Wednesday 26 February 2014

Confession time..!

Well I have to confess it's been 50 days since I last blogged!! Where on earth did that time go? 
I do have a plethora of excuses: The most recent of them was Man flu;(click the link for a giggle!) yes I was struck down by that terrible virus that usually only men get!!! seriously though it has been horrible and I have felt so incredibly frustrated to have had my work flow cut short as well as other appointments.

Another reason I couldn't blog was the internet - we use a dongle on Orange network and usually it's brilliant - I'm able to stream videos and surf to my heart's content but suddenly it has stopped working and we get an intermittent signal, I can use 3G on my phone but I can't blog from my phone. 
BT were supposed to install our telephone line on 4th Feb and guess what? they didn't and we are still waiting!! So "normal" internet (although i'm told round here it's not great) will hopefully be installed soon..



So onto the house progress:
Upstairs is nearly finished, it's almost all painted with only small areas of painting and woodwork to do. It's taken some doing and painting new plaster has been a challenge. I've had to dilute the paint for it's initial "piss coat" (a term I am informed is used in the trade as it's 'weak as piss'!!!) some rooms have had 4 coats. 

We opted to paint everywhere white, the look we want lends itself to that and it's clean. I have however chosen Cornforth white from Farrow & Ball to use in the hall stairs and landing - as this is such an enormous height I guess 
we won't repaint it easily in the near future unlike other normal height rooms.







We have skirting board and architrave pinned in place upstairs and are just waiting for the doors to be hung.







The family bathroom is tiled and fitted out and is only waiting for the shower door. The guest ensuite needs tiling but has toilet, sink and shower installed - in fact we have 2 working toilets in the house!
Our master bedroom ensuite needs tiling and a lot of work yet..




The dressing room space continues to excite me! I feel so lucky to have a great walk in wardrobe space and so we've decide to emphasise the 'secret' element and we are going to hang a mirror as a door.. watch this space


The stairs have been altered and now fit the space properly and we await balustrade spindles and handrails etc





Downstairs has been a hive of activity, Rob our electrician has finished putting sockets and switches in place ready and pandering to my every silly whim :-@




The underfloor heating has been put in - Richard and Paul spent 1 and 1/2 days wrestling with a giant reel of pipe, got in a massive tangle and sent the air blue in the process, but its done! 

The floor was screeded on Friday and Monday and the plasterers George, Mark, Darren, Tom and Dan left after doing a fantastic job!! So now the downstairs is ready for painting...







Outside the brickwork is finished and we are waiting for the cladding to arrive which should be this week - I have always joked with Paul the builder that once he's outside fitting the cladding it'll snow! I do hope not!

We went to Ikea and bought the kitchen early Feb which is being delivered tomorrow - we've gone for the hi gloss white. They relaunched their kitchen range the day we went (that was planned! Click this link to have a look) The drawers light up on opening and there are drawers within a drawer features as well as subtle details which make it a bit different. We've chosen all pan drawers mostly including the island. We hope to create more of a bespoke look on a budget and have bought nice Siemens and Neff appliances and we are having a 12mm quartz worktop so hopefully it'll have a WOW factor. 


Another reason for choosing white was based on the open plan living thing - although right now it looks an enormous space; by the time there are sofas, dining table etc it could potentially look quite full so we decided a white kitchen would 'recede' as such. Heres hoping...
We have bought hi gloss units in dark grey for the utility room with a walnut worktop - the dogs will sleep in here so white wouldn't be so practical. 

I've chosen (finally) sockets and switches, white for upstairs and brushed stainless steel for downstairs. We have some lights as you know but we are still working on the white downlights - because I want square and not round its proving to be a little difficult! 

And so that brings you up to date with our self build progress: we are still poor but loving it, exhausted but determined. 

My challenge this week is to finish painting and I'm also about to make a headboard wish me luck!! 

I can only promise to try and blog again soon...
















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