Gallery Wall (1st of many)

We have made loads of progress on the front /dining room over the past few weeks. However we have been too busy working on it for me to take photos or update you!

One area that I do have photos of is our stag gallery wall in the front room. Although we have not yet finished painting the bottom half of the wall we decided a great way to tidy away this box of stag artwork/frames was to just get it up on the wall.

We have planned this project since February 2012 when we bought a large hand printed stag artwork while we were on our 'mini-moon' in Brighton. Those few days away we sat down and discussed general themes for our future house - so that we could focus only buying things that worked in one of those rooms.

After that we have slowly collected a group of brown frames, and a couple of 'stag heads' (fake ones) to put together as a gallery wall as well as making some items to go in the frames as we really wanted these to be handmade (and only a couple not by us!).

First of all we laid them all out on our floor and I shuffled them around until we were happy with the arrangement.

Then Martin hung them on the wall - they look great! They will look even better once we finish making the rest of the stags to go in the frames. Since we took this photo we have already completed 2 more pictures (I am aiming for 1 per week) so we don't end up with the empty frames forever!

I will update this post when all of the stags are complete....

Progress

We finally had a really productive weekend last week. Which started off with the fitting of our new door, which has gone from this:

Which although it does not look terrible in this photograph did not open/close or lock (none of which do I consider out of the normal remit for a door). 

But now it looks like this:

And we love it - the old rotten frame is gone, the room feels warmer already and you can see that the new centralised door actually opens out onto our centralised step, so there is a reduced risk of tripping down it!

M spent hours on our beautiful shelves, they look amazing, from the covered over back boiler, which you can just about see in the side of the chimney of this photo we took when we first viewed the property: 

To this: 

They need filling and painting, but they look great already. And finally in this other view you can see that we actually have some paint on a wall and a set up curtains up!

110 days

110 days ago we completed on our house (yes I know my planned post of a 100 days would have been better, but I have been busy!).

We have learnt a lot in that time and have  probably grown up quite a bit as well. The main thing that I have learnt is that I am terrible at estimating! I tend to underestimate how much time something will take, but would rather err way on the side of caution (I admit it I am a bulk buyer) rather than risk underestimating paint/wallpaper/fabric.

The jobs that we have done I am really pleased with and I think I have learnt that I need to reduce my very high standards or nothing is ever going to get finished.

This weekend we put in our new bathroom tap, I was a little worried about it as we are in a hard water area and I think it will get marked very quickly, but I can't deny that it looks great at the minute!

We have also bought the paint for my craft room - I am very excited to get started, but here is a quick sneak peek...

Finally (for today anyway) I have been watching 'The Great Interior Design Challenge' and I am loving it! It is funny to see so many of the things we have already bought in their rooms, button handles/ wallpaper roller / penny tabletop. And I love the architectural history also included in the programmes (also who doesn't like to be nosey about other peoples houses!). Great programme - I always agree with more craft on TV!

We have the technology and a 'water feature'

We have the internet, YouView and a phone line!

I am struggling to think about why we need the internet and I guess the answer is that we could live without it if we had to, but it really is a nice to have. 

Especially with our new YouView box where we can pause and record live tv (yes I know we are very behind the times, but it was still nice that M could pause Sherlock when I poured hot noodle soup down my hand in the rush to see it).

So far so good with the wifi, I am hoping we do not end up with any repeated problems like we had in our last house where the cable connection box was such a mess that every time they fixed someone else's connection they removed ours...

The other exciting house news this week is that M has replaced the broken flush system in the toilet. So now not only does it flush, but it also stops flushing (that was the issue with the old one). 

I don't really have any exciting photos of our router or the toilet flush, so instead here is a picture of our new 'water feature' in the back garden. I should note, this was caused by flooding, not by our old toilet flush failing to stop!

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!