Georgian House Renovation Up North - 5 Years and Counting
Discussion
Fitting the fire itself was pretty straight forward.
It is purely cosmetic as we're not going to be using it (although the flue is massive and working) - Here I am standing up in the flue just because I could.
The floor of the hearth presented a little clearance problem but as it was sandstone, it was easy to persuade a few layers off the top in one corner to make it fit.
Here's the fireplace built up and secured to the wall.
I then just skimmed the sides of the fireplace flush with the existing plaster using powder mix filler and then handed over to the decorators.
We wouldn't normally have got decorators in but we had loads of rooms to paint with the second baby on the way and there were loads of other jobs I needed to be doing that it seemed silly to waste my time painting and as Sarah was quite heavily preggers by now, having her up a ladder with a roller was a step too far.
The decorators put up the wallpaper Sarah had chosen. Some of you will love it, some of you will hate it. Can't say I like it myself but it means one less noise in my ear letting her decide so that's that.
We also got a new carpet laid down too - after some hasty last minute floor levelling work from me.
Anyway, here's the finished room but with pics taken from my s
tty camera phone, I'll do it justice later when my new camera arrives.
The Bedknobs and Broomsticks bed frame was from the charity shop too, Sarah found it for about £20 iirc - bargain mad, that woman.
It is purely cosmetic as we're not going to be using it (although the flue is massive and working) - Here I am standing up in the flue just because I could.
The floor of the hearth presented a little clearance problem but as it was sandstone, it was easy to persuade a few layers off the top in one corner to make it fit.
Here's the fireplace built up and secured to the wall.
I then just skimmed the sides of the fireplace flush with the existing plaster using powder mix filler and then handed over to the decorators.
We wouldn't normally have got decorators in but we had loads of rooms to paint with the second baby on the way and there were loads of other jobs I needed to be doing that it seemed silly to waste my time painting and as Sarah was quite heavily preggers by now, having her up a ladder with a roller was a step too far.
The decorators put up the wallpaper Sarah had chosen. Some of you will love it, some of you will hate it. Can't say I like it myself but it means one less noise in my ear letting her decide so that's that.
We also got a new carpet laid down too - after some hasty last minute floor levelling work from me.
Anyway, here's the finished room but with pics taken from my s
tty camera phone, I'll do it justice later when my new camera arrives.The Bedknobs and Broomsticks bed frame was from the charity shop too, Sarah found it for about £20 iirc - bargain mad, that woman.
made a really good read for a sunday morning, wish you the best fo luck mate. amazing transformation. I have been ding something similar althought my house is a 13yr old newbuild but we have ripped everything out and started a fresh, beeing 7 years in the making and its the staircase and im basically finished.
stewjohnst said:
Sweep Up
Wet Down
Dot and Dab to cope with the wonky floor
Drop the slab down
Fettle the edges for neatness
Check Levels once,
Twice,
Thrice,
Then clean up and make it look nice
Looking good Wet Down
Dot and Dab to cope with the wonky floor
Drop the slab down
Fettle the edges for neatness
Check Levels once,
Twice,
Thrice,
Then clean up and make it look nice
We've done similar recently. Decorating the main bedroom we realised where was hollow on the chimney breast. This lead to mallet, crowbar, brute force etc removing bricking in and exposing similar (plus a lot of soot)
Bought a genuine cast iron fireplace to fit for the princely sum of £300 (you couldn't give them away 20 years ago!)
An update to our thread is due some time, I just want a few jobs completing for the visuals instead of them all being work in progress!
Edited by Fermit The Krog and Sexy Sarah on Monday 14th November 11:37
stewjohnst said:
Richmond isn't a million miles away for us, although parking is stupid in Richmond with 2 hour maximum stays everywhere so we managed to pickup the fire, then park up and snaffle down a decent pub lunch as reward for manhandling such a bloody massive thing into the boot.
There are some long stay car parks in Richmond, but if you don't know where they are they're a bit of a bugger to find.However most of the pubs are s
t for food, shameful considering we're full of tourists most of the year.Great thread though, really admire the work you're putting in to the house.
The slate was from mrs stone store and was £90 for the slab and another £35 delivery.
It was a fairly standard size so no special cutting needed, was in shock and delivered next day on a very sturdy pallet.
Driver even dropped it right at the back of the house despite the kerbside delivery guff.
Very happy with it.
It was a fairly standard size so no special cutting needed, was in shock and delivered next day on a very sturdy pallet.
Driver even dropped it right at the back of the house despite the kerbside delivery guff.
Very happy with it.
I'm in a very similar situation to yourself with my place and chuckle at all the trials and tribulations you have come across and had to deal with. It's not much fun sometimes.
On the plus side you have a Mrs who is fully supportive and takes as much care and interest as you do in getting the place the way you want it.
I don't. I mean I do have a Mrs but in 4 years I'm yet to witness her pick up a paintbrush or sand something down. Must make working on your place much easier as I regularly need to pause to build up the enthusiasm to carry on, encouragement from the other half would help a lot!
On the plus side you have a Mrs who is fully supportive and takes as much care and interest as you do in getting the place the way you want it.
I don't. I mean I do have a Mrs but in 4 years I'm yet to witness her pick up a paintbrush or sand something down. Must make working on your place much easier as I regularly need to pause to build up the enthusiasm to carry on, encouragement from the other half would help a lot!
Uggers said:
I'm in a very similar situation to yourself with my place and chuckle at all the trials and tribulations you have come across and had to deal with. It's not much fun sometimes.
On the plus side you have a Mrs who is fully supportive and takes as much care and interest as you do in getting the place the way you want it.
I don't. I mean I do have a Mrs but in 4 years I'm yet to witness her pick up a paintbrush or sand something down. Must make working on your place much easier as I regularly need to pause to build up the enthusiasm to carry on, encouragement from the other half would help a lot!
It's a blessing and a curse...on the one hand, having a like minded individual to share the graft is good, on the other...coming home to find she's decided job 'x' needs doing and has started it with some naive assumption it will take hubby five minutes or half an hour max to do fixing up task 'y' due to her starting job 'x' wears thin after a bit.On the plus side you have a Mrs who is fully supportive and takes as much care and interest as you do in getting the place the way you want it.
I don't. I mean I do have a Mrs but in 4 years I'm yet to witness her pick up a paintbrush or sand something down. Must make working on your place much easier as I regularly need to pause to build up the enthusiasm to carry on, encouragement from the other half would help a lot!
I apologise for those following the thread that it dried up a bit, we now have two kids and my pc died so sorting out this amongst other stuff has dropped off.
However, I'm not at work tomorrow, all three of them (wife and kids) have gone to bed, the dog's also asleep and I'm opening a second bottle of red so some updates will follow.
Depending on the quality of the wine, the coherence of subsequent posts may vary...
So, I'll do what we variously refer to as either 'the old office' or 'the nursery' on the basis that this room used to be my office and now it isn't.
On moving in, it was just bedroom #2 with a dodgy artex ceiling that was failing in the corner due to a leaking upstairs shower (remember the en suite with no walls? That was the room above and it turned out the waste plumbing was as ste as the cold/hot feed plumbing and any use of the shower resulted in water pissing through the floor...
Ignoring the ceiling, which was pretty easy to fix (I.e. Don't use the upstairs shower), the room had some potential. The wallpaper you see at skirting board level was original block printed wallpaper and although we haven't had it properly dated, the block printed method and simple but not quite William Morris style put it somewhere mid 1800's.
Based on later findings elsewhere that I won't reveal the spoilers for just yet, it's probably around 1870 or so.
The wallpaper prised off with a palette knife and is now safely stored for a day when I will get it remade.
On moving in, it was just bedroom #2 with a dodgy artex ceiling that was failing in the corner due to a leaking upstairs shower (remember the en suite with no walls? That was the room above and it turned out the waste plumbing was as s
te as the cold/hot feed plumbing and any use of the shower resulted in water pissing through the floor...Ignoring the ceiling, which was pretty easy to fix (I.e. Don't use the upstairs shower), the room had some potential. The wallpaper you see at skirting board level was original block printed wallpaper and although we haven't had it properly dated, the block printed method and simple but not quite William Morris style put it somewhere mid 1800's.
Based on later findings elsewhere that I won't reveal the spoilers for just yet, it's probably around 1870 or so.
The wallpaper prised off with a palette knife and is now safely stored for a day when I will get it remade.
Aside from the wallpaper, the room has some very lovely old panelled wall that divides a section of the room from the stairs to the old servant floor up top.
It had been painted over at some point and then half-arsedly sanded back and left like this.
My first thought was to finish the job and have a lovely oiled wood wall but after a couple of days of detail sanding and inhalation of a lead paint, arsenic and old lace, etc. it looked like this...
The Sandinista was also exposing and removing previous botched repairs...
and the woodworm equivalent of Hansel and Gretel's stale breadcrumbs...
I decided to cancel the wall sanding as a lost cause. At this point on any other day, harmless and idle musing over what else to have a go at would have taken over.
On such a big restoration job, there is much to be said for idle musing- it gives a necessary pause between thought and action that gives you time to plan for work and budget, etc.
However, as I admitted deafeat on the wall, my eyes settled on the floor and I recall thinking "I bet those boards will sand up nice" and before my conscious brain could step in to say "good idea, I'll think about that" my hands had gone all Daniel-San and were performing 'wax on, wax off' manoeuvres on the floor...
It had been painted over at some point and then half-arsedly sanded back and left like this.
My first thought was to finish the job and have a lovely oiled wood wall but after a couple of days of detail sanding and inhalation of a lead paint, arsenic and old lace, etc. it looked like this...
The Sandinista was also exposing and removing previous botched repairs...
and the woodworm equivalent of Hansel and Gretel's stale breadcrumbs...
I decided to cancel the wall sanding as a lost cause. At this point on any other day, harmless and idle musing over what else to have a go at would have taken over.
On such a big restoration job, there is much to be said for idle musing- it gives a necessary pause between thought and action that gives you time to plan for work and budget, etc.
However, as I admitted deafeat on the wall, my eyes settled on the floor and I recall thinking "I bet those boards will sand up nice" and before my conscious brain could step in to say "good idea, I'll think about that" my hands had gone all Daniel-San and were performing 'wax on, wax off' manoeuvres on the floor...
Those initial boards came up well but as I had met the other half by now and she was imminently moving in, sanding the boards was also put on hold as the room became Rolland planning operations centre for the rest of the build.
Once the bathroom was done and the other half moved in, we had a rejig of the rooms and as she had quite a lot of living room type stuff (and a penchant for consuming my up to now finely displayed alcohol collection in the living room) I moved the bookcases upstairs and have myself a rather nice office.
This will cease tonight's updates...as for the wine I opened.
I am not fond of the taste,
I'm not sure if it's because I've switched from a Valpollicella to a Bordeaux but the glass is too small to give me a good nose to appreciate the subtleties of the wine (making me a pretentious cock) or it might be the wine is corked and I'm too pissed to properly tell (making me a Philistine).
Of one thing I am sure, I'm neutralising the taste with a very large cheese board and there's bugger all wrong with that.
Once the bathroom was done and the other half moved in, we had a rejig of the rooms and as she had quite a lot of living room type stuff (and a penchant for consuming my up to now finely displayed alcohol collection in the living room) I moved the bookcases upstairs and have myself a rather nice office.
This will cease tonight's updates...as for the wine I opened.
I am not fond of the taste,
I'm not sure if it's because I've switched from a Valpollicella to a Bordeaux but the glass is too small to give me a good nose to appreciate the subtleties of the wine (making me a pretentious cock) or it might be the wine is corked and I'm too pissed to properly tell (making me a Philistine).
Of one thing I am sure, I'm neutralising the taste with a very large cheese board and there's bugger all wrong with that.
Thanks for the comments, I will try and get it up to date and get back to posting more often, eventually I'll catch up to where it is now...
The first room I actually wanted to use as my bedroom when I moved in was what we call the white room.
It was ok but needed the artex shifting and floor sorting but work was otherwise cosmetic.
The first room I actually wanted to use as my bedroom when I moved in was what we call the white room.
It was ok but needed the artex shifting and floor sorting but work was otherwise cosmetic.
In hindsight, the point of moving in would have been a great time to sand the floors...but I didn't.
I did give them a bit of a once over with a hand sander And then painted the floor with a fresh coat of white to stop it looking so grotty.
As this was where I was sleeping and hadn't had the asbestos tests back, I made do with painting over the walls to make the room feel a bit tidier.
My first choice of colour looked good in my head and on the tins but on the wall, well, um, erm, no...
The trade white emulsion was dug out and splashed about until I could think of something else.
Weirdly, the inspiration came from an old white gesso picture frame I bought at an auction as it looked kind of 'shabby chic' as the hipsters used to say five years ago...
The intention was just to reuse the frame and bin the portrait but for no particular reason, the oil portrait of the young lad appealed to me, (not in an operation Yewtree sense - I hasten to add).
When Sarah moved in, rather than asking what a grown man was doing with a portrait of a young boy on the wall, she also kind of liked it and thus, the colour theme for the room was taken from the knackered old £10 portrait...
As I cracked on painting the walls, Sarah was occupying herself by buying cheap drawers from the charity shops in the area and sanding, painting and waxing them up for use around the place.
She also brought a few bits and pieces from her house made by some bint called Laura Ashley and I acquiesced to their inclusion in the room (the adult equivalent of a boy taking down pictures of the Countach and Ferrari Boxer from the bedroom wall to make space for Care Bears and Bambi )
In my defence, the lick of paint, some patterned bedsheets and a silver mirror, along with the drawers Sarah had restored tarted the room up a treat.
I did give them a bit of a once over with a hand sander And then painted the floor with a fresh coat of white to stop it looking so grotty.
As this was where I was sleeping and hadn't had the asbestos tests back, I made do with painting over the walls to make the room feel a bit tidier.
My first choice of colour looked good in my head and on the tins but on the wall, well, um, erm, no...
The trade white emulsion was dug out and splashed about until I could think of something else.
Weirdly, the inspiration came from an old white gesso picture frame I bought at an auction as it looked kind of 'shabby chic' as the hipsters used to say five years ago...
The intention was just to reuse the frame and bin the portrait but for no particular reason, the oil portrait of the young lad appealed to me, (not in an operation Yewtree sense - I hasten to add).
When Sarah moved in, rather than asking what a grown man was doing with a portrait of a young boy on the wall, she also kind of liked it and thus, the colour theme for the room was taken from the knackered old £10 portrait...
As I cracked on painting the walls, Sarah was occupying herself by buying cheap drawers from the charity shops in the area and sanding, painting and waxing them up for use around the place.
She also brought a few bits and pieces from her house made by some bint called Laura Ashley and I acquiesced to their inclusion in the room (the adult equivalent of a boy taking down pictures of the Countach and Ferrari Boxer from the bedroom wall to make space for Care Bears and Bambi
)In my defence, the lick of paint, some patterned bedsheets and a silver mirror, along with the drawers Sarah had restored tarted the room up a treat.
The more observant amongst you may note the inclusion of an IKEA wardrobe, it was a stopgap until we had some money to find something old and original we really liked.
I have no idea why, when I'd been happy to fit entire kitchens and bathrooms myself, but I just couldn't face the prospect of trying to drill handles into the doors correctly. The wardrobe stayed handleless for about six months until I gave in and as expected made a total balls of the measuring and then it survived for anothe six months with the handles all cockeyed.
Why did it only survive another six months?
Well, as lovely as the white room is, it had single glazing so gets bloody cold in winter. For a fat knacker like me, this is a minor inconvenience, I simply make a mental note about it feeling colder and then do nothing about it.
I was blissfully unaware that it is fatal to the fairer sex and faced with another £100 a month on the gas bill or a move to the green room (that has double glazing and is in the middle of the house and therefore s
tloads warmer) we moved rooms for winter.. (First world problems an all that).As we weren't using the white room and the asbestos test came back clear, this happened.
In my defence, I was trying to work out the layout of the original house and was hoping to find evidence of a bricked up door to give a clue where the stairs used to go. I drew a blank on this but as all the plaster was now off, I decided to expose the beam to see what lay under that too and get the ceilings and walls skimmed.
The beam was full of character and rather than strip it right back and de-nail it like in the green room, the ceilings are higher in here so there's no danger of anyone walking into it, so we left it as is.
Here's how the room currently looks.
and the view from the bed.
We have an eye out for a larger bed but perfectly serviceable for now.
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