Pay Day Trip To Ikea- February

Every weekend after pay day I drag Max to Ikea. He loves it really. It's actually starting to get to the point where we have bought nearly everything we like from there already and i can spot something new at 20 paces!

So this weekend was no different and we headed to our local (not quite local at 40 minutes away..) with the intention of getting a new office chair, a plant pot for an orchid which has been sitting in a bowl since i bought it from Sainsbury's a few weeks ago and some kind of storage device for the iron and ironing board to go on (as part of project sort out the cupboard under the stairs)

And this is what we came back with:

From left to right:

1. A new plant and pot for the halway (i'm starting to get a bit plant-crazy)
2. A thingy which holds your iron and ironing board on the wall/back of a door
3.  A packet of strange foreign biscuits i couldn't resist at the checkout for 50p
4.  An assortment of white frames for a project I'm planning
5. Plant pot for currently orphaned orchid 
6. A pack of 5 different prints which may have something to do with project mentioned in point 4.

Nope we didn't come back with any office chair because we didn't see any we particularly liked, and one I did really like the look of turned out to be really uncomfortable.

We decided this one was a bit Dragons Den!

That book i am holding is my "house book" i have 2 the same one for the house and one for the wedding. It has all notes about the house like measurements of rooms and windows, lists of nice things I've seen/want, websites etc. I always take it with me to Ikea to make notes along with my tape measure!

The orchid has a new home thanks to this £2 plant pot!

I love Ikea mainly because it's cheap and has some really good inspiration. But don't get me wrong I don't want the whole house to become an Ikea showroom- we have already set the ground rule that nothing in the living room will be from Ikea! We like to mix Ikea furniture and accessories up with second hand pieces from car boot sales, charity and vintage shops. 

Oh and of course you cant go to Ikea without having a cheeky plate of Swedish meatballs in the cafe!

A Harry Potter Inspired Make Over

So most of the upstairs of our house is renovated- and i realise I've only yet posted about the bathroom, but yesterday I embarked on a new downstairs project so I thought it might be fun to share it as its being done.

Yes its the cupboard under the stairs...may seem insane to want to "make over" the cupboard under the stairs but seriously, although I don't have a picture to demonstrate, imagine you open the door and 50 pairs of shoes, an ironing board, the hoover and some random tin bucket you have no idea where it came from all fall on top of you. 

We did once upon a time have a shoe rack in the cupboard enforcing some kind of order...



But alas it was from one of those cheap shops (you're getting the theme of the house by now...) and was made from balsa wood. One day when straining to reach the hoover amongst said carnage, i lent on the thing and it spilt clean in two :( (joining Weight Watchers shortly afterwards too)

Next year will be when all the big changes start taking place downstairs- new boiler, new doorways, new log burner, kitchen etc so in the mean time we have a list of smaller jobs to do this year , oh and that small thing of our wedding in June! (more on that here)

Main tasks to do to complete this Harry Potter-style renovation:

1. Paint the walls inside the cupboard 
2. Paint the dark stain door and surrounding skirting boards white (yay!)
3. Buy and erect a new shoe stand
4. Lay some new flooring. 
5. Sort out storage

So yesterday i started off by emptying the cupboard, filling in all the cracks in the walls with Polyfilla (the rest of our house is held together by this) and caulk.

We already had this hook thingy up on the wall and for some reason was really hard to screw in at the time (something to do with breeze blocks or something) so we have just worked around it.

Caulk is really great for filling in long cracks where plasterboard meets like we have done in the second picture, but its also really good for finishing off doorways and skirting boards once you have painted them. 

Next job was to lightly sand the door and skirting boards to "rough them up a bit" to quote one of friends at B&Q. -Side note: I have picked up so many helpful hints and tips in B&Q a)because i go there at least once a week, b)if I'm on my own i clearly look like i have no clue about DIY as nearly every person that works there asks if i need help...

Obviously door handles and the hook which was on the inside of the door have been removed by someone who knows how to use a screwdriver before sanding!

Then the whole thing was "masked off" using the blue decorators tape we had in the shed and I started with the first coat of undercoat&primer. I used B&Q's own (although it may seem so i can confirm i am not getting paid by them to write this blog!) We did the same task with the dark stain door in the hallway last year- but we didn't use any undercoat or primer and it took nearly 10 coats of paint...but hey you learn from your mistakes and all that!

So the first coat didn't really do all that much (except make the house smell like fish??) but as all hairdressers know turning jet black hair platinum blonde takes time and effort so I carried on regardless.

The recommended time between coats is 4 hours so in the mean-time the polyfilla and caulk had dried so I started with the first coat of paint inside the cupboard. The paint we used was just the left over from what we have used in the hall stairs and landing: Crown Toasted Almond 

 I realise its a bit crazy to even consider painting the cupboard under the stairs, but i thought since we are painting the door anyway and replacing the carpet, it can't harm to spend ten minutes evening up the walls and painting them one nice uniform colour.


Then i got bored and went for a McDonald's. 


Later on after 4 hours recommended drying time had passed I applied another coat of undercoat&primer to the woodwork. This morning I got up early before we went on our payday trip to Ikea (more on that here) and gave it a 1st coat of actually paint- (we use Eggshell as I can't stand the sheen of gloss & it give a nice happy medium) and gave the walls inside a final touch up with the emulsion:

So the door is looking much lighter and i think will only hopefully need 1-2 more coats of paint. Over the next few days we will get a new handle to match the hallway door which you can just see in the left, paint the skirting boards inside the cupboard and lay the "new" carpet - we have a big stretch of carpet left over from our bedroom we need to use up!

So now our walls look even more yellow than they did before and i cant wait to rip off the anaglypta paper and get the whole thing re-plastered. Also that clock (came with the house) is starting to look even more sorry for itself than ever before..

I would love to redesign Harry Potters' under the stairs bedroom!!!!

Bathroom Re-design

When we got the details of the house we bought- there was no picture of the bathroom. When we viewed the house for the first time we knew why...

 

I'm pretty sure the only words which came out of our mouths when the (sniggering) estate agent opened the door was "Oh.My.God" 

What you can see in this picture (taken the day we moved in) is the beautiful toffee coloured suite, complete with wallpaper border stuck to the bath panel, old radiator, walls covered in (patterned!!!) brown tiles and cream wall paper..oh and matching (?) blue shower curtain. What you can't see is the blue carpet, yes carpet in a bathroom which absolutely STANK of bodily fluids and the blue net curtain which was up at the window and was immediately torn down the day we moved in (along with all other net curtains in the house!)

So we knocked a few thousand off the price of the house for the refurb of this and pretty much the rest of the house and the morning after we moved in proceedeed to strip all the tiles off the walls...

This is what the bathroom looked like after a few days of chiseling the tiles and stripping the wallpaper off the walls. Little did we know that we would be living with the bathroom looking like this for quite sometime...

That same week we went to B&Q (our 2nd home) and bought a brand new white bath, toilet and sink with all the taps. That bathroom suite sat in our living room in boxes for a long time as we just couldn't get a plumber to fit the bathroom for love nor money. I had about 10 different people come out and give me quotes (some of them absolutely ridiculous...£3000 anyone???) but not one of them could commit to a date to actually bloody do it!

Blue carpet gone, and all the wallpaper stripped

In the meantime we chose our tiles and bought all of those too, which you can see a sample off propped up on the windowsill in the 1st picture. I wanted something modern, and saw these in our local 2-letter-named hardware store and had to have them! Max needed some convincing but he came round in the end!

Under the old tiles we actually found some gorgeous hand printed wallpaper from the 1950's we believe, in the right of the picture you can see the brown 1970's wallpaper which must have covered it at somepoint...



Finally! After a few long weeks of showering at the gym/parents/shallow sponge baths because of the almighty gap we unearthed between the bath and the wall, we found a plumber to take out the old bathroom, fit the new one and tile the floor for a really decent price.

So work started with the whole suite being taken out in one day and the floor being layed (Max disconnected the old radiator with the help of his grandad a few days before)


So here the floor is down, but not yet grouted and the new suite is in but the sink wasn't plumbed in yet. I was really insitant on a tiled floor for the bathroom whereas Max wanted lino or something cheaper. Beacuse the floor is so small the tiles didnt actuall cost all that much, especally since I found them much cheaper at Tile Giant which is just across the way from B&Q. They are large (trick: makes the room look bigger!) porcelain gloss tiles and cost about £70 in total.

The bathroom suite itself if the cheapest one B&Q sell, but we jazzed it up with some more expensive taps (which were actually in the sale so winner all round!)




The floor was finished and grouted and sink plumbed in and Max got to work on tiling the walls. This was quite difficult because the walls were so uneven but the trick is to put lots of small blobs of adhesive on the back to you can sort of maneauvere them into place and make them look level. Considering he has NEVER done tiling in his life before the boy done good!

My job was the walls above the tiles, which needed a serious amount of sanding (thank god for the electric mouse sander we bought at a carboot for £5) and then had 2 coats of undercoat before 2 coats of white bathroom paint:












We would recommend trying to do tiling yourself if you can because you save so much money, tiling takes a long time and therefore if you have to pay someone to do it, it can really eat into your budget.

We used ready mixed grout, and whilst more expensive but it's much whiter than the one you have to mix (you can smell the peroxide in it, which is what hairdressers use to make your hair blonde!) and a has a nice smooth consistency. I had a go at grouting but its harder than it looked...most of the grout just fell of the float (some sort of grouting tool) and onto the floor so i tried to push it in with my fingers but the peroxide started burning through my gloves and onto my fingers...i'll stick with painting!



 We also had a new shower fitted by the plumber (a very cheap one and we bought a more expensive rainfall head attachment!) and Max somehow tiled around t which looks really good. 

Once all the walls were tiled we Max fitted the bath panel (much easier said than done!!) put the mirror on the wall, bought a new blind since the shower is right infront of the window and the window faces the street, and got a different plumber to fit the towel rail (who tried to rip me off but the less said about that the better..) And the finished result:

Finishing touches..Original artwork care of my friend Jason Sugden

Pull for the shower thingy; 99p from some cheapo shop i forget the name of ;)

New Light fitting from Ikea: £3.50 (bulbs were £4!ha)

So that's it the (nearly) finsihed bathroom project. It took about 4 months start to finish but was really worth it and its so nice when vistors come over and say "ohh the bathroom's lovely!"

There are just 2 things I want to change about the bathroom- firstly the mirror, i want one which covers the whole of the wall above the tiles above the toilet and sink (ala hotel style) and a new door which will be part of this year "replace all the doors upsatirs project!"

Buying a New Build House- Dolls House Furniture

Well this post is a bit hypothetical really- since we did try and buy a new build house last year but pulled out at the last minute.

I always wanted to buy a new build- no fuss- just move in with your furniture no weeks on end of stripping woodchip wallpaper off every bloody surface it could possibly be attached to....

So we searched the Internet and found a few developments in and around Manchester. Being naive and a bit curious we decided to visit them both without properly researching the area (we have since learned that new build estates can be neighbours to some less desirable areas or are more out of town than you would like to be). The first development was in North Manchester, luckily for us we got lost and went too far past the site. Far enough past to realise we didn't really want to be next door neighbours to a  gypsy traveller "funfair people" (the Sales representative's description...) permanent gated site. 

Next we went to the same developers plot but south of Manchester. Lovely site, didn't seem to have any dodgy neighbours and the show house was amazing:

 So after going home and mulling it over we decided to go for it! Next thing we knew we were back in the sales office and handing over our £500 reservation fee. The developers have their own in house mortgage advisers and she found us a mortgage with Nationwide and it was all accepted; our red dot was on the site plan on the wall marking the house as taken! We had chosen a corner plot which was to be built a few months later 3 bedrooms- 2 bathrooms and a downstairs loo and we chose to pay an extra £5000 for a bigger garden.

This was the same house signed up to buy when it was built!

Lovely shiny new road of houses

 So a few weeks later we went back to the site to sign some more papers- that's when we noticed the big plan of the site had changed. Our next door neighbours were no longer going to be two 4 bedroom detached houses- but 3 smaller terraced houses of which the end one had taken all of the extra garden we had paid £5000 for! 



When I questioned where our extra garden had gone- the sales woman said she would refund the £5000 as the garden would now be taken by the next door house. At this point I was starting to have some reservations about the sale anyway- like living so far away from our family and friends well actually anyone that we knew, and we started to get worried that in the months leading to the house being built they would change something else and only tell us when we noticed! And you pay a premium for a new build house- something we were worried we would not recoup if we ever sold. In the end we ended up buying a house which was £70,000 less; albeit in completely the opposite decorative state! So we asked to pull out- at first she said no, but luckily the area sales manager was in the office at the time and agreed to refund our money. 

I still look back at the house and think how lovely it would have been- all shiny and new, but I am glad we live where we do now as we are so close to family and friends (even if it's 30 miles to work...)!

There are some really good incentives for 1st time buyers created by the Government to help young people to get onto the property ladder and boost the building industry. 

1. These include 95% mortgages which are practically impossible to get on  a normal house: http://www.taylorwimpey.co.uk/special+offers/newbuy/
2. And Firstbuy scheme which is government backed equity loan which basically means you have to put down a 5% deposit, the government and housing developer give you a joint loan of 20% so you only need a 75% mortgage and therefore get a better interest rate. However you do need to start paying the loan back after 5 years- and it can equate to quite a lot of money depending on the value of the house: http://www.taylorwimpey.co.uk/special+offers/firstbuy

Final point- something i read on the Internet is that in showhomes they use 3/4 size furniture and even children's furniture to make the rooms look bigger, and if you look closely at the dimensions of any garages they are often not big enough to fit an actual car in them. Come to mention it those sofa's do look a bit hobbit-esque...