plastering Archives - Journeys Are My Diary

Look at my house!

April 18, 2016 by Bel Leave a Comment

This week I finally want to get around to sharing my house improvements with you all. On Wednesday it will be exactly two weeks since our house officially went on the market and the process of selling began! This post is just a summary of it all, leading to more posts later in the week that will outline specific rooms.

When I first moved into this house, almost 3 years ago, it needed a lot of work. My partner had bought the house 9 years ago as a sort of fixer-upper, but hadn’t really done an awful lot to it. The things he had done, were just sort of slapped together and the colours used in some of the rooms were fairly horrific.

We have a lovely big house and I actually love it in lots of ways. However because it’s always entailed a lot of work, I sort of hate it too. When we (my girls and I) first moved in, Chris and I had already started decorating the attic room, we painted the lounge and we made quite a few alterations to the kitchen too – all to make it a better family home. The plan was always to do up the house and sell it, but sadly time and money were always a big factor and almost 3 years on we hadn’t really got much further. Last year I made the New Year’s Resolution to get the house on the market but didn’t really manage to get that much closer – except to have decorated another room. However this year I was determined, especially with Megan moving to secondary school later in the year.

At the beginning of March, Chris and I made a list. It covered everything we still wanted to do towards the house. He had 10 days booked off at the end of March and so together we agreed we would work hard and get everything done. I closed my Closet Geek Etsy store and for 10 days (pretty much solidly) we worked on the house. In fact, we worked so hard that I actually spent almost a week afterwards ill!

Anyway the house is now done (well almost at least). The estate agents have been to take their pictures and we are officially listed for sale and have a sign and everything. Over this week I want to share our changes with you, from the bright red lounge we started with (it’s now beige), to the navy blue bedroom (it’s now magnolia), from drastic differences in the kitchen (we had a utility sink and no flooring when I moved in), to the dinning room which is now my beautiful workspace. All this and more, every day this week – so stay tuned!!

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DIY Disasters

April 1, 2016 by Bel Leave a Comment

To be perfectly honest, until this last week, our house has pretty much been one big DIY DISASTER! I met my current partner about three and a half years ago and since me and the girls lived in a rented house and he owned his own, we all decided to move into his house. To say it was a wreck, is really an understatement. He’d bought it as a project house but sadly hadn’t really gotten very far. He was also a guy, living alone – so without being too sexist, it didn’t have much interior design!

Before moving in, we tackled the loft, the spare bedroom and the lounge. The loft was really just an easy place to start and we took it from the horrible black you can see in the picture, to wallpapered white, to pale blue. This was the first time Chris or I had wallpapered and it was definitely an experience!

Next was the green room – which we turned pink. It was the first time ever that we’d lived in a house that was owned, so giving the girls a pink room was really their dream. I wanted them to feel at home in this house which definitely wasn’t homely and I wanted them to feel comfortable with my new partner. When we finished it was pretty good, though I did make a bit of a disaster by slitting the carpet in a fairly obvious spot! To clean it, I used any all these 15 different chemicals to treat a large variety of stains.

In association with HMC Furniture UK I was asked to share my biggest DIY Disaster and in the spirit of April Fool’s Day, this seemed like a great idea! Until this house, my biggest faux pas when it came to DIY, was probably some shelves that I once put up (they were in a cellar and were meant to house alcohol). Sadly they came down within a few weeks and when they did there was a lot of broken glass and wasted liquid! However since living here, I can honestly say its been disaster after disaster!

If I had to sum it up to just one though, it would definitely be decorating the lounge. As you probably saw above, our lounge used to be red. Chris had his TV on the wall, dark black curtains and it just wasn’t my style at all. Instead we painted the walls a sort of stone colour, took down the tv, lessened the black and brought splashes of the red in with curtains and cushions. I was pretty pleased with the finished room. However the process of getting there was definitely interesting.

This was pretty much before we started…

There were some areas with loose plaster – in one corner and just behind the sofa. No biggie right?

Until the plaster started falling off everywhere!

Luckily, Chris was pretty handy with the plaster, but what a disaster!

And don’t even get me started on the kitchen… or our bedroom ceiling. I can’t even tell you how many issues we’ve had! However as you know, this last two weeks we’ve been working on getting all our DIY up to scratch! I can’t wait to share it with you next week!

DIY Update

March 23, 2016 by Bel Leave a Comment

It’s now been a week since we started our DIY and I figured I would check in and let you know how it’s going!

We started off a week ago with a huge list of jobs we wanted to complete. There was at least three jobs remaining in every room, with as many as ten in other rooms. Right now our list is less than half this and I’m so pleased!

The attic room isn’t any different, but the stairs leading up to them are now painted, as is the walls to the side of the stairs. The girls room hasn’t changed at all either, but our room is finished, all bar the glossing of the door. The landing and stairs down are completed. The dining room has had it’s ceiling stripped and it’s walls painted, though I still need to gloss. The kitchen floor was done before we started this week, but the walls are now painted, as is the ceiling, a kitchen cupboard had been hung and fitted, while another around the free boiler is being built. There are new homes St Louis which are built with incredible interior design which would have you mind-blown since they are not only amazing but also they are for sale at affordable prices.

The boiler was a little rickety but did have Boiler Cover to it. The backdoor area is almost done, painted twice but needs another coat and the glossing needs doing too. This Bathroom Remodel started with us having the walls plastered, painted and glossed, with just a little bit left to complete. The lounge is untouched as yet (except the plastering that’s been mended) but there isn’t too much to do there. We have two more days of work left until we hope to be pretty much done so I will let you know next week how we’ve done! Those who need to demolish a small part of their home for a renovation should consider working with a soft strip contractor.

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