Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything. - Floyd Dell
I like your house Cherry and Mr F. It's lovely.
I had a busy weekend. I removed a staircase, saw cut a door through between the two halves of my house, opened up one of the fire places to its original size, plastered a wall in the bedroom, replaced part of the ceiling, created a loft hatch and re-plastered part of the ceiling.
I am now knee deep in dust
I will post some piccies tomorrow
I dont get crunchy people?
i've only just looked at this - flibble and cherry, you are clever, it looks beautiful!. i see you don't have kids or pets, though, by the colour of your sofa!.
vbb that sounds a bit manic.
Cor! Well done VBB. Glad to see you are taking the preparations for the VF meet up at your place seriously!
Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything. - Floyd Dell
You know it'll be a "bring a paintbrush" party - the warning signs are there!
its going to be more of a 'bring a sledgehammer party' actually
heres a few pics -
I removed a chimney breast from one end of the house; dry lined and insulated and re-plastered the end wall, of course it left a big hole in the ceiling and floor!!
new wall!
New floor
not sure what happened to the ceiling? Stu?
I dont get crunchy people?
I plan eventually to have a kitchen / Diner. So I wanted to see if the fireplace in the dining room would be large enough to site an Aga there?
the lovely existing fireplace:-
plaster all removed to show the originla bricked up fireplace:-
what it looks like now
perfect size for a little rayburn i have seen in a reclaimation yard
I dont get crunchy people?
My house used to be two cottages that had been knocked into one house, however the upstairs had never been 'joined' and i still had 2 staircases:-
stairs in kitchen
no stairs in kitchen
I dont get crunchy people?
as i said there was no door upstairs between the two halves of the house:-
view from the kitchen
do we see the light?
not easy to photograph without the stairs now!!
I dont get crunchy people?
I dont think i have ever done anything more dusty than saw cut through brick, (done lots of things more dirty)
I dont get crunchy people?
Great work VBB and great to see the pictures! Are you just going to have a higher bit of ceiling in the kitchen where the staircase used to go up? I see you have a window there. Or are you going to remove the window and make the ceiling level?
Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything. - Floyd Dell
I sought permission before posting this pic my lovely assistant (phoenix rising) removing plaster from chimney. To be fair she removed most of the bricks aswell
I dont get crunchy people?
That's a lot of hard work there VBB and PR!!
I love your kitchen Mr Flibble & Cherry
Update I went there today and it was good! There was a conference in the morning, which I went to, before looking round the exhibition in the afternoon.
Best of all, I met a young vegan couple at the conference! I've been a vegan for just over 5 years, but have never knowingly met another vegan in real life - then 2 come along at once!
my rayburn arrived last week, its solid fuel and was a bargain from a reclamation yard. It took 5 of us to lift it into the house
I dont get crunchy people?
I agree; it's quite an improvement!
"Mr Flibble - forum corruptor of innocents!!" - Hemlock
ooh, that's identical to the one my gran used to have. When we visited her on cold days it was a rush to see who get the seat next to the rayburn!.
nice to see the before and after photos! looks so good now I forgot how it looked before.
'Spring will soon pounce [like a floppy kitten]'. Whalespace.
Last summer we were using our back garden as a skip/general work area. Towards the autumn we cleared it up a bit and fitted decking over the knackered 80s patio. Now that it's stopped snowing; in the past couple of weeks Cherry and I have lain turf, a new path and back gate. The difference is quite welcome. A few pics:
Before:
"Mr Flibble - forum corruptor of innocents!!" - Hemlock
After:
"Mr Flibble - forum corruptor of innocents!!" - Hemlock
Wow, Mr F., your garden looks great now!
"Do what you can with what you have where you are."
- Theodore Roosevelt
Your garden is lovely.
I'm sooo jealous. That's just gorgeous!!
It's very bright now. Pretty. But I kind of prefer the antiqued look of the old better.
Until we stop harming all other living beings, We are still savages.
it's sweet, i can imagine you two having your breakfast out there on a sunny sunday!
Vegan Barbecue Time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A stallholder - love foods at Bristol vegan fayre left behind some plastic wood style flooring stuff and said one of us could have it - they didn't have room in their van. I think it's designed for outdoor use, but as my kitchen desperately needs floorcovering, I was going to put it down there. Any ideas on appropriate adhesive in a vegan stylee?
By the way - well done VBB - your house looks totally different than when I was last there!
what type of wood plastic flooring is it? Laminate, vinyl, tiles?
I'm not really sure what to call it! It's not laminate or tiles and doesn't have any bits that you slot together. It's quite thick with wood effect on one side and black on the other. It's the length/shape of a piece of wood (but not as thick). My boyf seems to think you can just stick it down on the floor with some glue?
Don't do it!!!!!!!! we've got the lovely job of taking a whole load of that up in our old kitchen!! Last time we removed a load of floor tiles that had been concreted in, we had to get an industrial sander!!! Dust everywhere!
Anyways...
We're still hard at work on our place, the gas has now gone - considering that Gas Central Heating didn't appear until the 70s, people had warm homes before then!
The meter went on Friday - all that is left is the pipe, which is going to get removed when we level the front garden.
We also ripped out our old gas fireplace...
The back boiler has to stay until we can get our friend - who's a plumber - round to sort it, as if we don't there'll be water everywhere.
The old front porch has gone
There was a great big shed-type monstrosity on the front (VBB and Gorilla will remember it so they can back up how hideous it was )
It came down sooooooooo easily - with the help of a big rope, as you see here I moved the bikes out of the way just in time
The work goes ever on. Work on the extension proper starts on September 1
Born to Lose - Live to Win!
I am trying to get motivated to decorate my L shaped hallway. It has the front door at the top end. It has encrusted layers of horrible chipped glosss paint on the doorframe then there is anyglypta type paper on the walls which is painted over and its really damp and also peeling in parts and I think its starting to go rotten.
I'm planning to get a few volunteers to help strip all the paint and paper off and then let it dry out for a week or so. Probaly paint it then. Any suggestions or things to look out for?
See my local diary ... http://herbwormwood.blogspot.com/
I'm doing the halwlay now. The wallpaper was hiding a lot of damp and some rot, also lots of cracks and peeling paint.
I now need to remove a couple of radiators, in order to prepare the walls behind them.
I have also read that the walls should be cleaned with sugar soap, is this vegan and is it environmentally friendly?
If not is there a vegan alternative?
See my local diary ... http://herbwormwood.blogspot.com/
I'm loving google sketchup again. It really is fantastic for quickly knocking up fairly accurate room plans with bespoke objects. The bathroom in this house isn't it's best feature (although it is upstairs, which many victorian terraces of this age don't have). It's *just* big enough for a bath/wc/basin and has no windows. It could be moved into one of the bedrooms, but that would considerably decrease the value of the house. I'm trying to figure out the floorplan for a new suite (roughly the same as before, but with a slightly larger bath) and way to tile in travertine mosaic as cheaply as possible. This is what I've come up with so far, using a bath/wc/basin on offer at b&q at the moment (I've no idea who the short haired weirdo is, but he's about my height):
I've also mapped most of the house now (cellar, ground floor and garden), accurate to a few cm, which is extremely useful for seeing what furniture will fit/look like without buying it and testing color schemes:
I conceeded and got a carpet (until now it's been slate, wood and laminate only). It does feel so much nicer under foot than bare wood and going down stairs is a lot quieter too! It's jute tweed. I had in my mind that I wanted sea grass, but when i looked at all the samples I liked this the best in my price range (err, maybe i went a bit over on budget.....). You can see quite clearly that I haven't finished painting the hall too and I think the slate floor at the bottom needs repolishing. The fun never ends.....
I'm really happy with the quality of the samples i got from www.travertinewarehouse.co.uk - both their travertine mosaic and granite floor tiles come in at around £30/sqm, which is phenomenally cheap (travertine mosaic in firedearth is £115/sqm, my local tile shop £160/sqm). The quality isn't as good as other places but it's more than perfectly passable!
Please tell more about carpets, I will need an new one for my hallway at some point.
See my local diary ... http://herbwormwood.blogspot.com/
What would you like to know? I found that most modern/chain shops don't sell natural (cotton/jute/seagrass) carpets, just wool or wool imitation for people who can't afford wool.
Love your stair carpet Mr F - beautiful!!! I don't think we will be able to run to anything expensive due to discovering further "horrors" that must be repaired within our budget.
We've had to totally rewire and replumb and weren't expecting that, mind you it's a miracle we've survived here for 5 years without being burned alive or gassed in our beds. Turns out the gas back boiler was ancient - at least 1960's, our neighbour says it is the original 1930's one (she's lived in the street since then) but I don't think they had gas back boilers back then
We're living in one small room with our lives in boxes piled around us and the rest of the house a brick and plaster wreckage. The workmen have disappeared for a week citing other urgent work elsewhere!!! Bastards!
The plasterer plastered the spare room without putting any dustsheets down and I'm just about to go in there with a steamer and industrial aquavac in an attempt to prise the plaster out from between the floor boards. The woodburning central heating has been delayed as they didn't order enough woodburners and there has now been a rush on them.
I think I'm turning into an alcoholic
Silent but deadly :p
Thanks, sorry to hear you're being buggered around by workmen
According to this page (http://www.vaillant.co.uk/about-vaillant/history/) gas boilers were available then.
I've just had the bathroom's granite floor and travertine mosaic tiles delivered (went for 24x24mm for the entire room in the end which will either look fantastic or be a massive mistake!), which should be fun this weekend
Don't know how far we'll get in one weekend, or what horrors we'll find (such as rotten floorboards) when we take the existing bath out.
"Mr Flibble - forum corruptor of innocents!!" - Hemlock
Pleased you are both making progress on your pads
I havent done anything further on my house for a while; been helping PR move and get settled into her new place.
The next jobs I have planned are fairly big ones so it will be a while until I can afford it
However, my chimney is still leaking loads of water, so I am having someone come and look at it for the third time I have also bought some more insulation for my loft (will take it upto 250mm) and I also bought some 'space blanket' to try and insulate the long slopey bit of my roof, the gap is only about 100mm but about 4m deep, I need to leave enough room for some ventilation, it is really difficult to access it to 'shove' insulation down there, i feel an experiment with gaffer tape and bamboo sticks is in order!!
if the weather stays like this I may have ago this weekend.
I dont get crunchy people?
OMG It probably is the original boiler then - anyways the insulation bloke choked on his coffee when he saw it as we should have had a wall vent in with one of those.
Talking about rotten floorboards, we took up the kitchen and under the sink, which unbeknown to us had been leaking for years, we found mega rot and a horrendous woodworm infestation - live woodworm, the plumber went through the floor as the boards were rotten.
Thank God the joists are ok but we have to take up the floorboards on the whole ground floor, treat the joists just in case and replace floorboards with MDF stuff, no point putting boards back in as it's all going to be carpeted.
We are currently walking in there very carefully as all the floorboards are extremely weak and filled with holes. We're amazed the washing machine didn't fall into the cellar!!!
Thank goodness it is only going to cost £90 to have the joists treated but we have to take kitties to the cattery as it's toxic for them
I wonder what they did with woodworm in mediaeval days? I guess they must just have cut out all the rotten wood and replaced it!
Silent but deadly :p
I didnt get round to do doing my loft; but i did go and see a guy about my rayburn, jealous that PR's works and mine don't
turns out he has all the bits i need as off cuts or cast off's from other rayburns he's refurbed and so its going to cost next to nothing to get up and running YAY!
I dont get crunchy people?
My hallway is now finished. It smells nice and fresh instead of mouldy and damp!
See my local diary ... http://herbwormwood.blogspot.com/
I've had a really good weekend. Despite it being gorgeous weather I've spent pretty much the whole time in the cellar. It was going to get converted properly, but would have cost 20-30k. Now I'm having a go for a few hundred instead
It'll still be slightly damp, but relatively pleasent to spend an evening in. Will be perfect for home cinema.
Will post pictures soon when I've gotten further, but looking good so far
"Mr Flibble - forum corruptor of innocents!!" - Hemlock
I'm gonna start on mine next month......honest!
But there's so much to do I just don't even know where to start!
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