Part Three: Our Home Renovation Project

Incase you are wondering if all I do is DIY these days, honestly you’re correct. Might I suggest that if you decide to buy a house, strip it down to bare-bones and rebuild the interior from scratch that you be sure that you have an abundance of time, energy and patience; you’re going to need it!

DEATH BY WHITE PAINT

In Part Two we had just plastered the house. This was a major hurdle but the first of many. Once plastered we had to paint EVERYTHING with several layers of paint; 3 undercoat and 2 top-coat. We stuck with white for the most part, as this house gets such incredible natural light and I wanted to brighten everything as much as possible. We used a teal blue in the bathroom which reminded us of our time in Cornwall and some funky wallpaper for the guest room. I spent what must have been an accumulative 10 full days painting white on white on white. Even with the help of my Father in Law the process was dull and uninspiring, but one of those that we could do ourselves and we really wanted to pour as much of ourselves into this house as possible. The upside of so much painting? Next level upper body strength!! We also had to remove the doors, which are solid so we decided to keep them and refurb them. We stripped the paint from the doors and the frames and repainted them in a pretty light grey to match the skirting colour.

The guest room: SO MUCH WHITE and stripped down frames

A touch of teal sneaking in from the bathroom and frames being painted

THE BATHROOM

We had a flooring company from Nailsea, where we currently live, instal our bathroom floors. We wanted something a little extra, to be honest, but soon realised that the posh LVT tiles we wanted were expensive, unreliable on uneven surfaces and frankly looked exactly like linoleum. So, we have a linoleum floor down and we’re surprisingly happy as clams with our choice! The bath was then fitted by a plumber - levelling a bathtub is no joke and we did NOT want to mess this up. Plus, I was absolutely desperate for a hot bath :D

Onto the tiling; we had planned to tile the bathroom ourselves, but frankly we were running out of time and had more than enough on our plates as it was! So we hired a tiler to get the job done; he took about two days to do it and it was the best £400 we’ve spent! We plumbed in the toilet too, got the water back on, and it’s safe to say the bathroom is starting to look a little more like a bathroom. Hallelujah for my hot bath!!

The bathroom prior to flooring and tiling

The bathroom currently

HEATING & FLOORING UPSTAIRS

As winter rolled in we realised it was time to fire up the heating, but wait, we don’t have radiators. So, we popped online and ordered four of the wrong size radiators. Oh, this happened shortly after wasting hundreds of pounds on incorrect sized blinds. Can I blame it on Mercury in retrograde? Our plumber took one look at our radiators and just said “no”, then went out and bought us different ones. The radiators are now ON and firing heat all the way around the house; it’s glorious! And it made working here much more pleasant, which was helpful because we had a lot of work to do!!

We ordered the carpet (around £1500 for 3 rooms, a corridor and stairs) from John Lewis, mostly using gift vouchers from our wedding and set an installation date for three weeks’ time. So the pressure was on - we had to cut skirting boards, paint them, install them and install ply underfloor before the carpet fitters arrived. So, bearing in mind that neither of us are carpenters I would say that cutting and fitting skirting board is up there with one of the most frustrating tasks we’ve undertaken. It took us what felt like a million years and the same amount of curse words. But once they were cut and we started glueing them (and screwing in some places) in place we discovered this wonderful product called decorators caulk - which basically fills in all the gaps where your skirting boards don’t meet and make you look like a semi-competent DIY-er. Just don’t look too close!

Cutting, fitting and stapling the ply underfloor and slowly losing my mind

The magic that is decorators caulk in action - once the caulk is dry I’ll paint over it. What gap??!

Guest room currently - awaiting carpet

Now, the kitchen. Our kitchen arrived in fits and starts; B&Q often delivered the wrong items or didn’t deliver some at all. We are still chasing them for a few parts! But we started piecing together the units, which was easy enough albeit time consuming and placing them in roughly the right place. The counter top will be fitted by a pro - we’re not risking that and we decided that he can take on levelling the units too. My family arrives from South Africa on the 21st December and frankly we need to start delegating and managing our time a little better.

Kitchen - freshly plastered

Kitchen currently

So that’s where we’re at folks. Seven months down the line and it is as frustrating as it has been rewarding. Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way, but I know it’s true. And frankly, writing these blog posts has been very therapeutic for me; a way to look back and see how far we’ve come!

We’ll leave the kitchen to the pros now and next we tackle final bits of bathroom plumbing, the living and dining room and do our very best to get everything ready Christmas. The fourth and final instalment of our renovation will come in the New Year, along with recommendations, costs and suppliers too for those that are interested. If you’re into this then follow along with my Instagram stories as I do update Instagram stories regularly with house progress. It will have been about a year of work with bits that will likely carry on forever, as no house is ever fully finished but it will 100% OURS and that’s magic!

Previously…