Lounge diner

The front of the house downstairs was made up of a lounge and a dining room, each room seemed a bit small so we decided to knock through the wall between them. First we had to strip all the horrible layers of wallpaper (on the walls and ceiling!) and pull out the carpets.  We also blocked up one of the doors and and replaced the door left with one with glazing to allow light into the hallway.  We decided to lay solid oak in the hallway and lounge diner for a sense of continuity, plus it is hardwearing and  according the B&Q if we wanted to we could re-sand and re-varnish it. 

We removed the old gas fireplace as the back boiler was behind it and it needed removing. We bought a new electric fireplace to replace it with but it hindsight we probably paid too much for it and should have gone with something that gave out a bit more heat!

Luckily both the dining room and the lounge had large tip and tilt windows, so we could get our very large oak dining table in and out! We bought bookcases from Ikea to put in the dining end of the open plan room as we have a large book collection plus a lot of stuff. As we'd knocked through we'd gained a lot of space so the bookcases didn't enclose the room at all. We had dimmers installed for the two light fittings.  Rick installed new skirtings all the way round to hold down the wooden floor (he also fitted the wooden floor - thanks Rick!) which we painted white and the walls we painted in a light creamy colour. 

The main problem we had with this room was when we took off the wall paper off the ceiling and part of the ceiling came down.  The whole ceiling was lath and plaster so rather than redoing the whole lot we had that small section patched with plaster board.  

Another slight problem we had was finding a structural engineer for the lintel where we knocked through the two rooms. We found a local guy who did some calculations for us but when we gave them to our builder he said that the system that had been drawn was not the normal system of pad stones and a thick steel lintel, but thin steels along the wall and across the ceiling - very odd.  Needless to say we had to find a structural engineer to do some proper calculations and pay again for the privilege.  We know now to go by recommendation for this sort of thing and to specify exactly what we want.

So tips you can take from this - go by recommendation and always be clear what your requirements are.

Also in hindsight I would have probably chosen some better light fittings as the bulbs in the ones we chose kept blowing. Perhaps some energy efficient fittings and bulbs would have been better!

Bathrooms

In our first project the main bathroom suite was grey, and very old. The shower was electric and a trickle! The bath seemed to fill up incredibly quickly when having a shower and when we finally had the bathroom redone, it turned out the drain pipe was angled upwards - not good at all.

There were tiles all over the walls, and when we tried to take those down, all the old plaster fell of the walls.  Therefore we had to replaster the whole room. Whilst doing that we decided to take out the old airing cupboard that had housed the hot water tank (which was no longer needed as we'd just put a new combi boiler in the utility room).  We got the plumber to build a shelf in place of the cupboard which was above the stairs and hence had to be quite high due to the angle of the stairs.  

We had a lovely big double ended bath put in, with an extra big bath screen. Separate taps and power shower, and white suite. The tiles were from Wickes £5.99 a pack, but once tiled, together with the quality fittings they didn't look cheap. I think if you combined cheaper tiles but quality fittings, it doesn't look cheap. 

Overall the plumbers did a really good job, however we did have a few problems with the timescales. He said that it would only take 2 weeks, but actually took twice that time. The main plumber we engaged with kept disappearing off the job and left his mate behind. We did some research and the Corgi membership belonged to the mate rather than the man we'd employed!  One evening we rang him to ask when he would actually be finished, and he didn't answer. We went off to have showers at my father in laws house (as we were obviously without a bathroom!) and when we came back we had over 20 miss calls off him, plus a very irate voice mail.  Once he finished the job we have not used him again, and have instead discovered a very good plumber in our friend Annie's dad. He has already installed a new boiler in our current house and just popped in whilst I was writing this to look at a leaking tap - very good service :)

Property and Interiors - first project

This is the house that was our first project. The first this we did was dig up the front garden and have a driveway put in. The garden at the back was plenty and a driveway was essential as the house was on a busy main road. 

The house hadn't been touched in a long while so we had great fun pulling down the wall paper, knocking walls down and revamping the whole place. 

We had grand plans initially involving a two storey extension at the back, but in the end decided against this as the house didn't warrant it. We did a straight forward refurbishment:

• Knocked through the lounge and dining room
• Knocked down a very badly positioned wall to open up the kitchen
• Knocked through into an outhouse to create a utility and WC
• New kitchen
• New bathroom
• All new decor and flooring throughout
• Painting the external render. 

The outside of the house looks so much better now! 

The old kitchen units were extremely difficult to remove, my husband reckons they were welded on. 

We must have lived without a kitchen (including a kitchen sink) for about 4 weeks. We had all new electrics and wiring installed, a new boiler was installed in the utility which was off the kitchen (as previously it was in the chimney breast - not what we wanted), so a lot had to be done before the new units and appliances could go in. We designed the new cabinet layout and went to a few different suppliers to see who could do the best deal. Our friend Rick is a joiner and in the end we asked him to install the kitchen and he purchased it from Howdens at a reduced price.

We specifically wanted a double oven so that we could cook one thing whilst using the grill. 

We would have preferred a double sink, but as we wanted a dishwasher as well it wouldn't fit.

The units were really sturdy, and really easy to clean. The work surface was a laminate, but looked like wood. The floor and wall tiles were from B&Q, and  were a bit difficult to lay as they had curved corners! I did try to help with the wall tiles but the floor was all Rick's doing.