Nursery Tales
We're getting to the point where most of the horrible dirty jobs are out of the way, and we actually start to see some rewards for our hard work. It had felt like a lot of work had been put into the house during the early part of the year, and not much seemed to have improved with our living accommodation - however that all changed with the completion of 2 rooms on the middle floor of the house.
First of all, was Freya's nursery - which was finished in the summer (I know - looong overdue update here). The little lady was very happy with her special birthday bedroom and can be seen here posing from the comfort of her cot. This room took such a long time to complete due to the huge amount of paintwork to be stripped from the wood - we have now found a company that will dip the rest of the doors in the house for £15 each, which we feel will be a very worthwhile investment of our money to save time (and perhaps sanity..)
Next up was the bathroom. We were so sick of the horrible salmon pink bathroom suite, and damp peeling walls, that we gave in to the tempation of getting a builder in to blitz the job for us. Afterall, with currently only one toilet in the house - this is not an area we could afford to have out of action for a prolonged time. In the end it took a few weeks to transform the old to new - but we are thrilled with the results and enjoying the luxury of our shiny new facilities.
We are now in the happy position of being able to stand in one finished room, and peer into another (and if you stand on your toes you can glimpse the finished kitchen from Freya's room at the same time - so that really makes three..). Now, that is progress!
A slightly more recent piccie of Freya for the blog fans only after baby stuff... Freya meets a piano for the first time - it was very tuneful!
Long Time No Blog
Well, this update is a long time overdue. There's been plenty going, mainly in the plastering department.
We've had pretty much all of the plastering done that we'll ever need so the house is covered in plenty of bare walls at the moment. Major enabling works were completed in the utility room and nursery which means both of those rooms can move forward to completion (maybe soon...) All of the horrible artex in the lounge and dining room has been removed as well which is sheer bliss. Here was the horror of our lounge ceiling...
The nursery probably benefitted the most from plastering, having stripped off all the old tiles and units the walls were in a bad way. This was the only room where every surface had to be skimmed. The after photograph includes the girly pink paint job and newly fitted skirting boards. (There was a 2:1 majority ruling on the colour of the nursery, the male contingent in the house losing the vote...)
The paintwork in the nursery has been never ending. Stripping 99 years of paint from the architrave, window frame, door and various other pieces has been dull to say the least. Still, it is at least now undercoated and we just need to do the glossing and get some carpet fitted. Here is the lady herself relaxing in her favourite setting, a nice pile of stones!
'Manporium'
Well, we are finally keeping up with the neighbours at long last! We have
constructed a shed to complete the Brighton beachfront look down at the end of the garden. Shot here is taken from on-high in our loft bedroom.
With the assistance of Roger and George the bulk of the shed (or log cabin to use the technical term) was
whipped up in just over a day. It took a good while longer to seal it and finish the floor, but all is completed now. This is my substitute garage and workshop from now onwards.
Loading of junk being commenced...
Whilst digging out the base for the shed base, we found pieces of would have been our beautiful period lounge fireplace smashed into pieces. Below are some fragments of hand-painted tiles we discovered. We also found part of the slate surround. How can somebody take something so nice and smash it into pieces? We also found pieces of an old porcelain sink from the back kitchen. We think it must have been the people who converted the house into flats who made such a dubious design decision.
We look forward to restoring something similar in the near future...
Lots of Shovelling...
Long overdue update - we've been very busy at the front of the house working on the drive. In fact so busy, that it is now finished (pending some flowerbed refurbishment works). When we look back from what we started with it seems like we've come a long way:
We had 30+ tonnes of soil karted away.
Installed 19 sleepers (around 1.5 tonnes of wood) and covered the base in rubble from our building works. Then we had some more rubble and soil removed for good measure.
Shovelled and compacted 9 tonnes of hardcore (note helpful positioning of hardcore in the hedge and borders by the lorry driver...)
Laid 18 m2 of black limestone paving using 3 tonnes of sand, with lots of help from family Hartley.
Freya finds the smooth ride down the new path much more comfortable than the previous wobbly one, allowing greater concentration to be diverted to her toys!
And finally shovelled and raked another 4 tonnes of finest Boreham gravel (note charity clothes bag on prominent display!). Perhaps the raking needs some more work looking at this picture...
All of which means we have parking for 3 cars and a flower bed to get stocked up. This has opened up all manner of vehicle related purchases in my over-active imagination, I've been browsing Ebay for a suitable fast/track related car. Probably not a wise purchase if any work on the rest of the house is ever to get done, but it's good to know I can keep my eye out now we have ample parking!
Next!
After several easy weekends, work started again on the ripping out the old kitchen. Predictably, a room that has previously been a bedroom, bathroom and kitchen since 1909 was looking pretty shabby underneath...
Will be nice to turn it back to a bedroom again - this will be Freya's new pad. Speaking of Freya, here she is deciding if the weeds in our lawn are worthy of eating. Even if they are tasty, she's not onto solids yet so we'll have to limit her intake for now!
Kitchen Complete!
It's been a while coming, but our new kithen is finally done. In fact, it's been done for a while now, but we've been so busy cooking in it all the time it took us a while to tidy it up enough to take a decent picture!
So as a reminder of what we started with, here is our original (downstairs) kitchen, with bathroom at the back:
All bashed out with new roof and glass doors in place:
To the finished article!
Can't wait to get that horrible shed taken down so we can see up the garden, will also be installing a decked/paved area so we can 'bring the outside in' through the patio door. I have also discovered the joy of clay pizza ovens for alfresco Italian dining, think we may have to treat ourselves to one of those one day.
The upstairs kitchen has now been removed and Freya is pleased to hear that she no longer has a gas supply to her bedroom! She will be even more pleased when her Daddy finishes it for her as she is rapidly growing out of her crib in her current dinky bedroom. Here is a pic of the lady in question.
Transformation Weekend
The troops were ready for action on Saturday morning to begin the major overhaul of the downstairs of our house. Roger, Jean, Jo and Stuart joined forces with Dave, Freya and myself for a weekend of extreme action and major results.
We began with an almost finished kitchen still resembling a construction site (see before picture below - minus tiling) and an adjacent workshop room filled with tools, shelves and about 2cm of sawdust. Roger and Stuart got to work emptying the workshop room, removing the thoroughly ruined old carpet and laying the conveniently available old carpet from Roger and Jean's living room. Meanwhile, Dave finished the extractor fan ducting and sink waste jobs on the kitchen, while the girls took turns of looking after Freya, attaching 27 handles to the kitchen cupboards and drawers, and peeling the blue film from the doors to reveal the glorious shiny cupboards underneath.
On Sunday the boys got stuck into furniture juggling to turn our upstairs living room into a bedroom, and turn the now liberated workshop room into our living/dining room. We were very relieved that our leather sofa fitted down the staircase as there was substantially less headroom than when we'd lifted it up due to the new loft staircase. Jean and Jo did a fabulous job of cleaning everything and anything while I had a wonderful time in the new kitchen deciding where everything should go and filling the new kitchen cabinets with tins and bottles.
So much was achieved in the weekend, and we effectively gained 2 new rooms to our house! It no longer feels like we live in a flat which is wonderful. There are only minor snagging tasks left to finally finish the kitchen - however this didn't stop us from christening it by shoving some pizzas in our new oven and enjoying a bottle of bubbly to celebrate as we recovered from a very hectic weekend.
Have just realised we've been so busy enjoying our new kitchen we haven't actually taken any photos of it yet! Next post will have lots of kitchen pix, so some baby ones here for now instead..
The Last Supper
A momentous occasion was marked the Friday before last, when we cooked our last ever meal in our old, dingy upstairs kitchen. To mark the event, I decided on chicken fajitas (can be cooked in about 10 min which is handy when it's already 7pm and we've only just got Freya to bed) and does not require the use of an oven (also handy when yours is broken). Below I can be seen happily frying the chicken content in the knowledge that soon I would be whipping up culinary masterpieces in shiny new surroundings.
The next day the troops were arriving to help transform the downstairs workshop into a functioning lounge/diner while Dave put the finishing touches to the kitchen. This would effectively turn our flat with downstairs building site, into a real life house. All very exciting (as you can see Freya thinks so too....)
