To mist or not to mist - that is the question

Before starting to paint all of our newly skimmed walls, I thought I would do a little bit of research about how to deal with new plaster. I wish I had never bothered!

I don't think there is any other subject that there are so many different 'experts' all strongly suggesting completely conflicting advice/instructions...

* Sand vs don't sand

* Filler before vs filler after mist coat

* 50:50 paint to water / 70:30 / 75:25 or any other ratio you can think of...

* PVA mixed in vs never put PVA near your walls

* No mist coat vs 1 mist coat vs 2 mist coats

Even as far as arguing whether it is a 'mist coat' or a 'miss coat'...

In the end I have decided to go with:

* A first pass of a 50:50 ratio cheap white emulsion to water ( I am not going to use this on the ceilings though, it is messy enough on the walls!)

* A second coat of 80:20 (approx) - starting with the ceilings

* Then 2 coats of the room colour 

So far I have painted half of the room with the 50:50 mixture, it is the consistency of milk so pretty messy. After trying a brush, a normal roller, I am now using a 'radiator roller' and a paint kettle - this has worked the best for me so far.

I didn't think it was working very well at first

However once it had dried overnight, I can see that it did what was expected. The water was soaked into the plaster and drew the paint pigment in

It looks much less patchy, even though I haven't actually done anything different to the first picture.

So now just to get the rest of it done...

If anyone else is interested in mist coats (hahaha) the most useful thing that I found was this YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTuaH-6rGRw

It Is All Go Here...

Well maybe I wouldn't go quite that far, but since I last blogged the shower is up and working:

We are going to redo the bathroom in the new year, so for now it is functional rather than pretty!

Our beautiful moth smoke alarm is up in the hallway - I loved this from the minute I saw it on Pinterest (I am addicted to that site). 

And we are lucky enough to get amazon vouchers with the 'cash back points' from our credit card - so I don't feel too guilty about buying is as it was 'free' with all our other spending!

And M has put our front door curtain up - the woodwork surround and shelf is not yet finished as it will eventually be painted, but it is functional and looks great!

The black lines are duck tape holding it all in place while it glues. We weren't originally planning to put in the cladding and the shelf, but had to because the lintel is impossible to drill into. I used another of my Pinterest finds (I love an over door shelf)  and in fact I think it looks better than if it had just been a curtain rail. 

Plus bonus storage you may recognise that as a theme over the coming weeks...

We are plastered!

Well the whole of downstairs is anyway!

This does make the room look quite dark, but remember that it is all wet plaster currently and it was pitch black outside (this photo will never win any competitions!). It has also served as a reminder that we don't want to paint the room floor to ceiling brown.

In fact these are our planned colours for the front room (on the wall before the new plaster), brown for below the dado rail and cream for above - GWR colours.

And the dining room will be slightly different as well, so of course we also tested those out...

So just a couple of weeks for the plaster to dry out, some sanding, some mist coats and then we can actually start painting!

Home sweet home

We moved in on Tuesday last week, as exciting as it was to be living in our new house, it would have been more exciting if we had water, heating, any cooking facilities and at one low point electricity!

At least our new house has a driveway big enough for the moving van - unlike the rental that we moved out of where we had to park halfway down the street.

In that week we have had a lot of progress, central heating system is now in ( just waiting for the shower and a sink in the cloakroom to be fitted ) - fingers crossed plumbing will be finished this week.

M has taken down all of the doors (many of them had punch marks in) and has started to replace them with the doors in this picture of the hallway on moving day - they were kindly donated to us by M's boss.

The ikea expedit shelves that you can also see on the floor are rebuilt and holding all sorts of stuff in the spare room. And our bargin eBay folding door has been hind in the bathroom and looks great - just needs a lick of paint now.

Basil the Rat

We were trying to get the house in some order last week, before the big move over this past weekend. We were removing the panels that covered the back boiler in the front room behind the fire place when we made an unexpected discovery...

Sadly I do not have a good 'before' shot as I wasn't expecting there to be anything of interest behind the fireplace! But it is between the fireplace and the wall on the righthand side of the picture above. Two wooden panels were screwed into place to allow easy access to the boiler (if they hadn't been painted over...).

We pulled the panels off (to help the plumber along with our new hot water/central hearing system that is being installed this week). And we noticed that about chest height wedged between the 3 copper pipes there was a feather duster.

Yes I know you can all see where this is going from the title of the blog post - but we really thought that is what it was. I did a big melodramatic show of putting on a marigold glove to remove it, but I was very glad that I had when I felt that the 'feather duster' had teeth! 

It has now been (almost fully) removed, but sadly we have realised that it was likely to be a pet. Which is good news for us as it is not a sign of rats in the loft, but instead it looks like it has fallen through the huge hole in the floor in the airing cupboard currently in our bedroom.

Poor old Basil (Fawlty Towers reference) but we will find some way of remembering him when he turn the area he was found into some lovely bookshelves.

I think our wooden mice might find a home on that particular shelf.

Lights, camera...... Some action

Well the electricians have been, so we are now spoilt by having both lights and sockets in every single room - result! 

They have also made sure that the house is safe by doing less exciting (but more important) things like earthing the gas main and updating the fuse box. 

It is very exciting though as it is the first real 'work' done on the house. Not that I am saying that all that cleaning was easy!

It has left the house looking even worse for wear than before:

Our dado rail removal didn't really help that wall either...

The best bit was that it meant that we could hang my best eBay purchase to date. We went from this broken dining room light: 

To these spray painted chandeliers:

Best part was that we bought the pair of brass chandeliers for 1p!!!

Still cleaning...

I'm afraid there is very little exciting to report - essentially we are still cleaning! The kitchen is looking significantly less greasy, fridge and freezer no longer look like a science experiment so now I am tackling the floor. Can you guess which grout has been tackled and which I haven't got to yet....

What a Load of Rubbish

Well we have been house owners for 12 days now (certainly not homeowners - yet). 

We spent the first few days clearing out all the rubbish that the previous owner had left and trying to chase him for the payment for its disposal.

I am afraid I didn't get a final photo of all the rubbish that was left, as some of it was picked through and pieces of furniture and nic-naks taken to new homes. Then by the time we had cleared the garden and the loft I was too tired and annoyed to take any more photographs.

There were some positives though, pulling up the carpets revealed that the stairs are not in a terrible condition (as we had feared) so won't need to be replaced. After just a little tlc they look better already! 

New Beginnings

I am starting this blog to document our lives and work on our new house. We are first time buyers, and this is really our dream come true, but lets see how long that lasts!

We have a lot of plans for this house and unfortunately we haven't got off to a great start with the previous owner essentially being a &£@* (insert your own 4 letter word). But now that we have spent 2 days clearing his rubbish out of the house and garden we are ready to get started!

There is quite a bit to do and we really want to do as much as possible of the getting contractors in before our rental contract expires and we need to move all of our stuff!

I am afraid the next couple of posts are likely just to be full of pictures, acting as a 'before', but I will endeavour to post any small projects that we do in the meantime - there are a few pieces of furniture that I want to revive.

I hope you will enjoy reading about successes (and I am sure failures) along the way!

Amazing sky on the day that we completed - the photos of the actual house need to come with a bit of a warning as it was pretty gross!