Day 7 utility room is painted

PAINT ISSUES
Today was a quieter day however I managed to paint the utility room with it's second coat of white matt emulsion.
A thought suddenly occurred to me that I was painting with matt emulsion over a relatively silk/shiny finish and whether that has an impact on the quality of the finish. A quick google search revealed that you should not paint matt over silk/shiny paint! Oh well, too late. Luckily it is only the utility room so it doesn't matter.
I think most rooms in the house are painted with 'silk' or 'shiny' paint which looks a bit old fashioned, so we will have to think about how we will paint those rooms.

SMELL ISSUES
I am very pleased with the smells in the kitchen, utility and conservatory. They are now 'livable'!!
The lounge smelt less of dog than yesterday, however the smell is still there! I also noticed that the carpet on the stairs pongs quite heavily of dog too......

GAS BOILER
I managed to get hold of, completely by chance, a 'gas safe' registered boiler man who is the son of our next door neighbour. We met the father yesterday who recommended him and today I was google searching gas boiler engineers and came across him. I have booked him in to come and check our boiler tomorrow evening.

ELECTRICIANS
I followed up on the 5 extra emails I sent yesterday. None are available or do domestic work except one, who will get in touch again tomorrow. Have had one quote from the first electrician, but nothing from the 2nd...
This is proving tricky!

Some dodgy floorplans

GROUND FLOOR:
















FIRST FLOOR:

Day 6, painting has begun

Our first item of furniture is in the house! One bike! 

The lounge smells very strongly of dog, despite all the airing. I have put a plate of bicarbonate of soda and we bought odour neutraliser and sprayed the carpet.

We are now coming to the conclusion that the lounge carpet must definitely go. Seems like the carpet cleaning was futile.

We have made a list of pros & cons about getting new flooring:

Pros: it will give us choice, we can improve the appearance, it will improve any uneven surfaces, we will (we hope) get rid of the dog smell, the floors will be cleaner, we can improve the edging (as there are loads of dirty gaps everywhere), we can add value to the house.

Cons: it will cost money, it is fussy, it is extra work for us, we have to decide on the type of floor (laminate vs engineered wood).

So overall, we will get new floorings. Priority - bedroom and living room.

We went to B&Q and we bought white matt emulsion and also the Beluga Song colour for the kitchen.

This is the beluga song colour

We painted one coat of white emulsion in the utility room and under stair space.  We learnt that it is really silly painting white on white as we can't really see the difference. Also, the first layer of coat is not really hiding any scratches or scrapes. In fact, it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Ideas??

Day 5, a quieter day

Today we started a bit later as we were tired. We spent a fun morning in B&Q where we looked at the myriad of paint colour choices, all with funny names.
We got many swatches of similar pastel type colours:

Looks like we will choose the 'BELUGA WHITE' colour from B&Q for the kitchen.


We ordered free samples from UK flooring direct, ordered one oak engineered one, and 2 laminates so we will see what they look like when they arrive.
We also got a sample of a Natural Oak laminate from B&Q, at only £15 per square metre it's not too bad. We got a sample of it:

When we got to the house we still smelt dog quite strongly in the living room! It is quite annoying and we hope it dissipates soon.

We painted with special anti-mould paint under the kitchen cabinets.

Mark cleaned the area between the kitchen and the utility room, and cleaned the really grotty understair cupboard. I remopped the utility, conservatory and kitchen for the 100th time and rewiped the cupboards in the kitchen.

We also unpacked our exciting new Miele Hoover, it's so shiny!

The work Andy has done on the back bedroom wall is great, we have lost all the horrid wallpaper and he is making good progress on the wallpaper glue, with his steamer and blowdryer.

We received 5 new home cards and I have bought a Home magazine to start reading.

Day 4

HAPPY OCHI DAY!!

We did not feel very ochi here as we were busy working.

Mark went to work today. I woke up and rushed to ASDA at 9.30 to try to buy crocs and an outdoor broom but couldn't find any. Then rushed to house to be there in time for the cleaners due to arrive at 10am.

However they were not there so I decided to start drawing a floor plan with measurements of each room while waiting. I managed the entrance hall!

Mark's parents arrived and we looked around. The house was much less smelly of dog, which is a good thing. Kitchen was still looking quite grotty and yukky.

We had lunch in the conservatory, this is actually looking pretty good now.

The electrician arrived, he had an ipad and was writing everything down on this special app. We discussed all issues with the house and spent a long time in each room discussing our options. He was much more thorough than the other electrician, we don't have price quotes form either of them yet.Mark and I think it is worth spending money on getting the electrics right as it looks like they are not correct.

The cleaners arrived just after the electrician, they were 1.5hours late. They started upstairs and did the bedrooms and bathrooms. Started at the top of each room and worked downwards. Did over the cupboard in room 2, skirting boards inside cupboards. Room 2 and 3 looking much better. They came downstairs and focused on kitchen and downstairs loo. They did in and out of cabinets, over cabinets and under counters, over boiler and extraction fan hood and inside extraction fan hood. They seemed thorough. They left at 3.30pm.

They did a really good job and good rid of the main layer of grime in the kitchen. Helga and I then spent a bit of time fine tuning the kitchen - I mopped it about 3 times. We went back under the counters and really go into the corners. And washed the walls and tiles and door frames.

I left the kitchen cabinets open to dry and air them properly.

Meanwhile Andy took the fake 'fireplace' off the chimney stack in the lounge. We discovered a working, clear chimney. Andy was really pleased about this. It was filthy though. So we emptied the soot and hovered the spider webs and cleaned the nooks and crannies. We put it back together and Andy said he will have to come and put sealant around the wooden frame.

Generally - they were not paying attention to detail as there are lots of little gaps around things etc where dust and dog hair collected and it's really hard to clean. Andy will come and help us seal all things up.

Today was mainly about dog hairs. Helga and I kept finding dog hairs in weird places - like in the fireplace. Under the kitchen stools. Under the radiator in the kitchen. We think we have got rid of it all, but we need to keep cleaning.

Finally the 2nd plasterer called to postpone for Sunday 3pm. He does not sound very good.

My back has played up a bit, lower back I feel a nerve getting caught when I stand up after bending. Trying to be careful to bend with my legs now. Feel better today.

Day 3

I met  2 friends and their babies for coffee in the morning and they updated me on their house renovations. Both of them have done/are doing very similar to us. Replastering, renovating, repainting. One friend got the entire electrics rewired. This was quite positive.

1) Succeeded in removing a large amount of wallpaper from the 3 walls in the bedroom. Still have one wall left. It is really interesting peeling off the wallpaper and seeing 2 lots of older wallpaper- some looking quite old e.g. 50s or 60s? Will photograph tomorrow.

2) There's loads of white stuff under the wallpaper. Looks like glue. I thought it was wallpaper paste but Helga then thought it was Artex and got worried as we were chipping away at it. Andy disagreed and thought it was PVA glue.

3) Meanwhile Mark was holding fort, and the carpet cleaners steam cleaned the carpets. It no longer smells as much of DOG!! Nearly getting rid of dog smell. This is very good.

4). The people we bought the house from returned today and they emptied the pond and took their carp and goldfish. They used a hose and drained it into the neighbours garden. They removed a lot more garden furniture but finally got stuck on one piece-  a table with a metal umbrella stand weight  which was rusty so they couldn't remove the metal chunk. It was so big and clunky they could not get it out of the house. In the end they left it and returned at 6pm a second time with the hope of getting it through the neighbours driveway and out into the front road, but the neighbours were out. They will return tomorrow!!! 

5) We loaded both cars with all the wooden planks from the bed unit and the fitted wardrobes. My car fitted loads but ANdy's is bigger and fitted a lot more.  Unfortyunately 10 of the cupboard doors were too big and wouldn't fit in either car, so poor Andy had to saw them in half! What a palava.

6) We drove to the Household recycling centre in convoy and unloaded all the wood into the wood recycling crate. THis was quite cathartic.

7. We ate at KFC.

8) Helga and I decided to start sorting out the lounge, entrance hall and electrics cupboard inbetween the lounge and entrance hall (at the bottom of the stairs). I scrubbed the skirting boards in the entrance hall, washed the walls, and washed the door. I washed the walls in the electric cupboard (obviously didn't touch the electric meter etc) and wiped the shelving unit in there. I mopped the floors. Helga and Mark worked in the lounge - they washed the skirting boards and walls and also took the grill off the vent in the wall - this was so disgusting (as was the one in the bedroom) that Helga soaked them in hot water.

9) Meanwhile, Andy tried to use the steamer to 'melt' the PVA glue off the wall. He succeeded in removing some off of a small section of the wall however the steamer lid got stuck and he couldn't get it off and as a consequence couldn't use the steamer. It was really annoying then because it was a design fault in the steamer and there was a bit of frustration in the air at the end of the day.

Before - after photos of bedroom

Day 2

Our first full day discovering the real house. We had some quotes from the electrician and plasterer. We took down the wardrobes from the main bedroom and stripped it back to bare walls.

We also discovered lots of grime!

Moving in day

Day 1 We got the keys!