Living Room - Time for some destruction

So this makeover was actually quite some time ago now, but we are at the point of selling our home, and I want to make sure I capture all that we have done on this house before we move on and I forget!  So, lets begin on all that has been achieved on the house in the last 18 months...

First up, the living room...

Now, when we bought the house the living room contained all the textures you could ever imagine.  Textured wallpaper on the walls painted yellow, textured wallpaper on the ceiling, damaged polystyrene coving, and a foul green carpet - yum!  It also didn't help that on Day 1 of owning the house we had it rewired so there were also a LOT of chases around the room too (not helped by the fact that we have 10 double sockets in here now - yes 10!)

After a few months of living here, we bought a cheap tub of magnolia paint to slap on the walls to cover up the chases and make it look vaguely more attractive.  The texture was temporarily staying until we had the time and financial resource to tackle it.

Roll forward another year to about March 2016, when we decided enough was enough.  I couldn't bear looking at the texture anymore.  We hated the room so much we barely used it - so it was time to rectify that.  Starting with stripping the wallpaper... oh my!

I completely underestimated how long this would take.  My chosen tools were a wet cloth and a scraper, but after several looong days, it was clear that these just weren't cutting the mustard.  After a plea on Instgram, my fellow instagrammers guided me to getting a wallpaper steamer and a Zinsser Paper Tiger.  The BEST money I have EVER spent.  My life is transformed! I have always been nervous about using a steamer as I've heard horror stories of it damaging the plaster behind.  I already knew that these walls were going to need re-skimming though, so I thought what the heck.   Absolutely no problems with damage because of the wallpaper steamer and I feel like a bit of divvy that I didn't invest sooner .

As you can see below though, after the wallpaper came off, the walls were significantly cracked behind - so as anticipated, this was going to be another job for me to plaster.

In good news, when removing the fireplace, I did find £10 behind it - wooo! That will pay for the renovation right?!

Can you see the gorgeous texture? Yum!

This was about 4 hours work, pre the steamer!

Absolute came changers!

SO much progress, and a facial in one!

We had a steel lintel installed above this window a few years ago (read all about that here), but this had clearly disrupted some of the plaster on the inside.  We just didn't realise before as the wallpaper was holding it all together!  So some patching up was required here.

I also came across some rather unsightly cracks, larger than most.  I put some scrim tape over these cracks to hopefully prevent the crack coming through my new plaster finish.  18 months on and it's still going strong with no crack present in the surface so I'm pleased with how it turned out.

And this is how we lived for a few months.  We sold our sofa for pittance and bought in the garden chairs from the garage.  The bunnies appreciated them though! Haha!

The next step was to strip the wallpaper from the ceiling.  There was also some fairly sizeable cracks between the boards so they would need refixing.  Not long in, I decided it was going to be easier to get a fresh start o the ceiling with new boards, and may even be quicker that way too.  So, as you do, we pulled the old ceiling down, textured wallpaper and all.

Buh-bye textured wallpaper!

What a mess! I never fail to underestimate how far and wide the dust spreads in the house.  And this is where I shall leave you until the next installment when we will start putting everything back together again!

Total spend:

Wallpaper steamer £25

Zinsser paper tiger £14.99

TOTAL: £39.99

(We also sold all our furniture and the fireplace surround, so we were actually making money at this point!)

Hallway Progress - More Paint Stripping and Splash Coat

As I hadn't managed to get all the paint stripping of the architraves done before the plastering was done (see the post about that here), I had to finish it before painting.  I didn't want to run the risk of the emulsion on the wall blistering if I had painted the walls first.

I waited a few weeks for the plaster to be really dry, as I was worried the heat gun might cause it to crack.  It was generally fine, but there was one area which it cracked - eek! :(

I still have more to do around the door stops, I only did the edges next to the plaster, as I'm going to be honest, I was itching to get the paint on the wall!

So for fresh plaster, you have to paint on what is called a splash coat.  This is typically a watered-down emulsion coat, as the plaster will be really thirsty.  The plaster drinks in the water and it's a good starter coat before you put your more expensive colour coat on.  I generally use cheap white matt emulsion paint, but you can use any matt emulsion - just make sure you don't use vinyl emulsion.

I probably watered it down 50/50 to start with, so half paint half water.  The paint doesn't always mix well with water though - it takes a while to get it consistently mixed.  I actually used a whisk to get it all mixed - not conventional, but it got the job done!

The 50/50 mix was waaaay too much water!  So this happened...

Then I read the instructions on the paint tin, and it said 20% watered down on fresh plaster.  I measured out the paint to water ratio using a plastic cup and that worked well.

After I got the ratio right it went on much cleaner!

I did all this while the hubby was out so I had to leave the corners that I couldn't get to with the roller on an extension pole.  When he got home we got the ladder out and got those bits done.

I still need to sort the area of the loft hatch out.  I will actually change the loft hatch, but it's the area around it that will need a bit if thought and work.

There was one area of the ceiling down stairs that didn't take the paint too well - I'm not quite sure what was up with the plaster, but I wasn't particularly impressed with it.

Again, some more work required to this patch to sort it out.

What projects are you making progress with?