Last week I gave a house update and implied that I might do them semi-regularly, so that’s what I’m doing. After all, there’s very little else going on here and I’m not even up on current events at the moment. I managed to miss the coronation altogether, happily.
Anyway, I do have a brain like a scatty squirrel, so it is likely I’ll forget in the near future but for the time being I’m sticking with it. So here is part two!
This week’s house update
We decided that, since it was a bank holiday weekend and we were sans children, we would tackle the front room and strip the wallpaper.
The space is approximately 5m x 4m with a large fireplace along the outside wall and a lovely big typically 1930s bay window to the front. It will be used primarily in the evenings and will be an adult-only space with Nice Things in it – only fair really, as the rest of the house is an explosion of children’s stuff and Ikea furniture to store it all in.
As far as wallpaper stripping went, we made a bloody good go of it and got the lot off. It didn’t even take that long. Hurrah!
Except maybe not, as shortly afterwards it became evident that the plaster which the wallpaper was adhered to was, in a word, shit. In two, old and shit.
It had blown all over the place (ooh er), and when the skirting was yanked off, off came the walls in a cloud of ancient dust. So that was a nice surprise!
Who needs walls anyway?
To take our minds off it, we booked ourselves tickets to a comedy night, but when we turned up they’d changed the date (or we got it completely wrong and are a pair of dickheads, but that can’t be the case, surely?!) so ended up drinking lots of wine instead. That’s not really a house update, but it does explain why we didn’t get a lot else done.
And so, this was where we found ourselves come the bank holiday Monday: Knee deep in dust and crap, shovelling very old plaster under the floorboards so we wouldn’t have to take it all to the tip and pay to get rid of it.
We’d been planning to get the walls and ceilings skimmed anyway, but it all felt a little bit more urgent all of a sudden. I know things have to look worse before they get better, but holy crap. Luckily, we’ve booked a plasterer in for two weeks’ time so we don’t have to live in a building site for long.
Choosing paint
With that happening, we’ve decided to go all in, and pick out the paint colours.
Thanks to Earthborn Paints* who make breathable, eco-friendly paint, for sending me a bunch of tester pots and who are kindly going to supply us with the paint for the room.
Below are the final two we’re choosing between. On the left we have Hobgoblin, and on the right, Bobble Hat. Nothing ever looks exactly on the screen as it does in real life, but Hobgoblin is a dark sage-like green with blueish tones, and Bobble Hat is a much brighter blue colour.
After a lot of deliberation, we’ve chosen – but you’ll have to stay tuned to see what we went for.
(*If you happen to be decorating and want 5% off on their site, use the code FRAN5 until the end of 2023).
How’s that for a cliffhanger?!
We took the old radiator out, which was taking up a lot of space and meant that it was hard to position furniture in the room. I should have got a picture, but I’m really not too good at this ‘before’ and ‘after’ stuff – hopefully I’ll get better with practice. Anyway, just believe me – it was massive and ugly.
To replace it, we’ve splashed out on a slimline, black radiator to sit neatly beside the door. The colour mirrors the fireplace and will be much less visible and noticeable once the walls are darker. No one wants a radiator as a centrepiece.
Obviously – because nothing is plain sailing, is it – when we went under the floorboards with the aim of moving the existing pipework, there was a massive bloody iron pipe in the way, so we’ve also had to book in a plumber to get that done.
So much for DIY, but there are some things it just isn’t advisable to do by yourself, and cutting through large mystery pipes is probably one of those things.
Flooring
Regarding flooring, we got a whole bunch of samples of engineered wood flooring from various places, which are all very similar to be quite honest with you. We’re still deciding between planks and herringbone, but obviously the former is easier to DIY.
We’ve also ordered a bunch of tile samples for the fireplace, but I’ll probably cover that in next week’s exciting instalment.
Right, I’m off to have a glass of wine. It is Friday, after all.
See all house updates here.