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!)

Bringing the internal doors into the 21st Century

So I have been struggling with the internal upstairs doors for a while.  Struggling in the fact that I hate them! Just look at them:

Before

Urgh! So dark, and the brass handles had seen much better days.  In fact the bathroom lock didn't even work.

The trouble is, the style of the doors themselves aren't actually horrendous - it's just the colour I can;t get on board with.  So, I decided to paint them.

I tried to sand one of the doors, using my little mouse sander, but even with a very coarse grit sandpaper, it didn't seem to take off whatever was on the doors.  I'm not sure if it was varnish or lacquer or what... who knows.

This was when I came across Zinsser BIN primer.  A bit pricey at £40 for a 2.5L tin, but here's the magic:

NO PREP REQUIRED! Nope, not even sanding! Yay!!  Apparently it sticks to almost anything. Wow.

I did prep the doors in the fact that I used some wood filler to fill in any knocks in the doors, and I sanded this down once dry so it was smooth.  I also cleaned the doors as they were a bit grubby.

The primer was a really weird paint to use.  It was like water and just fell off the paintbrush and dripped everywhere between the tin and the door.  However, once it made it on the door, it was so thick and hard to spread. Weird.  I decided to do two coats, although I'm not sure it needed it.  It only took 15 mins to be touch dry and 45 mins to re-coat so no hanging about.

I then did one top coat of brilliant white Johnstone's eggshell:  http://www.johnstonestrade.com/products/product-display/eggshell

The handles were what got this whole project started.  I happen to look on the Wickes website one day to find they were having a mega sale on door handles.  I saw some nice Chrome ones, massively reduced to just £3 each, and £5 for the locking bathroom one.  That would be the whole set for five doors for just £17! I also had to buy new chrome latches and hinges which cost more than the handles in the end!

I also had to chisel out a bit of the doors to fit the new latches in as they were ever so slightly different in size (change from imperial to metric I think).  Turns out I'm pretty handy with a chisel.

The screws that came with the handles were absolute rubbish, and I think it was the second one that I used, the head just sheared off completely leaving half the screw in the door.  Marvellous.  So I ditched those screws and just used my own.  Although I guess when you are only pay £3 for a handle, what do you expect?

It's amazing how much brighter they make the hallway.  I'm regretting polished chrome handles a bit as I can see the finger prints on them very easily, especially the bathroom door handle which obviously gets a lot of use.

There was also the incident where the bathroom door got stuck - the latch (not the lock) jammed in the door and wouldn't open. Luckily no one was stuck inside, but I did really need a wee! #firstworldproblems
We had to use hubbies European health card in the end to slot down the edge and push it back in, but it wasn't easy due to the architrave.  I would like to say no European health cards got hurt in the opening of the door, but I would be lying if I did.

It was a normal bathroom latch/lock set up from Wickes, but I got a bit nervous after the incident (just imagine if you were the only one in the house and you got trapped in - eek!), that I went and bought a Yale one to replace it.  There is something about the brand Yale that I inherently trust - I don't know why - good marketing obviously!

Anyway, what so you think?

With some wood filler in a blemish on the wood

Lined up for painting in my workshop *carport**cough*

Left to right: Original, Two coats primer, One coat primer

With top coat - looking better!  I had to bring the doors inside as it was so cold and humid outside I didn't think the paint would dry, at least not in a reasonable time frame that would allow me to get the bathroom door back on before the in-laws came for the weekend!

It's hard to take a photo in such a confined space but you get the idea.  I'm also now aware that the architrave now looks naff and a slightly different white to the doors.  That will need to be done soon.  It never ends!

We have also done a scheme of upgrading to the window handles.  Brass, again(!), was the theme throughout the house, and some of the locks were past serviceable.

On first impressions I thought we would need new windows, or at least a professional in to have a look.  Who knew it would be so easy!  YouTube, where would I be without you?!

This is an example of one of the window handles before:

It really is just a few screws and the job is done! I genuinely think it looks like we have had new windows from the inside.  It makes a huge difference to the look of all the rooms.  We also had to change one of the locking mechanisms.  This is ok for ground floor windows as access is easy - luckily for us, the knackered lock was in the room with the flat roof outside so we could climb out onto that to get access.  The trickiest bit was ordering the right lock - two attempts later and I got there in the end!  But once I had the right one, again it was just a few simple screws.

Doesn't that look better?

Post transformation