Organising

I've spent quite a number of hours this morning on the Real Simple website and Lakeland. I am now £50 poorer and determined to get more organised. I'm getting a shelf to lift my cookbooks onto and a plate shelf so that I can stop almost breaking things whenever I try to get plates down. Also on the list: tongs, a moisture remover for the bathroom, a handheld shredder, a sink tidy, and a plastic bag dispenser, as the IKEA thing isn't working out so well.

But for today, I started simply by sorting through some plastic tubs and am now trying to get rid of a whole load more things on Freecycle. I'm getting rid of:

3x trainers
1x boots
1x wellies
2x shot glasses
3x wooden bowls
1x beach towel
1x large plastic tub

I also have one huge CD wallet full of CDs and a smaller wallet half full, but I think I'll try to sell that on Ebay, since the wallets on their own go for a tenner. I have some other Ebayable items, so I might have to get on that next.

But first! I finally hung up the hook that "Santa" got me from India. Yay! It looks great. I did try to hang a second hook in the kitchen, but I was up on a ladder, and I have no drill and I dropped the screw and it all went a bit wrong. So that might have to wait for another day...

Ow

Finally we had a day of DIY. Oh but the pain. My thumbs hurt, my back is aching, my wrists feel funny... I am going to sleep extremely well tonight. BUT we did get some stuff done. I built a non-children sized chest of drawers (OMG no more folding underwear to make it fit!) and Steph painted a couple of the walls in the "blue room". Then we moved all of the clothing-related things (cupboards, clothes, shoes, etc) into the bedroom. The living room now looks about 10 times bigger, hurrah! Still loads to sort out though... a task for later on (or maybe tomorrow)(or maybe next week). Pics below.

New things

Some of the exciting new purchases for the flat include:


Picture hooks and bookends!


A new computer! Still a work in progress (especially its positioning...)


Lightbulbs!

Whilst in Sweden over the weekend we also purchased coat hooks! These will be on the wall once the wall is painted, so it may be some time before you see these. £55 for that Dwell coat stand was too much. But if you have already bought it, don't fret. It will still find a handsome spot in our living room.

A new IKEA chest of drawers should be arriving soon and the entire living room will change as a result. Pics soon to follow.

If you fancy buying us an early Xmas present

I have my eye on this. I think I am going to get it. It's the best metal coat stand I've found aside from some from Heal's which cost 10x as much (literally - £445). If anyone fancies getting it for us as a very delayed house warming gift, we wouldn't say no...

The hallway

Painting in knackering. Almost finished with two walls. Taking a break for the rest of today. Tomorrow we will complete Coat One. It would take us less time, but we also have to do the ceiling. How the F we are going to do that, I don't know.

Painting the hallway

Stage one: painting the metal bits. I was all set to start stage two: painting the entire hallway, but we forgot to buy Turpentine and I don't want to paint if we can't clean the brushes (and ourselves). Soooo that's for tomorrow...

We have light shades!

Pretty.

Next weekend (Saturday 28th), we get... A SOFA. This is very exciting. Pics soon to follow.

Before and middle

After will come once we're back from hols and have painted the hallway...

Long way to go...

There is a whole wall of this to get through... the fire helps make the... whatever he put on the wall... go softer and therefore come off easier, but it is pretty hard-going!!

Smoooooth

The walls are sooo smooth. Can't wait until they dry so that I can do some painting...

We have an oven

Oh my God. At last. Isn't it pretty? We just need to get it fitted now...

Repainting

Now that the bedroom is (mostly) painted, we have, of course, decided we don't like the colour. It is too dark. So we got some samples last weekend and painted some squares on the wall. I like the bottom left one best. So, I think that's the next thing to do...

Deconstruction

So, taking things down is a lot more fun (and way easier) than putting things up. Today was a LOT of fun. We took down the weird cupboard in the hallway and the uneven shelf in the corridor. The walls are completely fucked now, and we can no longer postpone the inevitable - we need a man to come and do some plastering. I guess that is the next step. Now how does one find a plasterer??

Curtains!!!

We picked up some curtains over the weekend. They are temporary, until we have some made, and they are a little bit short, BUT they make the room feel so much cozier. The sarong was good at keeping prying eyes out, but it really wasn't up to scratch! This is so much better... Meanwhile, the painting still is not finished, but I will be heading out to the DIY shops on BGR tomorrow to see whether they have any Dulux Nutmeg White...

WTF

The bookshelves might take longer than expected. This is the state of one of the walls. To be fair, it is the wall you can't really see, but still, I don't just want to paint over it so am painstakingly wetting and scraping it off.

One thing about all this DIY is it does make me feel better about not doing any exercise lately... scraping and painting are damn strenuous!

I'm a Googlewhack!

Searching for 'beanbaps' on the Internet only brings up one site - mine! Kind of excited by that...

Wallpaper hell

So, I might have mentioned that the guy who lived here before had 'interesting' taste, but I don't think I can have properly conveyed my annoyance with the levels of wallpaper that plague the walls.

The patterns very conveniently cover it all up, but once painted white, you begin to see that the surface is flecked with bumps of wallpaper that he failed to properly remove. Not just near the ceiling, which is where the wallpaper is in the rest of the room, but all around the fireplace. How annoying...


There are also areas of totally uneven wall. How did they get this way? I did the undercoat on the wall by the fireplace today and now realise just how uneven it is. What should I do? I think all of the wallpaper is now off, but I'm really not sure what to do about the uneveness. I think it might require plastering. Is DIY plastering ever a good idea? Probably not... I think I might need to start investigating the builder situation...

Despite the bumpy wall, the room is starting to look a lot lighter now that that wall is white!

One White Wall

That feels good.



Only about 20 million to go...

Tackling wall 1

The walls in this place are pretty impossible. Not only are they uneven and painting in a very heavy pattern, the previous owner also neglected to take off any of the wallpaper above head height, leaving us to stand on our one piece of furniture with a scraper to try to get it all off. This is probably the least fun thing ever. Because it is pretty stuck on. I can see why he couldn't be arsed. But we have to get it off.


Check out the faux-stucco event wall he has painted over. Top tip from previous owner... if you have a crack in your plaster, don't fill it, paint it and make it a feature!


Painting the wall. We have now finished the undercoat completely. The bottom area took three coats, and you can still almost see the lines showing through. I think this guy watched Changing Rooms one too many times...

The question of the century

Where the hell is all this stuff going to go?