So a while later

Yes it's 2015 (like, when did that happen?!?!) and the house was finished off, so i'll update a little as to what I've done progressively.

The house has been let as of June 2013 and we've uprooted and gone closer to work and where the Mrs is doing her Masters, so all (so far so good) has been rather successful.  Looking back I can't believe how little I've done in terms of updating this blog about the actual work that was done, so I'll try and get it all down!  Rather than do it chronologically, room-by-room might be an easier approach, given I can't remember what I did for breakfast yesterday!

Anyway, one of my previous posts I wanted to come back to the subject of woodchip paper on the walls.  there are good ways and not-so good ways of getting this off.  First i'd like to say prevention is better than the cure, if you can avoid buying the house with woodchip, do it, it takes a loooooong time to get it off!  If you do have it, may I say unlucky to your knuckles, you won't be needing them anyway.  There's every chance that the plastering underneath the woodchip will be the old horsehair stuff they used in the 60's, so don't worry about ruining it as you'll probably prefer to skim for a proper finish afterwards.  The easiest way to remove it in my view is to score it diagonally in each direction with a stanley knife down to the plaster (leave 2-3 inches between lines) to make little diamond shapes, get hot (not boiling water) in a spray bottle and give it all a good coating.  Leave or about an hour, give it another spray and it should glide off with semi-ease (the same process could probably be done with a steam wallpaper remover).  It's worth putting vaseline on your knuckles before scraping as they're gonna catch on umpteen coats of gloss, emulsion and whatever other crap is on there, the vaseline will help you glide!

When you've done it all, congratulations!  You've just got the least fun bit of modernising out of the way!

The dining room (as you've seen before) had woodchip all-round, apart from the infamous wooden wall.  I had a cracking time painting the wooden wall (still too chicken to get rid of it!) - it's all white now... here's what it looked like halfway through after the primer coat:

It did take a while but the results were good at the end.  You might also have noticed the dark blue carpet had gone, as had the layer of lino underneath, the next layer of lino, the newspaper and the felt!  The carpet contributed to making the place look dark, for anyone looking to let out rule number 1 is to make it light and airy, so I opted for laminate flooring.  I'm not against laminate flooring, but I do prefer walking on a nice carpet with my bare feet on a cold January morning, which brings me to rule 2; don't make the place how you like it.  It needs to be how others like it. My new favourite saying is "if you make it how you like it, you're going to be paying the rent".  The market likes light and airy, make it for the people who're going to be paying.

To bring a bit more light into the room we also installed a french window where the old window used to be.  It's made such a difference, but in order to save money I asked the double-glazers to leave the brickwork untidy and I would make it good and plaster myself, a task quite daunting when i actually got down to it.

Thankfully (and many thanks to Hugh Baird college in Liverpool for the 10-day free plastering course) getting it sorted wasn't as bad as it could have been.  I did manage to get the rocky brickwork you see above either side of the windows to look something closely resembling a decent wall:

So all in all after lots of paint, laminate (at a decent £5 per square metre), a curtain rail and a little bit of spit and grit (and influential sunlight!!) managed to end up with a room I was actually really rather pleased with:

As you can see, the old gas wall heater still exists (which I'd been advised was unsafe so had been disconnected from the gas anyway).  When I get the house back next I'll rip that out, and maybe I'll be brave enough to get rid of that wooden wall once and for all.  Who knows what lurks behind it!  I may also end up opening the teeny tiny kitchen into the room.  That was the original plan but money was a major issue at that point... I'll embellish on the kitchen... *shudder*... next time.  

Back again... again!

Well it's been a while again... since my sister passing away, preparing for No. 2 daughter being born, then the birth, then Christmas, then New Year... and breathe... I have managed to fix a dodgy connection on the bath which was leaking into the kitchen every time we showered, replace the old shower with a new 'leccy one, half finished (well actually less than about a tenth finished) repairing the concrete pillars in the bay windows and that's about it!

Whilst this year has semi-completely bypassed me the list of jobs to do around the place has grown somewhat.  The damp in the house is now beginning to grind me down; the box room at the front has two walls (one at the front and one attaching to the neighbour's house) which have developed 'Dark spots' that looks like damp, Kid no.1's room has damp in the bay (hopefully caused by a combination of rotten window frames and crumbling pillars) and the living room bay has said replicating damp in the bay also directly underneath this room.  There is also a few ominous-looking spots of discolouring on her bedroom ceiling which looks a yellowy-orange colour, which I can only assume is rainwater accumulating... Something else requiring investigation!  The damp has to have taken over as priority number 1 so the windows at the front at least will need doing.

There is also damp to the back of the house right in the corner of the kitchen, again I think contributed to the guy next door's shoddy house leaking all over the shop.

Let me tell you a bit about the guy next door.  He arrives at his house at 1400hrs every Thursday.  stays for an hour or a little more, then leaves.  I spoke to him once, he is a bit old and mental!  Nice chap, but he hasn't lived there for about ten years apparently, and has just left it to rot, and that is the literal rot.  I may include some pictures of this at a later time, but it rains too much to do anything to it!

So anyway stuff seems to be leaking from his house into ours, but I will get to the bottom of it at some point.  It's quite difficult being able to afford building materials and things with two kids, a Mrs. and one income!

Here again!

OK so nearly 4 months later... It turns out the reason the purchase of our new house took ages was because our spectacular mortgage adviser lost our paperwork, or probably put it under their copy of 'Hello' magazine and forgot about it.  Despite it all going through 8 months after seeing the house, he will still get his nice commission chunk.  Which is a shame for the world.

A lot has happened since the new year, the worst part being around completion time my sister passed away at the age of 40.  She was such an amazing person who did everything, went everywhere and saw everyone, cared so much for others and she will always stay in the forefront of my mind.  It has already been ten weeks and a day since she died but our pain is never going to go away, we still think about her all the time and to be taken at such an early age is so infuriating.  I am dedicating this blog and the modernising of our house to her.  RIP my wonderful sister.  We miss you more than you would ever know.

I also turned 30 towards the end of January and by then hadn't completed the purchase thus successfully failing in my lifetime ambition to own a house before turning that ripe age... But... YAY we now have a house!!  Thankfully we have everything moved which was a pain, we're away from the crazy psycho lezza formerly-next-door and we have damp!  Our very own damp!!  Not much to celebrate I know but I don't care!

Upon completing the house sale we had to get everything from just down the road out of our tiny rented house and transport it to the new one.  Thankfully I have a large-ish car so most of it was transportable in there, however our sofa (which I have no idea how we got in there) had to be removed by force... Breaking up a sofa is one of the most exhilarating things ever!!  If you have never done it before I highly recommend it, make sure you don't need it though as putting it back together could pose a few issues!  Transporting in plank-by-plank to the dump and cleaning up after mass destruction however is not exhilarating at all.

We're in anyways, after all that!  Ready with the tips to enlighten all the wonderful folk in BlogWorld!

Problem no. 1: If the previous owner was a dog-lover, check the living room and bedroom carpets for signs of doggy pee-pee.  If tests confirm the prescence of said pee-pee, firstly check what's underneath the carpet.  If the carpet turns out to be sitting on a layer of felt/fibreglass stuff which in turn sits on a layer of 2 or 3mm plywood which is nailed into the floorboards, DO NOT hire a Rug Doctor and midlessly attempt to clean the carpet for hours.  This will lead to the aforementioned under-carpet produce becoming wet which will take days to dry, and because it's porous will absorb said pee-pee and not actually wash it out, it will just make the smell worse.  Many complaints from accompanying Mrs and the strong desire to vomit after every sniff will ensue.

Solution no. 1: Wait until you can afford new carpet and underlay.  If it's going to be the unforseeable future, borrow a couple of hundred quid, from a nearest and dearest!  Make friends with a carpet fitter (in this case, the father-in-law).  Purchase carpet and underlay (any will do, as long as it doesn't have 'hint of ammonia' essence).  Request the pleasure of said carpet fitter's company for an afternoon.  Introduce said fitter to said room and new carpet and underlay... and Hey Presto, new carpet smelling living room!

I have done several little jobs since we have been there (almost 6 weeks of occupancy now) but that was in hindsight one of the first things I should have done.  Along with that we have:

• Painted the living room and 'furniturised' it.
• Scraped the woodchip paper off the dining room (ouch... more on that later)
• Changed the lock on the back door to one that actually uses a key!!
• Removed several violent-looking hooks and umpteen metres of telephone extension, TV Aerial and doorbell cable (why do old people feel the need to put so many telephone extensions in without removing when cordless comes along?) - see hooks to the right, don't they look evil?!
• Removed and re-seated some skirting in the 2nd bedroom (ours) upstairs which for some reason looked like a step!
• Attached a shower head bracket and new shower head into the bathroom - electric showers aren't my cup of tea so may invest in those taps that run a shower off the combi boiler supply.
• Found the front cover of a newspaper from 1949 underneath a carpet upstairs.
• Ripped off (accidentally... whoops!!) the curtain rail in the dining room.
• Started scraping woodchip from the utility room, and got bored and a bit demotivated when I saw the damp.
• Painted the kid's bedroom (just plain white at the moment).
• Sanded down the wooden wall in the dining room which took 18-ish hours (God only knows what's underneath it, but I'm too scared to rip it out!)... and here it is, pic taken about halfway:

It's looking OK at the moment... sort of... the grand plan is to have the popular open-plan kitchen diner put in, but that won't be for a couple of years yet I don't think.  Not least until we have paid nearly £8,000 for the windows and doors to be replaced!!  OK that is only one quote but I wasn't expecting that much!

I'm also concerned about the damp in the utility room quite a bit, I have no idea how to deal with damp but it may be due to the roof on the utility extension needing replacing.  It just so happens the gentleman next door is a roofer which will come in handy, he has already replaced a couple of slates for me so will see what he says about getting that roof done.

Anyway this is a lot, I will embellish further later.  And promise more updates (with pictures) more frequently.

Back to the grind!

Well I know it's been a while since anything happened on here (nearly five months... i thought it was longer!!) - things have dramatically moved on.

After declining to make another offer on the house which needed knocking down and replacing, I then went to see another house in the same-ish area which was on for about the same price as the previous one. This time it was much more pleasing to the eye! None of the rooms looked like the exterior of a boat, decent yet 70's/80's decor and a nice layout that can be worked with and down a nice quiet cul-de-sac, perfect for the kid!

To cut a long story short, after an offer, acceptance, survey then further negotiations we got it for about twelve per cent less than the asking price!! This all happened by the end of September, since then everything has been with solicitors and mortgage advisor.

Unfortunately, solicitors aren't the easiest of people to deal with: firstly they take a big chunk of the agreed price for the whole job; then they give you a world of 'checking' forms to fill in where you are verified as a human, a sane person, a person who has money, a person who is who they say they are and most of all, a person who can afford their services; lastly, not only do you have to do this for yourselves, but for EVERY PERSON who is gifting you money for the deposit too! So everyone has transferred their chunk of deposit, I am going to tell them that I raised the money for the deposit myself, it's in my bank, hurry the fudge up retards! Oh and I'm expected to pay £95 plus VAT for this 'Service'. Kiss my ass!

To make matters worse, the psycho woman who used to rent the house next door to us (whose tenure culminated in us making a police complaint about her mother's threatening behaviour) has only gone and bought it from the owners and is moving in on 6th of February... get me the hell out of this place quickly!!!!

Bye bye pigeons

Well the survey results came back a week ago now, having had them verbally first (never a good sign) then read the official document I have been too depressed for updates!

Everything needs doing; gas system replacement, gutters, bathroom, kitchen, damp proofing, staircase, pointing in the attic, even all the water pipes in the house are made of lead and will need replacing... the list goes on. Thirty thousand pounds is a good wad of cash, a wad that we dont have to use replacing a whole house!

We took the surveyors advice and ducked out of the purchase, it would be too much to do with a baby living there, if the house was empty maybe but a job of that magnitude wouldn't bode well with a stroppy two-year-old growing up in it.

We have started the search for a replacement though, lets see what happens. Back on the phone to the estate agents I suppose!

...and the survey says...

Cue angry 'Family Fortunes Wrong Answer'-stylee sound.

Well it's been another week, we have our 'Offer in principle' so now all we need to do is get the survey done, once that has been looked at then we have further negotiations, then get the solicitors to do the rest. I can't believe it's been so long since we went to see it! I do know these things can take months so I'm not holding my breath.

In some ways, I hope the survey shows up as an unbelievably good structure and we need to do nothing but the windows... Yeah like life is ever that kind.

On the plus side of things, my LO who is 1 year, 1 month and 1 week old today can say 'No', 'More' and 'Bab'... as the only other person to call me 'Bab' is the OH, I'm taking those three words to translate as "Go away Daddy". At least she doesn't gesticulate in the same fashion.

Back to the subject, how hard can it be to look at a house and say 'yeah, should be safe to live in', and do you really need to be paid for a whole day to do that?? I'm looking at it as an insignificant amount to the whole cost of the house, pre-work and post-work. It will be worth it I'm sure.

The plan is...

Here's (VERY!!) rough plans for the new house, the heaviest pencilled bits are where the OH disagreed with what I had done and asked me to re-draw it!

I may well see if I can use some computery-wizardry to do a better inside plan at a later date. Jeez we have a whole lot of work to do!