We have decoration!! ... 1 week till move in

I'm SO chuffed this week ... even though I don't suspect we've done as much as previous weeks it feels like we've come a long way.

My aim was to have the bedroom decorated before we move in this weekend. A tight deadline as I am away some of this week and we need to take a few days to actually move everything from the flat to the house.

I rubbed down all the skirting and frames etc, painted them and the ceiling white. Wow, what a difference (I think you can see the cupboard doors I haven't done are still dirty cream compared to the frame in pic).

Next job .... papering. Dad to the rescue!! Father's day and he's putting up wallpaper in our bedroom. Reza's mum took over and 12 hours later the lining paper was up (there's so many corners in that room with the fireplace etc). It's not perfect but mainly because the walls are so terrible. When we return to the bedroom to decorate again we'll probably take the plaster off and have it all re-done. I'm so excited to get it painted - it's going to be a rush before the weekend with Mon/Tues/Wed all taken up with other things. Also bought a new light for a bargain £26.99 which really brightens the room up.

Piccies piccies .....







What else did we do this weekend?! hmmmm

ooooh my new garden furniture arrives!!! We look super posh now and it was a bargain at £34.50 from Tesco. The only problem is I need to put it away every night in case of rain grrrrrr



Reza also put the first coat on the front door and some new locks. Now we actually have 2 sets of keys instead of working out who's going to be there first and who needs the keys etc etc.



Other stuff ..... now we're shorlty moving in we thought it was sensible to get some appliances. Reza did a brilliant job of plumbing in washing machine and dishwasher in one evening. All we need now is a cooker!





BIG ewwwwwwwww next. The sink wasn't draining properly so we 'poked'?!! a bit of copper pipe from the outside to where the waste came into the kitchen. Basically what came out was a massive sausage shaped, long bit of gunk!!! No wonder it didn't drain. That mustn't have been cleared for years and years. YUCK!! Just be thankful I don't have a pic of that.

Reza also ran the new hot water to the old bathroom (confusing?!) and Mum cleaned both that and the toilet so they're half respectable for when we move in. Got some lino for the toilet floor and it looks like new :) (ish!)

Stevo's room also needed new skirting boards so decided to buy new ones rather than repair the old. We thought it wasa great idea as they didn't cost much but it was pretty tough to get them on and then fill in the nail marks etc and sand down. Several hours/days later ...



Plan for this week is to paint the bedroom, undercoat and paint Stevo's skirting boards and paint his ceiling. Move flat stuff over to house. Have another BBQ?!!

Floorboards are down!!

Reza promised me that this weekend we could put the floorboards down so I could get to work on the bedroom. Super excited me!!!

We finised off the cabling to both bedrooms, lounge and loft and had to pull out the old copper tank. Who hooo that's gone now too. It's so weird to walk upstairs and not have to hop over joists. I still go to look down everytime I go up there!






Saturday night was BBQ time! I bought Rez this BBQ for his birthday back in May but being a bit tricky to move we haven't got round to actually putting it in the garden. Four strong men later it arrives!






Blowtorch + Reza + wood = oh ohhhhh

Not quite sure what happened after all of that but the morning looked something like this:





Back to business .... we now have 2 weeks until move in which is going to be super stressful. We've decided there's no way the bathroom will be done so having to plumb in the one downstairs for the foreseable future. Mum's in charge of cleaning again!

I'm planning to have our bedroom finished (minus new carpet) by the end of this weekend. That means I can start moving my stuff from the flat across to the house.

The lounge .... well, no comment here but sometime between now and then we have to pop my home office/desk into it and remove the bath?!

eeeek!!! Time to draw up a plan.

My birthday weekend .. we have progress!

Wow, lots to report from last time. We have new windows!! YEY Really pleased with them but still hate that horrible ivy which covers our walls. My plan is to pressure wash it off (the little feet things the ivy leaves) and then paint but we'll see how that goes. Also the rendering needs painting so actually they could look alot better!






Next ..... boiler installation! The guys worked really hard and 7 hours later we had hot water in the kitchen and heating upstairs (aaaaaaah lovely). Reza was really chuffed as he'd worked so hard on this, yey well done :) Not sure I've ever seen so many pipes?! We now have a boiler fit to heat a 4-5 bedroom house :)





I am now allowed the kitchen back and it's almost a tool free zone!

We also had a big clearout of all the rubbish and old carpets which makes a huge difference.

Count down to move in ........ 3 weeks AARGH. We decided it's pretty unlikely the bathroom will be ready so we may have to resort to plan b to temporarily plumb in the bathroom downstairs. At least it's a backup.

Back to the now and I'm determined to decorate the bedroom before we move in. Reza is installing TV/Sat, Telephone and Cat5 cabling in each room so we needed to run that from downstairs. We also put in some new plug sockets in both the bedrooms.






I had a fab birthday :) Everyone came over and we had tea and cake in the garden (aww how nice). Although we probably did the least amount of work this weekend it really feels like we're getting somewhere. I'm happy :)

Weekend update

Wow, as usual a busy weekend! I'm not sure I can remember everything we've done .....

The house seems to be getting messier but we have some good progress :) Reza and Pete re-ran the pipes which didn't take as long as expected. As a bonus they chipped off the outside render which seems to be causing the damp and fitted some new air bricks.






HAHAHAHA

I decided that the window fitters may refuse to fit our windows with that much ivy growing up the walls so started pulling it off the walls. Possibly easier than it looks .....



Half way?! Going to have to do some more on that.

Now for the best job of the week!!! Gem & Laura's plaster chipping off afternoon :) We weren't entirely sure of the reason but gave it out best effort with a few injuries along the way.



and the winner goes to ......Laura!!




The boys decided we needed more protection from the dust. Very H&S of you guys ;) go me ...




HAHAHAHAHAHA

Overall a good weekend. Radiators all in upstairs (minus bathroom towel rail), bathroom ready for plasterboard and Stevo's working on the front door so it looks sparkly new for our new windows.