What were they thinking?!

One of the horrors in the house when we looked round was the windowsill on the landing.  Someone had smashed a mirror and put it into some sort of grout mixture to decorate a windowsill...!!!

Aarggghhh!

We lived in the house for several weeks before I built up enough energy to tackle it.  But it got to a point where I couldn't bear it any longer and took the bolster chisel to it.

The bolster chisel and hammer took a bit more out of the actual wooden windowsill than I probably would have liked, but oh well!

I used a mouse sander to sand off the old paint underneath all that mirror! And some wood filler to fill in the areas where I had taken chunks out of the wood by accident.  I didn't have to be too worried about the colour of the filler because I was going to paint it anyway.

Primer, base coat and two coats of eggshell later, and now its not the worst element of the stairs!  The trouble is when you make one part of the room look 100 times better it makes the rest look pants!

What to expect when you're expecting... a re-wire

A large outlay of cash is expectation number one.  Ours came in at around £2,500 and this was the cheapest quote that we had.  Part of the reason this was the cheapest is because we went for a recently turned one man band who was below the VAT threshold (another amazing find from www.mybuilder.com ).

However, the important thing to look for when hiring an electrician is to get an NICEIC approved electrician.  This means that they have certain levels of training and certification, as well as the ability to self-certify the works for building regulation approval.  Make sure you fully investigate their declared credentials – an honest person won’t mind you asking questions, and if in doubt you can call the NICEIC themselves to see if your chosen contractor is registered with them (as I did).

As this was a re-wire we would need a Building Regulations certificate at the end to prove that all the works were compliant with current codes of practice, which we duly received a few weeks after the works were completed.

Our original wiring was the stuff they had built the house with in the 60’s so it was in a right old state – and only a double socket per room.  Don’t get me wrong, I grew up with a house with just a single socket in each room, so I’m pretty handy with extension leads! But a re-wire was a condition of the mortgage – so it had to be done.  I’m kind of pleased though, it worked out well – we got exactly what we wanted and no more trailing leads – which is great when we have two house bunnies that like to chomp on things!

The old fuse box

The first thing to expect is mountains of dust. Mountains.  If there is any way at all, literally any way, that you can avoid living in the house whilst you are getting it done – that is the number one preferred option.

We arranged an overlap of our rented property and the new house to allow for these works, and I’m so glad that we did.  It makes it cheaper too, as the electrician doesn’t have to lug furniture about, reinstate the electrics every evening, be constantly tidy… etc.

So, to help with the mountains of dust, we bought a Henry Hoover.  He’s my new best friend.  £100 and he will have my dust needs fully under control for a lifetime of DIY, I’m sure of it.  Plaster dust kills Dysons I hear, so the Dyson took a back seat on this one.  Hopefully your electrician will also do a fair amount of hoovering, but I promise you you will be hoovering it up for weeks afterwards...

We love Henry!

Secondly, expect to take up your entire upstairs floor coverings.  Some of the electricians quoted that we would need to take up all the laminate floor in the kitchen too (argh! Nightmare!) – so I think this depends a bit on your electrician.

Make sure your electrician is fully briefed up on what you want.  I’m an engineer by trade so when I want something doing I’m well versed in preparing a specification and a set of drawings.  I pretty much did this for our electrician.  I drew up simple plans of the house and marked on where I wanted lights, switches and sockets.  The day before work commenced we also had a meeting with the electrician where we walked round the house with the electrician and marked on the walls exactly where we wanted everything as my drawings weren't to scale – but they provided a reference for the electrician in case he needed to look back during the works.  (Top tip: don’t use felt tip for marking the walls, use a pencil else the pen will keep coming through no matter how much you paint over the top.  Last resort was stain blocker paint.  Lesson learned!)

I also detailed what sort of light switches (just plain white ones) that we wanted, and which of our purchased lights were to go where.  

Typical Spec for one room

We sourced all the light fittings ourselves, and I would probably do it this way again.  I also purchased a whole house full of LED light bulbs too, to save on our energy costs (from LEDHut – often offers on and big Quidco cashback too).  At around £200 for the whole house, they weren't cheap, but this included fittings for both the bathroom and kitchen too.  One of my favourite products from them that we purchased was the LED strip lighting on a roll.  We used this underneath the kitchen cabinets and it’s just fab.

Finally, be prepared for the noise!  Our electrician, along with some assistants he had draughted in, started at 7am on a Saturday morning, ripping through the walls with the chases almost immediately.  We only got the keys Friday afternoon and had yet to introduce ourselves to the adjoining neighbor…  The horror!  When I finally met her she said it was fine, but I felt and still feel dreadful about it!

A chase ready for wiring up 

The whole re-wire (3 bed semi) took approximately 1 week; however, this did not include plastering and we had to separately price and plan this work.  The plastering was another £300-400 and took 2 days.

The living room chases post plaster

When thinking about how many sockets you want, think about how you currently use the room, and how you might possibly use the room in the future. We ended up with 10 double sockets in the living room (hey, I was talked down from 11!) – which everyone thought was balmy, but I don’t regret a single one.  By the time you have the tv, sky box, router, PlayStation, laptop charger, hoover points, Christmas tree lights etc. it soon adds up.  The more sockets you have the more flexibility it gives you too.  It sounds really daft, but imagine where you are going to put your Christmas tree, imagine where you are likely to want to plug in your hoover in an easily accessible spot (not into a socket tucked away behind that oaf of a chair…).

Guest Bedroom Renovation

Whilst the whole house was my baby (my husband was fully aware that this was my baby rather than ours!); the second bedroom was my room.  (The third bedroom was to be my husband’s room so I’m not a complete monster!).

Whilst this was technically going to be the Guest Bedroom for when we have guests, it was also destined to be my dressing room.

It had a long way to come though, as it started out as a teenage boys bedroom… including graffiti, spider man stickers, and holes in the wall from a terrible darts player!  It did have some great built in wardrobes though, albeit melamine, but they were an asset I was keen to put to good use.

The colour scheme was going to be a contemporary grey (I can be trendy if I try!).

The following paints were used:
• Dulux Warm Pewter
• Dulux Engraved Locket
• Little Greene Traditional Oil Eggshell in Grey Teal for the wardrobes.

The wardrobes required the Spiderman stickers to be striped off, and the melamine to be repaired in places with some filler (turns out that spiderman stickers had been very strategically placed!). I used a melamine/tile primer (bought from The Range as that was the cheapest place I could find it, but also freely available in the likes of B&Q etc.).  I then did two coats of the Little Greene paint with a gloss mini roller.

The damaged melamine cupboard doors

Primer

On goes the grey

For the handles I settled on some glass cut looking handles from eBay – about £10 for 8 I think and they look smashing.

The finished product - looking a tad better than they started!

Apart from filling in the dart holes, and using a stain remover on the delightful graffiti, the wall decoration was quite straightforward.  There were two tones of grey - one lighter used on 3 walls, and then a darker shade which closely matched the wardrobes on the facing wall to the wardrobes.

Once again we had the light fitting moved to the middle of the room as well, and lots more sockets fitted.
The floor was white painted floorboards – they looked pretty tired but we have left them as they are for now.  I think we will eventually put carpet down, but for now it suits the décor as it is.

For the furniture, I always knew my Singer sewing machine (see post here) would be my dressing table, and the mirror that I made for my husband out of one of his old carbon race wheel would be my dressing table.

We already had a double mattress for this room, but no bed, as our last rented property had come with a bed but no mattress!

I had seen a lovely bed in Ikea but was a bit shocked at the price as I knew that wasn’t something our budget could stretch to.  Until I found a used one in great condition on Gumtree that was a snap at £35 and just a few miles away.  Marvellous.

The bedding was from Wilkinson’s.  Great value at £19.50 in the sale for a 400TC cotton double duvet cover.  It is so smooth and soft I kind of wish it was my bedding, and not the guest bedrooms!  As the walls were a bit dark with all the grey I wanted to keep the rest of the room light with lots of white.

The accent colour in this room was yellow to keep it nice and bright.  The curtains were a steal from eBay.  Brand new Ikea curtains RRP £25, and I picked them up for £7 (very local so no postage costs). I bought some dye from Wilkos (two packs for £10) and the job was a good’un. I even managed to get two cushion covers from the leftover curtain fabric as they were so long, and I dyed those with the curtains too.

The rooms not quite finished yet.  I’d still like to sort out some bedside tables, but I’m really pleased with how it has turned out so far.

Minion Cake

Back to a bit of baking!

Back in April it was my husband’s birthday and whilst he was away on a cycling training weekend, I knocked him up a birthday cake – and not just any cake, a Minion cake :)

He is a massive kid at heart and absolutely adores Despicable Me.  He also loves dinosaurs so he thought he was getting a dinosaur cake – what a surprise he had in store!

I didn't have a recipe as such, I had just pinned a lot of pictures of minions and minion cakes on Pinterest, and hey off I went!

I wasn’t really sure of proportions so I kind of winged it as I went along, but I’m really really pleased with how it turned out.

In the end I made three 6” cakes.  One chocolate with chocolate buttercream, one lemon with lemon buttercream, and one vanilla sponge with jam and buttercream filling.

I cut the chocolate and vanilla cakes off level and rounded the top of the lemon one to make the top of the minions head.  I have no experience in sculpting cakes so I think this was a great gentle introduction.

I dowelled the bottom two tiers and put a cake card between the layers – the dowels probably weren’t necessary but no harm done.

I then stacked them up and covered the whole thing in buttercream.  The hardest part was getting the yellow layer on.  I admit I didn’t do it perfectly but it turned out ok.

For the rest of the minion I just kept going back to the pictures and building it up bit by bit.  Here was the step by step pictures:

I’ll admit, the cupcake I actually bought from Tesco. Shock horror!  I went to Tesco to get some ingredients for the cupcakes and saw it right there in the bakery aisle.  (This also was the weekend I did the Totoro wedding cake, and a lot of DIY, so please forgive my sins).

And the hubby loved it!

This was definitely my most favorite cake I have made to date.  I think because there was no pressure.  I hadn't had a brief so I could do what I wanted, and at the end of the day, no matter what it looked like, I knew he would have been chuffed just because it was home baked cake.

Master Bedroom Renovation

The master bedroom was a bit lackluster when we first viewed the house.  The walls were a tired white, with several minor cracks in the wall.  The built in wardrobes were ancient and took up a large part of the room.  The light fitting was offset in the room (near the window), which annoyed my OCD husband no end! And the floor was just bare floorboards – not even nice ones, or even treated ones – just bare.

We knew the whole house wasn’t going to be perfect instantly, so we just wanted a room that was completely finished – a bolt hole if you will.  And this room, we decided, was going to be the master bedroom.

We started by ripping out the wardrobe, which I showed you in my last post.  This took a good few hours.  We wanted to save the as best as possible to see if we could give the to a charity furniture shop, but we just couldn't get them down the stairs in one piece. – so unfortunately they all went to the tip.  We managed to salvage the very large mirror (although it’s so large and heavy we now have no place to hang it!) and the bridging units.  I have plans for the bridging units to flip them over and use them as shoe storage units, although more of that in time (when I get round to that project!).

There was some wallpaper behind the wardrobes, which we had to strip but nothing too serious, and certainly not as bad as I was anticipating.  We pulled down the vertical blinds, which were very dated, and the curtains.

Right, a blank canvas!

We started by filling in the cracks with a fine surface filler, and the bigger holes with a chunky filler. Once this dried we just lightly sanded the filler down to create a smooth surface.  

There was also a gap in the skirting behind the old wardrobes, as well as a missing floorboard.  Both were fixed by a quick trip to Wickes.  The skirting was a bit of a palaver until we invested in a mitre box from Screwfix which made the whole job a lot easier.  We fixed the skirting board to the wall with adhesive (probably not the correct way to do it but it looks neat and does the job very well).

The floorboard that was missing we just measured the width and depth and then got a standard floorboard as close as possible to these dimensions, and cut it to length.

Once we had had the electrics done (light moved to the middle and lots and LOTS of extra sockets put in!) we had the chases filled by a plasterer and then we were ready to decorate.

We painted the ceiling white and used Dulux Endurance in Magnolia for the walls.  The Endurance stuff is pricey but I have heard lots of good reviews so we went with it.  A few coats of White Satinwood on the windowsill and the skirting and the basic decoration was done.

The carpet was a bit of mission.  We umm-ed and ahh-ed about whether to take the plunge because it was going to stretch out budget to breaking point.  But… in the end, we went for it.

We went to Carpet Right and met a salesman who was interesting let’s say.  A bit pushy, as they all are.  He convinced us that we needed the luxury underlay, which admittedly was lovely, but when we sat down with the numbers I nearly fainted at the total price with all the add-ons!  Anyway, we agreed to have the salesman round to measure the room up – even though I had already given him the measurements he said that was lovely but he didn't trust me…

Between going to Carpet Right and having the salesman round I was a woman on a mission.  I was determined to get the best carpet for the best price.  I started with the underlay.  The underlay was an absolute rip off in Carpet Right, and armed with the facts about density, sound absorption etc. of the underlay that I liked in Carpet Right I went searching on the web.  I came up trumps when I found Flooring Warehouse Direct http://flooringwarehousedirect.co.uk. I found a better specification (apparently it’s all about density when it comes to new types of underlay) for less than half the price including delivery.  It worked well in this instance because the size of the room was just smaller than a roll and the trade websites only sold it in rolls.  If you have a very small room, or a room just bigger than a roll, then this might not work out better for you, but always worth a look!

I also sourced a Carpet Fitter myself through www.mybuilder.com (fab website where I got a lot of our tradesmen).  He was the same price as the Carpet Right fitter but I could see this chap had good feedback –who knows who or what Carpet Right would send?

As the bedroom had had no carpet previously, there were no existing carpet grippers which meant we had to buy some.  Once again, Carpet Right were taking the biscuit with their quote, so I found a shop on eBay that sold branded ones at a much better price (even including delivery).  I can't deny I got some weird looks when they got delivered to work but it was worth it!

Whilst it took a LOT of extra legwork, in the end I believed we saved 35-40% off the original Carpet Right quote without compromising on quality.  When renovating on a tight budget you can’t sniff at those sorts of savings.

(By the way, when the Carpet Right man came to measure up, funnily enough it was exactly the size I told him. Imagine that, a woman who knows how to use a tape measure...)

 

All the furniture was existing including curtains and curtain pole.  The only new item was the voile panels and rod to hang them on.

I LOVE our Indigo Bed and Bedsides, and this seems like a lovely room to put them in. I wish we could afford to furnish our whole house with Indigo Furniture :) www.indigofurniture.co.uk

Final reveal... (Updated July 2015 - with new radiator installed)

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...