A NEW PROJECT

Oh dear, I thought it had been 2 weeks since my last update, but it turns out its been 3!

We've made lots of progress in those few weeks, and yet we've still got a long way to go! Here's a few highlights from the last 3 weeks...

This has been one of my favourite projects so far. We were originally going to just remove the wooden frame and old metal fireplace (its lovely but just wouldn't go with anything in the room!) but once I pulled that out and discovered the lovely shape of the brick work underneath, we decided to try and keep some of the original character. So I carried on and removed all of the rubble that had been used to fill it in, and tidied it us as best as I could. Unfortunately the original bricks are pretty crumbly and there's a few holes we won't be able to fix. So instead we're going to use brick slips over the top to mimic the original shape of the fireplace (I just love the little arch at the top!). We've ordered and some samples and chosen our colour (a lovely light grey) so watch this space for the rest of this project!

Last weekend we had our first helper at the house! Our lovely friend Fran came to visit (it was her first time seeing the house too) and we made a start on painting the walls up in the loft room. She chose to work on the one section we hadn't put lining paper on (its a small triangular space where we'll be putting shelving) and it turned out that blue paint was pretty stubborn! I think she ended up doing 4 full coats and lots of top ups on some particularly stubborn areas! Meanwhile me and Jamie worked on the rest of the walls and its looking brighter up there already! We just need to do the ceilings, a top coat of all the white walls, and add the lovely sage colour to the other wall.

I've spent most of time in the last few weeks stripping paint off all the word-work in the 2 bedrooms...

Again this wasn't always the plan. Originally they were just going to be sanded and re-painted, but after years and years of being repainted, they've gotten pretty thick, bumpy and damaged, and there's so much filler in there that there's no clean edge between the skirting boards and the walls. So we're stripping it all back and starting from scratch, sanding it all down, filling in any gaps (stripping the paint has removed some small bits of plaster in the edges of the walls that need to be filled) and re-painting. The before and after doesn't look like much at the moment because I'm only on the first stage, but here's how its looking so far:

Jamie wasn't too well last week os he's had to take it easy so we've had to find him some quieter jobs to do. So he's been stripping the wall paper off the chimney breast in our bedroom (the corners are pretty rough so we're going to add some edging tape and start again! I know, we're 'starting again' a lot, this is all going to take a while!) and putting a first coat on some of the skirting boards I've been stripping so we can see where it needs filling.

We've also been discussing plans for the garden (Once we're finished with the bedrooms, Jamie will start out there while me and Dad work on the bathroom, as there isn't room for all 3 of us to work in there!) and trying to narrow down paint colours for the bedrooms!

This week will mainly consist of more paint stripping, sanding and painting. We're also planning a trip to Ikea to pick up a few things for the loft room and have a look at their kitchens.