New House!

So I have been incredibly busy these last few months.  Not only have I made a wedding cake, my husband and I have bought our first house. It's a 1960's semi on the outskirts of Nottingham and it needed a fair bit of work doing to it.

We had a lot to do, not much money and not much time to do it in!

Here is us when we got the keys in our happy ignorance!

Half an hour after getting our keys, we were briefing the electrician who was starting the whole re-wire the very next day! I told you we had a tight programme!  That afternoon the old owners also came back to empty the garage of all their stuff  - I can't believe they are allowed to do that!  Surely once the money has been transferred everything on the property is yours?! Anyway, they came back for what they wanted, but also left a LOT of rubbish!!  They had also overfilled the bins which had been collected the day before - so we had a lot of trips to the tip!!  We also put what we could on freecycle - huge fan of freecycle over here.

We also spent that afternoon and well into the evening ripping apart the built in wardrobes in the master bedroom, and demolishing the bathroom. 

The wardrobes coming down.  The bridging unit had already come down by the time I took this photo.

Wardrobes gone!

BEST TOOL EVER -> a bolster chisel.  My dad had lent it to us by chance but it turned out to be the champion tool of the whole project.

So the bathroom had been tiled, on top of tiles, on top of tiles.  All three layers were foul!  They ceiling was painted cork board, and the shower was a dribble. Hence the renovation!

Bathroom before

Bath out - took a good old yank! Chipping away at tiles...

3 layers of tiles!

Safety first!

Tiles gone!

The hardest part of getting the bathroom demolished?  The flooring!  Vinyl tiles which had been glued down with some really really sticky black stuff. It took ages to get rid of - and I'm still finding bits now.

We had the obligatory take out meal on our first night (even though we weren't staying) - on the floor of our new living room with no furniture.

It was the first time in a really long time that I felt like I earnt my dinner!

It was all too much for Rupert, who buried his head in the hay at the thought of all the hardwork ahead...