DIY part 1

Warning!  This post is all about DIY, which I know isn't very interesting to a lot of people especially if you read my blog because you're a knitter, crocheter or you just like saying hello, so I don't mind if you skip past this one.

DIY is a BIG part of what I'm upto these days so it would be a bit odd not to talk about it.  When we bought the house it didn't look like anything needed to be done, other than cosmetic stuff, but I guess once you move in you start to properly notice all the little things.  Our main bedroom was a pale blue which we wanted to change for something a bit warmer.  I also wasn't mad on the wall paper.

We noticed a small crack running between the two windows but we weren't too worried.  It looked like the top layer of plaster wasn't bonded to the wall very well, bits of it came off when we pulled off the paper, but no biggie; this could be re-skimmed.

And it was okay that when we pulled the dado rail off the plaster came off as well...

But it was not okay when we pulled away the wall paper here.  Er yes, this is brick.  Brick with absolutely NO plaster on it whatsoever.  Hello House!

So the first piece of advice I have for you, if you buy an old house do not pull the wallpaper off unless you're absolutely certain that you wouldn't rather put a picture over it because there's a good chance it's gluing the house together.

Luckily my Dad is a dab hand at DIY.  He built a climbing frame for me and my brother when we were kids, our garage, a conservatory and an extension to our house, but he never did put up my clock (thanks Mum!)

We decided to gut the room completely...  This was all the day after we moved in so I was pretty shattered but OH it was so much fun!  ♥ tool of the moment was the crowbar.

We found some beautiful wallpaper, which judging by how thin it was I think was pretty old.

My Dad got to work building a frame which we'd fill with insulation and cover in plasterboard.

Bye bye brick!

There's some green plastic in the wall to keep out moisture

Starting to look like a padded cell now...

We foolishly (I cannot emphasise this enough) thought it would be a good idea to take the ceiling down.  The original ceiling was quite springy and my Dad was having trouble finding the joists in the loft to drill the plasterboard into.

This my second piece of advice if you buy an old house.  Do not take the ceiling down because you and everything you own will quickly become covered in a layer of 100 year old dust, dirt and soot.  As soon as we realised it was getting everywhere (I mean everywhere) we stopped and decided to try again with finding the joists...  I looked like a chimney sweep and I had to visit B&Q like that for more screws.

Upon abandoning out quest we started to get cracking.  My Mum did an amazing job helping get the plasterboard onto the ceiling with my Dad, the car jack and a wooden contraption that my Dad built.

Over Christmas we couldn't really do much work until the room was plastered.  My Cousin who is a decorator / plasterer offered to come and do the whole thing for us, which was amazing and saved us a fortune.

They came up bright and early (8.30am!) from London one Saturday morning and did the whole thing, with a bit of help from coffee, Red Bull and Radio 1.  My neighbour who is amazing said she didn't hear a thing but I don't believe her :-(



And then we let it dry!



My Mum and Dad put up the coving while I was at work.



I cut some skirting board and it was the straightest cut you'd ever seen, no word of a lie!



Although it was the only cut I did ;-)  I was recovering from a teeny tiny operation, which is all good and I'm fine but lots of rest was in order, particularly annoying as there was so much left to do.



J and I painted the rest of the room and got covered in it.  You have to do a watered down mix onto plaster so it soaks in (otherwise it just flakes off) and believe me it's messy!



I got to work stripping the poor door frame, which I think was covered in about 20 layers of paint so had barely any shape left to it.  This is another project of it's own!  ♥ tool of the moment was a shave hook

I finally got to put on the new skirting.  We toyed with keeping the old stuff and stripping it but after the doorframe I couldn't face it.  We've kept it though so it may do another room.  While I slightly regret not using it here, I know it would have been too much work.

A glimpse of our lovely floorboards and stone flooring where the original fireplace would have been.  We want carpetas it's a bedroom but it seems such a shame to hide these beauties.

And that's it for now!  We are very lucky that my Mum and Dad are coming back next week, because we cleverly kept their tools and they need them back ;-)  We should get the new dado rail cut and then we can start painting properly.  It's going to be well worth it but it's been a lot of work for one room and we're both hoping to get in there soon!

x x x x

Sun, stripes & silicone

Bye bye January, what a lovely start to February!  The sun is shining and we have beautiful blue skies ☼

I'm feeling pretty upbeat today, last night I re-grouted all the tiles in our bathroom so it looks sort of shiney and new (even though it isn't), redid the silicone behind the bath taps which I'd messed up the weekend before and I put paint stripper on our bedroom door frame which looked like it had been painted about 20 times.  Huzzah!  I then celebrated with a mug of mulled wine ☺

I've been making good progress on my knitted blanket, I just needed a day like today to photograph it.  If anyone can think of a good 'name' for this project please let me know ♥

I'm really pleased with how this is turning out because it's the first completely random item I've knitted or crocheted.  I've tried in the past to use colours at random but I've always ended up with a repeating pattern.  This is very much out of my comfort zone but I am loving it!

When I took this photo I thought I'd straightened out all the rows, how wrong I was!

I wanted to make a start on all of those pesky ends because I know it's going to be really boring doing them at the end, but unlike crocheting where I'd just weave the end into something like a treble cluster, these garter stripes are very stretchy and the ends just kept coming out!  

I decided to rip of that Mama's and Papa's blanket (I'm not going to link to it, but I'm sure you'll easily find it!) and sew on a fleecy border which I can tuck the ends into nice and securely.  It should be nicer for the baby to use and will be a lot less tedious for me!

I bought 1/2 a meter of an off white fleece, it cost me less than £3 and there should be plenty so I really can't wait to get the knitting finished.  It looks like I'm going to miss my friends baby shower because we're busy that weekend, but I'm trying to plan in a trip soon after his arrival ☺

The rest of my plans for this weekend consist of a lot of DIY!  Painting and paint removing, putting up blinds and skirting and maybe visiting some DIY stores.  Oh how grown up (boring?) we are now haha!  Hope you have some lovely plans for today

x x x x

100 happy days

A few weeks ago one of my friends posted this link to Facebook. It's called 100 Happy Days and it's a challenge to submit a photo every day of something that makes you happy.

I decided to join in, even though the bit that said '71% of people tried to complete this challenge, but failed quoting lack of time as the main reason. These people simply did not have time to be happy. Do you?' annoyed me a bit because I'm not sure that forgetting or not taking a photo means you're not happy. 

Some of my happiest moments since joining have actually been impossible to photograph, but I've given it my best!  If nothing it's got me using my camera (phone) more so that's always nice.

Ok I know we've all seen them... still in love

Knitted stripes ♥

Work tea break

Finding our ceiling rose was perfectly intact after moving this monster of a light fitting

Plastering beginning

Making the best of our fireplace

Absolute joy!

A birthday present

My birthday!

Imagining...

More flowers :-)

Mmmmmmmm.....

The best way to eat fruit (in mulled wine)

Portable yarny project

Chinese lanterns

Feeling giddy over organising!

Our first major DIY achievement

Why not join in?
#100HappyDays

x x x x

Stripey stripes

Good news my lovelies, my RSI which I was telling you about last year is much much better again.  Hooray!  How long it will last I'm not sure but I've been really good with my crafting and haven't been overdoing things and I won't be setting myself any unrealistic deadlines in a hurry that's for sure!

So with that in mind I've given myself plenty of time to knit up a blanket for one of my oldest friends who will be having a baby boy in March ♥

Now I don't like gender stereotypes and I'm not the kind of person that thinks girls should wear pink and boys should wear blue (although I do love pink myself).  I don't like the shelves in toy shops that categorise cars for boys and dolls for girls.  I don't mind if other people do but that's just my personal opinion.

I tried really hard to apply this ethic onto this blanket (I really did!) but it is h-a-r-d I tell you!  I have wanted to use Stylecraft because it is beautiful to work with (important), lovely and soft for a baby (essential) and I have a tonne of it (useful).  The problem I found was a lot of shades from my stash have been used up like Meadow green and I was a bit concerned that too much pink and people will just assume my friends child is a girl, which wouldn't bother me but they're not me you see.

So after playing around with loads of colour combinations, some very terrible, some very retro (which I'm sure friends husband would hate) I have admitted some defeat and am knitting a blue blanket for a boy...  Well it's got yellow, red and purple in it too.

So far so good though.  I quite like that the 'back' is even stripier than the 'front', it took me a few rows to realise that the colour changes needed to be in even rows, but once I got around that it started to work out nicely.  I even painstakingly sewed in a different colour (following the knitted stitches) and ripped out the original just because I didn't think it looked right.  Yikes!

I'mn knitting on my circular needles for extra length and it's just plain old garter stitch because I just think it looks fabulous, especially in stripes.

A nice shot of my new white goods as well.

I also have a yarny confession...  Actually does this even count as yarn?  It's recycled t-shirt yarn!  I think it might be factory left overs and I've seen it on the internet before but never in the shops.  These were from Hobbycraft on 3 for 2 so about £12 for all three.  I thought it might make a nice floppy snood but actually it goes very thick, so it might be more handbag or pouffe material.  We will see!

Hope all is well in your world!  Much DIY has occured here as well, I'm looking forward to boring you with photos soon ;-)

x x x x

Christmas 2013

Christmas is my favourite time of the year, but last year we had so much to do I really struggled to get into the Christmas spirit.  I stopped worrying about "x sleeps til Christmas" and managed to focus on what it's all about.  Eating, drinking and family!

I've always wanted a Christmas wreath.  I'd love to hang one on my front door but I'm worried it will get wet and stolen!  I made this from pieces bought in Wilkinsons.  It's quite simple (aka cheap) but I'm really pleased.  It could do with lights, but where to hide the batteries?

This year we spent Christmas day with Js family.  Our nephews were very excited about the whole thing, the biggest enjoying opening presents more than the presents themselves I think and the youngest enjoying the little things like Duplo.  It's always weird not being 'home' for Christmas but now we have our own home to make lots of memories in, although I'm not looking forward to cooking a Christmas dinner for lots of people...!

J and I agreed we wouldn't really do presents for each other because our home was a big enough present but we still got a few silly things.  I even bought a tree to replace our weedy one, £50 down to £25 and free with our Nectar points, win!

I was able to hang a very exciting decoration which arrived in November...

  

My very own Percy Pecker!!  Thank you Jooles, I love him!

I baked mince pies (jar & ready to roll puff pastry cheat)

Our enormous (slightly unsightly!) fireplace became adorned with Christmas and new home cards ♥

Loved decorations came out of their boxes

We visited the markets in town (I might have been more than once...)

 

And I got some amazing Dr Martens boots.  Swoooooon!



♥

We went down to my family after Christmas and because my brother works Christmas day we had Second Christmas on Monday which was so much fun!



My poor mum hadn't much time to decorate this year, she's spent most of December at mine!



But she did a great job and we had a lovely time



Wishing you all a very happy 2014!

x x x x

And a happy new year

It's been a while hasn't it?  Better start with Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year :-)

 I just wanted to say I'm still here but I've been a bit busy buying something rather big...

We did it! We bought a house!

This last month has been absolutely exhausting and I was so ready for the Christmas break I could have fallen asleep on my desk at work several times!  I've been very much away from blogland unfortunately but I've started to catch up (a little, over 100 posts to read in Feedly!) It's been one long journey but it feels lovely, and where I was worried that I miss my flat I haven't thought about it at all, although we did have a pretty amazing view ♥

This time last year I couldn't possibly have imagined owning our home, our circumstances made it seem like a bad idea right now, but then when we realised how much less we'd be paying (plus our landlord put up our rent by a lot) it just made sense.

Anyone reading this who had bought a house will know it's not easy. We both fell in love with a lovely Victorian terrace, which sadly wasn't meant to be and even worse for me was every other house we viewed had to live up it.  I negotiated a price on our second choice at Glastonbury Festival, which wasn't easy and then it all fell through because the seller was a complete bum hole.

Then FINALLY our home appeared on the market.  Perfectly timed because we'd viewed or ruled out everything in our price range and preferred area.  I won't say that the sale was a breeze because we ended up choosing an incompetent solicitor and our mortgage lender could never find our paperwork, but the vendors were lovely and the good news is the solicitor was so incompetent they've yet to bill us.

Check out my awesome kitchen!!  ♥ Ikea

I hope not to be too much of a stranger to blogging this year, seeing as I've a lot of DIY to write about, but more importantly lots of knitting & crochet projects!

Much love x x x x