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!)

Office Make-Over - Part 1

We have had a little shuffle round in the house and decided to move the office out of the guest bedroom, and into it's very own room, which used to be the spare guest room with a single bed in it.

We gave it a quick lick of magnolia paint when we moved in two years ago, but other than that, it was left as it was, and to be honest, it became a bit of a dumping ground.

I also gave the hubby (almost) free reign to pick a colour of his choice, as it would be his office after all.  He had taken the mickey so much out of my Farrow and Ball colour cards, that when he picked a colour I think he was just being flippant.  But to show him I'm not a wimp, and I really can paint our house in a colour other than magnolia, I went through with it.

The colour he chose was Farrow & Ball Sudbury Yellow.

I've never used F&B paint before, and it was eye wateringly expensive - but I wanted to give it a go.  With it being a tiny room, I would only need one 2.5L tin, so there was some damage limitation. (But still, £40!)

Prepping for plastering by removing the skirting board (yes it was screwed on...)

One bit of prep that I wasn't bargaining on was removing this little bugger of a piece of skirting board:

After wrestling with it for quite some time, I realised the reason I could not extract it from the wall, was in fact because it continued THROUGH the wall, (yes, that's correct, through the wall), and into the master bedroom on the other side!  I'm not often lost for words, but that really left me speechless!  I mean, really?!  There is no way this was ever a two bedroom house, there are no other signs that the two rooms used to be one (that and all the neighbour houses are the same as ours) - so why on earth would someone think this was a good idea?! 

They really was no way it was coming off by pulling it, so out came my trusty hammer and chisel, and I chiseled the little bugger off.

And then plastered over him like he never existed...

So next up was, plastering.

I cleared everything out of the room, and put some scrim tape across the minor cracks on the ceiling.  No idea if that's a good idea or not, but I thought I would give it a go.  I also split the ceiling into two halves using scrim tape (which I would peel off after doing the first half) to give me a nice clean edge to work off for the second half.

Half of the ceiling plastered - scrim tape removed to leave clean(ish) join

It took me 7 sessions (each about 3 hours) to get the whole room done.  The room is approx 2.4 x 2m.  Plastering is all about time management, and making sure you have the right amount of time to go back and do the second coat, just when the first coat is at it's sweet spot.  It's all about good prep, setting up all your equipment ready, and making sure the surface to be plastered is clean and has sufficient coating of diluted PVA glue - this is to stop the wall prematurely sucking all the moisture out of the fresh plaster, making it unworkable too quickly.

I found a great solution for plastering around light switches and sockets.  What I did was that I turned the electrics off first, and then detached the front plates of the sockets from the wires behind.  I then cut out some small pieces of cardboard to cover the remaining hole and protect the wires.  I then plastered straight over the top as if it wasn't there, and cut the cardboard out after I had finished all my 'wets' (last finishing trowels). Simple, and so clean looking when it's done - something our plasterer who came in after the re-wire could have taken a lesson in!

Some progress shots:

Prepped (left) and after (right) shot.  The paint on the left is where I had sampled the colour before buying.

The hardest bit for me was around the window as there were so many fiddly bits like the valves for the radiator, and the narrow edges down each side of the window.  It really does look a bit pants, but the radiator does cover most of the worst spots, so I'm not too concerned.

Let's just say my plastering isn't perfect, and when it was all done, I did need to rub over the walls in some places with some really fine sandpaper.  But it's not horrendous!  After sanding I then wiped the walls with a wet cloth to get rid of any surface dust before painting.

I did two coats of a watered down white emulsion and then one coat of full strength white emulsion.  I love Johnstone's premium contract matt - it goes on so well and the coverage is excellent.  That and the paint shop at the end of the road sells it which is very convenient.

Look how huge it is now it's all white and clean looking!

Due to time off work, it was at this point that I decided to sand the floor back.  The carpet in here was the original carpet that the owners before it had left, and for some god awful reason (in terms of god awful points the previous owners have racked up quite a few on this room!) they had decided to fit it in two halves. As the room was so small, I just hired one of the edging sanders to get the room done, and it only took a couple of hours.  Not bad! (Absolutely killed my back mind. Will I ever learn?!)

Halfway through

And done!  Ignore the dodgy plumbing in the back of the shot.  This will get sorted out when we next drain the system down, but as we had just put some inhibitor in the system, it seemed like a bit of a waste to do it there and then.

And covered up with a plastic dust sheet to protect whilst painting commenced.

This is where I will leave you with part one. Join me shortly for Part 2 - the paint!

Updating the loft hatch

I wasn't particularly happy with how the plasterer had left the loft hatch, and it certainly requires some work to get it to a finished standard.

This is what I was starting with:

I planned to completely change the door, and I have in fact had a new door cut out of plywood for probably about 6 months.  I've just never gotten any further...

But I also needed to sort out the plaster around it.  I knew I'd put some trim around the edge of the door, but I didn't want the trim to be too wide so I needed to sort out the plaster work a bit.

I went back to my trusty filler friend.  I actually used deep gap filler as that's all I had lying around, so I thought I would give it a go.  

I started with a filling knife:

But it really wasn;t working out for me.  The filler seemed too dry so I had a look at the instructions, and it recommended adding a few drops of water to it.  I did this, and also cracked out an old card. And it went on waaaay easier than with the filling knife.  

I had no intentions of getting it perfect first time.  But I have had a good go at it.  I'll follow up with some more filler and then sand it flush with the new plaster level hopefully.  Then when I mount the new door, I'll mount it a few mm lower than existing so it's also flush.

It's certainly not finished, but it's progress nonetheless. #smallprogresseveryday

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?