Nearly finished a room!

by In Ethel's House, Renovations Tagged , , , , , 4 Comments

Latest mortgage update yesterday, for all those crossing their fingers, is that the forecast is currently being considered by head office.  However, they’ve confirmed that it is the final hurdle, so if it’s approved then we’ll be given a mortgage offer in principle.

I’ve been trying to forget about it and get on with the painting.  It took two and a half hours to get into all the little pockets at the top and bottom of the tongue and groove with a tiny brush.  (Sorry, I am still unable to get WordPress to display portrait photos in portrait – I can go to Edit and Rotate and then they refuse to save.  They’re the correct way up before I upload them!)

And then it still needed another coat, damn it!  But it was worth it – I reckon it looks pretty good.  Colours, while I remember, are Crown – Milk Bottle on the ceiling and woodwork, and Crown Period Collection – Promenade on the wall.  It’s a pretty good Farrow and Ball imitation and while it doesn’t have quite that same depth and warm that F&B does, it makes up for it by being £18 for 2.5l instead of £43.59(!).

Certainly a vast improvement on a year ago!

All that’s left to do in that room now is (a) touch up the spots where the masking tape took the green paint off; (b) Dougie to fit the smoke alarm and TV/phone socket; (c) David to fit the door; (d) get carpet laid and furnish it (including a blind for the Velux).

In other news, one of Mick’s colleagues was selling an oak coffee table, did we want it for £100?  Yes please, especially since the drawer handles match the ones I’m using in the kitchen!  (I know where it came from and I think it cost him closer to £300.)

Another £1,000 just like that

by In Ethel's House, Renovations Tagged , , , , , Leave a comment

The one thing I’ve noticed about this project is that as its gone on I’ve got very used to paying large bills without batting an eyelid.  Take this week, for example.  On Monday I got a text from David the joiner to say he was going into town and he’d stop by for a chat on the way back.  Turns out that he was finishing off one of his current jobs on Tuesday and was therefore proposing to spend Wednesday and Thursday working on the house (hooray!) “if you can get me one or two bits by then”.

So we went down the road to the house together and the one or two bits turned out to be 70 x 4.8 metre lengths of 3×2 plus 75 sheets of plasterboard, which is rather more than I can put on the back of the pick-up (12 lengths of 3×2 is about as much as you can do on its roof without risking them all spilling off when you go round a corner).  I rang Rembrand in Thurso and explained my predicament to Neil – their lorry usually comes west on a Thursday, but he said he’d see what he could do and, bless him, called me back half an hour later to say that they’d got it sorted and would deliver on Wednesday morning if there was someone to help unload.

I shot into town on Tuesday morning to pay for it and handed over my debit card for just under £1,200 without thinking twice about it – plus a stack of homemade flapjacks for them to say thank you for being so helpful 🙂  I made another batch last night for David (and possibly Dougie, who is going to try and come over tomorrow) and took them down just as the delivery lorry rumbled down the road, so I helped them unload.  It’s refilled the living room, put it that way…

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But it means that David has some straighter lengths of wood to choose from for the long sections in the gable end framing.

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David and I had a long discussion about whether the tongue and groove panelling should go to the bottom of the Velux or stop where the house walls stop, a few inches below.  We’ve gone for the latter on the grounds that it’ll be much easier to do the window surrounds with plasterboard than trying to match up panelling and a dado bead.

Finally, here’s my paint mountain!  I hope it’ll condense down significantly when I get round to removing all the packaging.  At the moment it’s looking like three semi-reasonable days next week and then rather wet, so I’m crossing my fingers that Magnus will be able to get started.

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