Living Room - complete!

I'm going to prefix this blog post as I seem to with all my "complete!" posts - it's not really complete.

We still plan to:

Hang artwork
Add new sofas (they are on order and should be delivered around the start of October)
Buy/make cushions
Shorten curtains
Buy sideboard (hoping and waiting for a Laura Ashley sale)
Replace double doors leading off the hallway

Anyway, photos!  There's quite a few, you might want to get a cup of tea/glass of wine... From the beginning:

When we viewed the house.  We later found about a million rawlplugs in the walls, but strangely there was no rawl plug, and not even a nail-hole where that picture above the fireplace was!  I think it was blu-tacked...

Shortly after moving in:

Bought curtains and new wall/ceiling lights (24 Feb)!

In March we got new windows and patio doors, and heating so we gained radiators...

Began stripping wallpaper (27 May) - we just stripped this wall so the hole could be filled and the wall skimmed, and then stopped for a while to concentrate on other rooms... 

Stripped the dining room (31 July)

Graham ripped the gas fire out (he'd disconnected it when he installed the boiler) and we were left with this lovely hole (4 August)

We temporarily stuffed it with newspaper to keep the draughts out...

...and bricked up the hole with some bricks that were not the right size, and a LOT of mortar.  Still, it dried solid so job done, despite it being seriously ugly!

Continued stripping wallpaper (I should probably mention that the anaglypta wallpaper ruined the painted surface underneath, which is why we had to have the walls skimmed. You wouldn't normally expect to skim walls in a 1980s house, but the only other option was to wallpaper, and I don't like wallpaper...)

More stupid holes in walls...

Discovered paint samples painted on the walls underneath the paper...

Finished stripping the wallpaper!  (20 August)

Pre-plastering (note artex ceiling)

End of plastering day 1 (21 August)

End of plastering day 2 (22 August)

Drying out (23 August)

Painting the smooooooth ceilings (26 August)

The in-laws come to the rescue for 2 days of painting.  Mist coating begins (27 August)

First coat of Dulux Almost Oyster on the walls, with my team:

First coat of Dusted Damson on dining room wall:

Painting complete at the end of day 2!

Filling annoying holes...

Painting the woodwork (it's wet in this photo, it's actually satinwood rather than gloss) (29 August)

New curtain poles up! Also replaced all light switch/plug socket fascia plates (31 August)

And at the other end...

And curtains re-hung! (3 September)

Old carpet and underlay cut up, to reveal the glorious yellow lino tile underneath (4 September)

Aaaaaand today (5 September) the carpet was laid and the piano delivered! The room is pretty much in its final layout though as I said above the sofas will be replaced next month.

The oak sideboard will stand against the purple wall on the left here:

Garden 30 August

Wow, it's been weeks and weeks since I last blogged!  Things have been happening here - working on the living room currently - but I don't want to blog photos till it's finished!  The living room/dining room walls and ceilings have been skimmed and painted, the new carpet is due for delivery and fitting on 5th Sept and the sofas should be delivered - fingers crossed - around 7th October.

Today Sophie came round and we put her to work in the garden ;) we did a couple of hours weeding in one of the flower beds.  Photos of a very autumnal-looking garden:

Sophie setting to work:

That same border afterwards:

This is one of the centrepieces from our wedding in April 2013, still just about alive!

Trying to work out what to do with the garden long-term... I'm not happy with the paths/gravel/weed paradise areas but just not sure what to do with it all...

Driveway update

Today's excitement has been the removal of the tree in the front garden/driveway.  I rather liked this tree (hawthorn) but its roots had started cracking the driveway and it was getting a bit big and Ian's car was getting covered in bird poo and sap etc... so I grudgingly conceded it was time for it to go.

The tree surgeons also took out the conifer on the corner as well while they were there.  They've just ordered a new stump grinder so will be back in a few days to grind the stumps out.

The living room is even lighter and brighter now which is really nice.

Any suggestions on what to plant in place of the hawthorn?  We really want something that isn't going to get bigger than 6 foot or so, and is upright rather than having a horizontal spread... any ideas?

Scuse the phone camera quality pics...

Before:

After:

Downstairs Loo - complete!

We mostly finished the downstairs loo last Friday (same day as the spare room), but had a few finishing touches to add - grouting the tiles, sealing around the vanity unit and between the basin and tiles, painting coving, and hanging a mirror and adding the door stop to stop the door handle bashing the plasterboard... We may still hang a voile curtain in here, and probably add some sort of artwork - my in-laws have an assortment of amusing cards, which I like - but apart from those things, we're done with our third room!

When viewing the house in August 2013 (you can actually see the delightful stained carpet in this photo, lovely...):

This was the first room we stripped the wallpaper from, so it was pretty exciting... (12th February)

Stripped and first round of Polyfilla (19th February): 

Ceiling skimmed (and new window fitted at some point between these two photos), 3rd June:

Paint samples:

Old toilet and basin ripped out, 29th June:

Graham moved the pipes that ran down the wall, they're now the other side of the wall in the utility room, looks much nicer without them!

Painted (Apple White), 7th July:

Not Graham's most flattering angle ;), 7th July:

Nice carpenter boxed in behind the loo so the cistern could be hung (it wouldn't reach the wall due to the stupid placement of the waste pipe), 10th July:

Boxing primed, 10th July:

Painted (Willow Tree) and new carpet laid, 11th July:

Splashback tiled, 11th July:

Mirror, splashback grouted, coving painted etc, 20th July:

New light fitting:

House video tour: July 2014

Sunday will mark 6 months since we moved in, so I thought I'd do another video tour as a little update.  In many ways it feels like we haven't done much, but the windows and heating and hot water are the sorts of things that aren't very noticeable.

Here it is, what do you reckon?