Demolishing someone else’s living room

Posted by louisa on Friday 6 January 2012 in house | 5 comments

We cleared just about all our stuff out of our living room last night (bar the sofas, the coffee table, the bean bag and, um, a pink flip flop) as we were supposed to start demolishing our giant dated fireplace today.

Demolition has now been put back until this weekend but without our junk in it, we’ve just got a big empty room that doesn’t feel like ours any more. We have photos of us in the completely empty living room the day we got the keys for the house and it feels like that again – someone else’s home. We’ve not done anything to the living room really since we moved in — it’s always been on our “OMG must do!” list but because it’s likely to be a messy job and other things have taken priority for practical reasons, we’ve not got around to it. We were supposed to do it the first spring we were in the house – 2010 – so we’re only a couple of years late, which is pretty good for us.

The decor – which includes the strangely painted (polystyrene) coving and ceiling rose above – is … not our taste at all but we’ve been happy lazily accepted it over the last couple of years. We’ll be glad to see it go though – the fireplace takes up so much space considering how little space there is for an actual fire/stove and the panelling is really imposing.

It is going to be quite an expense but it’ll hopefully be more than just an aesthetic improvement – we’ll gain quite a bit of space where the TV stand thing is (we think there is a deep alcove behind that area), we will be able to get a bigger wood-burning stove (which will be more efficient at warming the house in general than our current little one) & more efficient radiators, and we’ll be able to get better curtains & a door curtain (there is an external door to the balcony just at the right of that top pic) which will stop draughts. From a comfort/usefulness point of view, we’re also going to get a new-to-us sofa that makes better use of the space. Plus demolishing stuff is really fun ;)

I can’t wait to see if our alcove predictions are true and what the original fireplace is like behind the nasty modern one — we found this in boarded up in our office:

We don’t think the living room one will be quite as big but who knows? An exciting weekend of discovery ahead!

What are you going to be getting up to this weekend? Will it include a crowbar too? ;)

Today I…

Posted by louisa on Monday 18 July 2011 in DIY, meta | 10 comments

Today I slept late because we were up til the early hours putting the world to rights with a friend. When we’re elected supreme rulers of the world, things are gonna be sweeeeet. ;)

Today I sanded and re-primed the bathroom door frame – we did all the woodwork in there yesterday but the door frame “alligator” cracked so I had to start again rather than getting on with the first coat of the actual paint. Note to self: use the right brush for cleaning your teeth.

Today I filled in various cracks/holes/seams in/around the bathroom woodwork and in the coal hole-turned utility room. I heart decorators’ caulk.

Today I “supervised” John making doughnuts for the first time in reaction/protest to everyone going on about the new giant chain doughnut shop that’s opened up near the motorway. They were pretty good for a first try but have lots of ideas on how we can make them better. However we’ve not sure we *should* make them better – too much temptation.

Today I wandered over to Homebase (our “convenience” DIY store, although we prefer to get major stuff from better/cheaper places further afield) to buy a tile trowel and ended up buying in addition to the tile trowel & spacers: a little pot of green enamel to revamp some lanterns (reduced from £4 to £1), two 3-exposure photo frames (reduced from £10 each to £3), two mini succulents and a mini cactus (to be potted on together for John’s desk), a Calla Lily (pictured above) and some sort of stripey-leaved red Bromeliad — the latter two because I want some more houseplants and specifically at the moment, some colour for the bathroom. Naughty unplanned spending though.

Today I bumped (literally) into the same guy three times at Homebase. It got embarrassing by the third time.

Today I used my new tile trowel with my bought-super-cheap-at-Focus-the-other-week tiles to make a splashback in the former coal hole/now utility room. The tiling gods were smiling down on me for my first spot of tiling in 12 years – the corner to edge of the wall cabinet was exactly four tiles plus spacers, and the corner to the edge of the wall the other way was exact three – no cutting required!

Today I sat down at my computer to do a bit of work and didn’t realise how much tile adhesive I had stuck on my arm until it all dried and flaked off onto the floor. Another note to self: sweep that up.

Today I sanded the bathroom door frame AGAIN because the second coat of primer had cracked in the same way as the first. I decided to get really aggressive with the sand paper and ended up peeling – in pretty big sheets – three layers of paint off the door frame. It seems that somewhere down the line someone really skimped on the prep – the newly exposed level was perfectly glossy. I sanded that back though and primed it for a third frickin’ time and so far, no cracks. Woohoo.

Today I was grateful that John volunteered to cook a big batch of pasta sauce for the freezer so we could have that for dinner rather than me having to stand in front of the stove this evening. He’s serving it as I type this. Final note to self: type faster!

What have you been up to today?