Bye Bye Egg Box Doors

The perfectly functional sapele effect eggbox doors are now in the wood-to-be-recycled skip at the tip - thanks to Mum & Dad for helping us get them there!
Instead, we have 9 oak veneered doors (FSC full CoC of course) with stainless steel furniture & heavy duty hinges.  We've owned them since December as I bought them when on offer.  I talked Phil out of fitting them himself - he is perfectly capable, but it would take him about 1 day per door with lots of swearing & frustration.  Found a chippy who gave a great quote, but his order book was full - hence only just fitted!  It took him 2 days to do all 9.
We then varnished them all with a satin clear varnish.  "We" was mostly Phil - I only managed to do 1 due to time constraints.
Very pleased with Mel & Tony's suggestion to put a glazed door on the kitchen which gives a weird dark corner in the hallway a little bit of natural light.
One more to sort out - the carpenter found out that although B&Q don't do the 2' width version, the manufacturer does, so we can get the airing cupboard done too.

En Suite Bathroom Finished

Drum roll......


En Suite is finished!  Our first finished room.


We removed the old suite - which included a corner bath too short to stretch out in and a leaky loo.  The carpet and a goldfish shower curtain were also consigned to the household recycling centre.


We kept the tiles - and managed to find a very close match to add in where needed.  The light, mirrors, towel rail, radiator & shelves were all good - so we kept them too.


Additions were:

• Large shower cubicle with a low profile tray and sliding doors.
• Thermostatic mixer shower, that thanks to the megaflow has a decent level of oomph.
• Oak vanity unit 
• Tile Loc flooring
• Non-leaking loo! 

It all works and it is so much more enjoyable to use than the blue, daylight free bathroom.

We moved into the main bedroom this week as we welcomed our very first overnight guests - my Fabulous In Laws en route home to Torquay after a long birthday weekend in Vienna (many, many thanks to Xis!).   Really good to be sleeping in a nearly finished room, but I'm so looking forward to having a kitchen so that we can be proper hosts.

4 unfinished rooms

John the Builder finished his first stint with us yesterday - so we now have an unfinished en suite, unfinished bedroom, unfinished lobby & an unfinished utility room - note the theme.... 


The lobby & utility are waiting for new exterior doors (John's sourcing).   Everything else is now at the level where we need to get the paint brushes out & ask Tony to start the flooring.


The main priority is to get the utility room finished as much as poss before John comes back in a couple of weeks as that will be our mini kitchen whilst proper kitchen is destroyed & replaced.

However, I think we're going to focus on getting out for a day this weekend - and then maybe some gardening.  Even I have to accept we've been jamming too much into weekends recently.


We spent most of last weekend shuttling green wardrobe doors, old bathroom & utility units to the household recycling centre (aka tip).  


Really appreciated Sunday's lunch guests taking the corner bath there for us in their estate car as I don't think it would have fitted into the Panda even after husband sawed it in two...

De-Greening continues

John the Builder started work today on the main bedroom & the en suite bathroom.  


He was very complimentary about our wallpaper removal work - very much appreciated as we only just got it finished in time.


I left the house for work just as he was ripping off the lovely green louvre wardrobe doors - great to see them all gone by the time we got home!


He's sorted out a sagging ceiling, but has found some electrical nasties to get sorted in the loft - nothing major though apparently.

Wardrobe doors are now outside waiting for me to take them to the wood bin at the tip at the weekend...

Italian tiles found

Previous owners of this house had good taste in tiles - as already mentioned, I quite like the 70s style red ones currently in the kitchen.  The main bathroom has blue tiles that I can't get excited about - but equally, can certainly live with.
The ensuite bathroom's tiles are tricky - we like them and they aren't broken so would like to keep them.  However, we plan to replace the corner bath with a shower enclosure & the loo & basin with white versions.  This means spaces that will be tile free.
A box and a half had been left behind - not quite enough.
It seems nuts to re tile a bathroom when we like the current ones for the sake of a couple of boxes, so we've been looking for them online.
No match anywhere for the barcode or any of the information on the box - but on the back of the tiles, it says "Novabell White Collection".  Much more success!
No UK stockists nearby (that I could find anyway), but there is a store in High Wycombe that deals with Novabell so we are going to pop in on the way to Baby Sister's on Saturday to double check & place the order.
It's not going to be cheap to have them shipped from Italy - but much cheaper than re tiling!