Our Hause

Not Much

2012-02-22T07:41:00.000-08:00

It's been a bit quiet on the home front this week. Mainly because I've FINALLY got myself a new iPhone and have therefore dropped everything to play on it 24 hours a day. Who needs a house when you have a new phone.

I downloaded this fun 360 degree app which patches together your pictures. This was my first attempt of the living room and dining room (you have to click on it):

And here's a picture of my fit chairs in the sunshine:

That's all for today.

Spare Room

2012-02-20T06:53:00.000-08:00

This weekend we attempted to remove some of the madness from the spare room. By which I mean a LOT of empty boxes and things that could find a new home. We even put some things in the loft which is novel, never had one of those before. Ben ventured up there because I was a little apprehensive. I totally fell for his cry of 'Oh my god is that a COFFIN?'... I don't know what's wrong with me.

By the end of the day things looked like this:

In genuinely looks like we've done nothing, but honestly we did. A whole day of stuff! That's how bad it was in the first place. There is still a lot of stuff in there that needs to find its real home, like the bedside tables we found and still need to re-finish, loads of art work and boxes upon boxes (upon boxes) of CDs that need to be unpacked.

This room used to be a little baby's room and looked much like this when we viewed the house for the first time:

It needs a bit of loving before we will be able to utilise it in the way we want to, as a study slash guest room. We need to paint the walls and the built in wardrobe doors, add curtains, clean carpets again and basically de-baby-fy it. Then the idea is put a desk in there and also bring in the sofa bed, that we are currently using as our main sofa, to house people who want to come and stay chez Hernandez-Stroud. We have a way to go yet.

One thing that is troubling me is this:

Bit depressing, right? Bit prison cell. I'm not sure if that's just an incredibly small light fitting or if we need to find some kind of ceiling rose to cover up the lovely hole.

Either way our guests will be starting up at it for a little while longer. Alongside sleeping on a blow up bed until made.com decide to deliver our sofa. I can already see people queuing up to stay in such luxury.

Runner Running

2012-02-17T05:14:00.004-08:00

I found a runner for our hallway in Ikea.

You really can't fault them for stuff like that. We needed something that wasn't going to get ruined by people traipsing in and out of the front door with wet/dirty/snowy shoes, so it needed to be hardy.

I looked at a few natural fibre one's like this Jute runner from Argos and this natural looking one from Ikea, but they just seemed a bit blah. A bit 'the same colour as the floor-ish'.

I saw this Andrup rug on the Ikea website and kind of dismissed it until I saw it in real life.

I thought it might look a bit hippy-ish (no offense to hippies) or like something I would have had in a student house, but actually it's really not. It's REALLY Scandinavian looking (shocker that it's from Ikea) and I think it really brightens up the predominantly white and grey hallway. And it was under £30.

It's also 250cm long which is a bonus as our hallway is ridiculously long and most runners stop at 200cm.

I like it.

Matchbox

2012-02-14T09:07:00.001-08:00

Here's something you can do when you are waiting for your computer to download a massive update that keeps on making it crash.

Cover a match box in Washi tape!

Oh yeah, I went there. I am now a crafter by default! I've got one of these Bjorkefall candlesticks from Ikea which is lovely, but I always leave a bit of a crappy pound shop lighter in the bottom of it for easy flaming. Can you see the crafting lightbulb moment?

I had a box of matches and some Washi tape and tadaa! Pretty matches!

Not exactly rocket science, but satisfying none the less. Big props to Washi tape!

PS The picture in the background is of me and Ben and it was drawn by the film director Michel Gondry! Cool no? He will draw you if you email him a picture! I bought it for Ben as birthday gift a few years back so it was a bit cheaper than the current $99.95 but it's a pretty cool keepsake.

I look like a deformed Kelly Osborne. Here's the picture he took it from:

You can see a whole collection of them here.

Decking The Hall

2012-02-13T03:52:00.000-08:00

The hallway is shaping up nicely. Although we are so high on the intense VOC fumes from all the bloody glossing I've done that we might not be around much longer to appreciate it.

Word of advice, bannister railings take FOREVER to paint. Avoid them at all costs. I was basically weeping into my pot of white gloss on Saturday, desperate for the torture to be over. Thankfully it is now and all of the skirting boards and other wood work have been glossed in the hallway and on the landing.

We even put up my fake Eames (we have way too many knock-off Eames products) Hang-it-all. I got it on eBay for £45 back in October, as a treat to myself for nothing in particular. It's pretty sturdy but I'm not sure how my weight it can really take. Probably more form than function in this case.

We also hung the mirror I mentioned I'd painted using the same tester pot I'd bought for my stool make-over. It used to be a flat white shabby-chic style mirror, but I've had it for about five years and it was basically just looking shabby without the chic element. It's scrubbed up nicely with a couple of coats of paint.

Here's how it's looking from the top down. The pictures on the left are of Ponyo and Totoro, a couple of Japanese Anime cartoons I really like.

We really need some kind of runner rug to make it look a bit cosier, but I've not found one I like yet.

Postcards, Prints and PayPal

2012-02-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

My god PayPal is a dangerous thing. Click, click, oops-I've-spent-loads-of-money-but-it's-virtual-and-I-didn't-have-to-enter-my-card-details-so-it-didn't-really-happen. I swear the amount of mornings I'm surprised and confused as to what the post man has brought me is getting out of control.

Today was no different, although I have to press the point that I never really spend over £20 on impulse purchases. I have some kind of in-build stingy mechanism that makes me stop before I click 'purchase'. Anyway, this morning I bought some wicked little post cards and a print from Seventy Tree. It's a beautiful little online shop run by Kerry of the blog also named Seventy Tree. Kerry's prints are right up my street, loads of geometric patterns that totally appeal to the OCD side of me. I find great satisfaction in repeated patterns. I'm a bit like Rain Man, only not as good at counting.

So this morning I bought the following three postcards at £1.50 a pop:

Mountain Green Postcard

Grey Drop Postcard

Hello Dala Postcard

Nice right? You see the tape that's in the bottom pic? That's Washi tape, it's another little obsession that's been bought on by reading blogs. Everyone is talking about it man, it's like the Sunny D of 2012. It's basically masking tape with pretty designs on it and it originated in Japan. I think a lot of crafters are in to it, but I really like the way Kerry uses it to tape pictures to the wall in non-permanent displays...and I am totally going to copy her once my postcards arrive FYI. I have no shame.

I also bought this great A4 print for £12 in my little mid-morning spend-a-thon:

The City Fox

I'm going to frame him I reckon. To be honest he's a lot healthier looking than your average city fox (thinking the Crack Fox from Boosh) but I like him none-the-less.

Looking forward to forgetting I bought these and receiving them in the post soon!

Love'ly Carpet

2012-02-08T07:06:00.000-08:00

We are finally rid of the red carpet of doom on the stairs and landing!

Why would you choose red carpet? Seriously? The annoying thing was that it was basically brand new and also really nice and fluffy under foot. But it was red, so it had to go.

The hallway, stairs and landing still have a way to go yet. We threw up some white paint at the weekend and I primed the woodwork, but it all still needs glossing and a million and one other things like light fittings, art work and probably some wallpaper in the distant future.

Anywho, here's how things were looking this morning:

We ended up getting our carpet from a local place (called Love'ly Floor Coverings, I kid you not - why the hyphen?) that is literally at the end of our road. I debated going to John Lewis and Carpet Right, but ultimately these guys could do it 1) quickly 2) cheaply 3) love'ly and that's all we really wanted. The carpet choices in there are endless and they really knew what they were talking about.

Although the original Red Devil was really cushy and soft it was actually wrong for a stairs and landing situation and it was flattening out because of the traffic and because of the way people run up and down stairs. Especially in period terraces like ours where the stairs are incredibly steep (like running up a wall a friend once said), so we went for a Twisted shorter pile that is made from Polypropylene and could hold out a bit more. You can really clean the hell out of it and it stays in good shape which is what we wanted, plus it's actually almost as cushy as the Old Red Slapper was so we're not loosing any comfort either.

TADAA!

As you can see we went for a mid grey...it's a bit lighter than this in real life, but once again my iPhone failed me. Our underlay was in good nick so we didn't have to pay for that or any carpet grips (although we were quoted £50 for new underlay should the original not be worth keeping) which was a bonus, so the whole shebang including *removing and disposing of the Red Wonder cost us £239. The carpet itself was £19 per sq/m which is relatively cheap and I think we needed about 9 sq/m for the stairs and landing.

*As a side note about the whole removal/disposal of the original carpet thing, we were a bit concerned as to what to do. Friends had said we could do it ourselves, but as we wanted to keep the underlay and the carpet grips we were worried we'd damage them some how. When I mentioned it to the guy in the carpet shop and he said they remove and dispose of old carpet for only £20 we went with that straight away. I guess it depends on your circumstances though.

It was worth every penny in my opinion. It's so much lighter and brighter on the landing it's insane.

Like I said, there is a way to go, but this is a massive change for the better! Plus it's the last huge change we need to make to the house for a while that is going to cost big bucks, which is a relief (we are ignoring the cracked tiles in the bathroom for now).

Now I just need to paint the living crap out of the 'off white/we love a bit of a nicotine stained look' woodwork without painting the carpet.

WHY GOD, WHY!?

Hello. I Love You.

2012-02-06T12:33:00.000-08:00

Chairs are here!

I'm in love with them in a weird and creepy way!

Not only do they look amazing, but they are really comfy too!

They arrived in two parts, but we just had to screw the legs on to the seat which took no time at all! They feel really sturdy, although I keep telling Ben to sit down on them softly because I'm scared he will hurt them.

We went for the plastic option over the fibreglass for two reasons. One was just simply that this style chair with wooden legs only comes in plastic on bluesuntree.co.uk and I preferred the wooden legs to the metal. Secondly the plastic ones were a hell of a lot cheaper, I'm talking half the price. I was bracing myself as a friend had mentioned he'd seen some plastic and fibreglass replica chairs like these in a shop in London and he'd said the plastic one's looked really poor in the quality stakes. But these are wonderful in my opinion.

Lovely stuff.

Moderate Makeover - Home Edition

2012-02-05T12:44:00.000-08:00

I did a little make over on a stool this weekend. I really enjoyed it and feel like I am a real blogger now because I can offer a before and after! Hooray for me.

Anyway, I found this stool at my local Salvation Army charity shop. It had some dubious stains which the man in the shop assured me I could just scrub out. Y'alright love. I also have to admit that even though the stool was priced at £8 I only paid £6. I haggled a charity shop. I am going to hell, but honestly I only had £6 on me in cash.

I had big plans to re-cover and paint this baby, so I popped to Ikea (yeah popped, it's like fifteen minutes away in Manchester) as I really like their graphic-y textiles.

I picked up a metre of this cool stuff that has hand drawn planks of wood on it for about £5. I was thinking about painting the rest of the stool white, but seriously, we can not have any more white things in our house, so I decided on dark grey and went home via B&Q. I grabbed a tester of Crown Flat Matt Emulsion in Herringbone. FYI that tiny 125ml tester pot covered two coats on my stool and also two coats on a mirror frame I'll show another day. Pretty good value for £3.25.

When I got home I unscrewed the top, cushiony part of the stool and laid it on the floor (stapling can be violent). Then I simply stapled the fabric tightly over it, leaving the old fabric in place.

The corners were probably the trickiest bit, but they were still do-able. I sort of pulled them up and folded them under themselves, like I was wrapping a present (worst. description. ever).

And there you go, one re-upholstered stool seat.

Next up for some make-over action was the base. It's made out of some kind of mock, MDF, plastic nastiness so I decided to prime it with some Dulux Ultra Grip primer before painting. Then I just applied two thin and even coats of my Crown emulsion paint and left it to dry for four hours.

Et voila, once screwed back together again it's looking pretty slick if I do say so myself.

Clearly being snowed in makes me far more proactive than usual.

I Win.

2012-02-03T03:39:00.000-08:00

I'll shut up about this now I promise, but OMG, after the head of Customer Services called me yesterday, now this!

https://www.facebook.com/note.php?saved&&note_id=353785344641280&id=110119682334549

I feel like a MOVIE STAR. In a really gripping thriller about a girl from Manchester who complains about customer services. See it now!

That is all.

They Made.com Me Angry

2012-02-01T06:30:00.000-08:00

You might have seen me ranting about this like a mad woman today if you follow me on my personal Facebook or Twitter accounts. Or you might have seen Ben also retweet-ranting like a social media affected mental patient, because that's what we do. We take down the bad guys one tweet at a time. Because we are THAT GOOD (and cool). You heard.

If you dodged that bullet then it's about to hit you right in the face now anyway. Sorry.

This isn't a post about home improvement so much as about how important customer service is to the (stressed and poor) home improver.

Way back in November I posted about how we'd bought a sofa from a website called made.com. Back then I was a happy, carefree, naive girl about town who loved the idea of saving some money by purchasing an expensive item via a website who make lovely things cheap by making their products to customer demand. They have some wonderful customer testimonials on their site, their Facebook page is full of praise and links to new and beautiful furniture and they assure you on their website:

So we ordered the bloody sofa and were told that we had an estimated delivery date of the 21st of February. Fine, no probs, we new it would take a while as like they say on their site, items are made to customer demand. Come the end of January I checked the delivery date again. Still estimated. I tried to click through to the so called Real Time Tracking System they have in place for 'every step of the way', and it just took me back to their website. Ok, again no probs, I'll just ask them when they are able to confirm the delivery date so I know when this sofa is going to be: in my house for sure/ I can make sure I work from home/ we can move the current sofa we have.

So I took to their fairly active Twitter account and asked them. (*As note here I just want to add that made.com don't have a phone number).

"@madedotcom Hi! I have an estimated delivery date for my sofa, I was wondering when this will be confirmed? It's currently estimated for the 21st Feb, so will I hear closer to the time? Thanks."

"@anahavana Please email contact@made.com, thank you"

Ok, well that's a bit annoying as surely at least try to answer my query, but whatever, I'll email you.

So I emailed the same question, both from my email account and via their online contact form. I waited. I waited until closing time (5pm) and nothing. So I waited again this morning, surely they would be checking their customer emails first thing and drop me a quick like just to reassure me that they are looking in to it? Nada.

Then I got pissed off.

I know that email and social channels have made us all (or maybe just me) more impatient with response times and I know that I am guilty of being frustrated when people don't get back to me straight away via email. But this is a business! They have £900 of my money! They should check their fucking emails! Not only that but I could see that they'd been active on their Twitter and Facebook channels, so someone was obviously there checking them. So I tried Twitter again asking if they could reply to my email. Completely ignored. I tried a few more times. Again nothing apart from a tweet promoting a new item of furniture. So I tried Facebook. I wrote on their wall, they deleted it! I wrote on their wall again. Deleted straight away!

You what! Do you really want to anger this beast made.com? I'm a half spanish, red headed, Scorpio. I will basically murder you.

So I emailed again, going a bit bonkers. I couldn't believe they were ignoring me! Then I went mad and I did this (you'll have to click on the image to enlarge):

I found that if I complained in their comments boxes they didn't delete them. So I copied the same complaint into every comment box I could see (with a bloody typo in it which is REALLY annoying and kind of takes away from the 'I'm taking you DOWN made.com' feeling of it all.)

But low and behold I suddenly received an EMAIL! Guess what. They were awfully sorry but our sofa is going to be delayed. They have no idea when it will get to me but it's not even getting to them until the end of February! Wow! So what was that about 'being in touch' when anything changes? Oh right that was a load of wishy washy bullshit for your site.

I basically said as much in my reply to them. I also told them I would never shop with them again, yada yada. Within minutes another email came through (made.com in 'Suddenly Able To Email' shocker) offering me a £25 voucher if I wanted, as way of an apology. I said no thanks. Nothing on their site is less than £20 and I'd end up paying for P&P and waiting forever anyway. Plus I kind of had to stick to my guns about the 'never shopping with them again' thing.

So there you have it. I was angry, our sofa is probably never going to get here and I've realised how far a simple tweet can go to appease a concerned customer. Let that be a lesson to you made.com.

Designer Storage

2012-01-30T09:10:00.000-08:00

I mentioned a while back that I'd ordered a Componobili replica from bluesuntree.co.uk for some bathroom storage. Well it arrived last week and I love it! It fits the awkward space between the sink and the bath perfectly and stores everything we need!

The original owners of the house had renovated the bathroom about a year before we bought it so not much really needs doing urgently aside from the massive crack in the tiles on the floor. It's like a bloody fault line. Style wise I'd prefer black and white tiles and a bit more fun going on...but I'm not complaining as what we have should serve us well over the next few years. Plus our shower is the size of a house and is amazing.

The estate agent's picture below shows it how it looked when we viewed the house. I really wish they'd installed the sink to one side, or at least installed some kind of vanity unit as they clearly had similar storage issues to us and went with the 'shove some storage next to the bath' concept.

Here's how it's looking now. Oh how I long for a wide angle lens. Oh how I long for an actual camera.

It could do with a bit more art work in there, we currently only have one framed map of the NYC Subway system, which you can't see in this pic.

It's funny...I don't love the bathroom that much as we haven't really been able to make any drastic changes to it aside from a lick of paint. Like we are the evil foster parents who don't want to invest too much in the bathroom-child as it won't really make much financial sense.

Impatience

2012-01-28T09:33:00.000-08:00

Just bought four of these babies in Sky Blue for the dining room table.

What was the rubbish I was talking about 'waiting and making sure they were what we want'? Christ I'm impatient. We were always going to come back to them though, I know it (ahem).

£207 for four chairs including delivery. Not exactly cheap but I've always loved the original Eames chair so it's a bit of love struck madness.

In other news my sweet friend Camilla told me about Failsworth Mill so we are hoping to head over there tomorrow morning (it's not open on Saturday's FYI) to check out some antique goodness in the shape of a side table for the living room. I was thinking of getting some chairs from there maybe and painting them, but as you can see above I didn't. Is this just me? Am I really that impatient? YES.

An Unintentional Shrine

2012-01-26T11:24:00.000-08:00

Our living room fireplace is looking a bit like a rubbish attempt at a shrine to Bob Dylan at the moment.

He's not dead, FYI.

It's an attempt to hide the fire insert that I'm not really a fan of. I need to get a bigger/wider/darker frame and put something that isn't human in it. I also thought about a fire grill instead but I can't find anything big enough or opaque enough to hide this:

Don't get me wrong, it could be a lot worse, it's just not something I would choose and the cast iron/cast iron style insert we'd want to replace it with starts at around £230, so it's not going anywhere for now. Plus it works perfectly well and has a nice gas flame, and open fire is pretty welcome up here in Mancunia.

I bought a couple more sheets of wrapping paper from Magma yesterday (£1.50 a pop) so will probably be using one of these to replace dear old Bob.

Card Art

2012-01-26T02:39:00.000-08:00

I did a bit of make-shift art last night.

I had an empty frame that was asking to be used and I remembered I had these Tim Burton playing cards that were a gift a couple of Christmases ago. I've never used them to actually play anything because I ALWAYS end up buying last minute packs of cards for about £75 a pack at the airport en route to a holiday destination. Without fail. I'll never learn. They are some of my most expensive purchases.

Anyway, my Tim Burton cards were sitting around doing nothing so I put them in the frame. Not much more of an explanation needed. I just picked out some of the picture cards for the centre and shimmied around some number cards around the edges. Then I used the age old 'turn Sellotape back to front' trick that our forefathers taught us to stick the cards to the back board and Bob's you uncle.

Is it a bit Emo? I don't know. I like it though. It's sat in our fireplace in the dining room at the moment as we aren't sure where to put it, so it will likely stay there for the foreseeable.

Dinner Dinner Dinner Bat-Table

2012-01-25T06:53:00.000-08:00

So we went ahead and bought a dining table last week and it arrived yesterday. We ended up going with No Name table from John Lewis (as mentioned in this post) because he was on sale down from £299 to £199 with free delivery. (He's no longer available so I can't link to the site which is annoying and ruining my link flow, but here's what he looked like).

So anyway, he arrived and it was exciting. All we had to do was screw the legs on using the spanner they supplied, which broke under my brute force so we finished the job with some pliers.

Here he is all made up and ready to head out on the town. (Again, worst pictures EVER. Just had lengthy discussion about purchasing a DSLR so hopefully this will drag me out of this pit of despair)

His legs are solid wood and the table is oak laminate, meaning it's real oak on the surface but MDF or some-suchlike underneath. This combo makes it cheaper and lighter. Ideally we would have real wood table but to be honest they are expensive and we are cheap, so you do the maths. It feels really sturdy and hard wearing, and the oak top is lovely and will also hopefully be sturdy and hard wearing. It's also an extender, in the picture it is indeed extended. Think we will keep it that was as it's not as big as I had envisioned and looks a little lost when un-extended. It will easily sit four to six people, but it turns out our dining room is bigger than I thought.

Clearly we need some chairs. The ones we currently have are from Ikea, one of which I put together the wrong way and it slopes down at a funny angle making you feel like you are constantly on the verge of falling off the seat. Good for your stomach muscles though. I've kind of got my heart set on these Eames Vitra replicas in Sky Blue (four chairs for under £200!) but think we will wait until we have scoured the local antiques and vintage shops to make bloody sure we are getting what we want. Either way there will be no more white. It's starting to feel a bit like an art gallery round ours.

While I'm here I'm going to kill two birds with one stone and say 'hey look we painted the walls in the dining room!' They are the same colour as we used for the main three walls in the living room, Dulux Professional in Swansdown. It's just enough to give the room a bit of warmth without really being an obvious colour and that's what I love about it.

We also painted the corner unit that was previously stained wood (surprise) to white (also, surprise!) It's looking nice! I even put out all our nice books that make us look like we are intellectuals and used my lovely owl book ends. Shazam! The pic in the corner is my Valentine's Day card from Ben last year. It says 'You are the David to my Elton'. That's how we roll.

Rejoice!

2012-01-20T07:48:00.000-08:00

I'M SO HAPPY.

Trevor the damp man came over this morning and told me it's not damp. We won't have to have the wall ripped out or re-plastered or anything horrid like that. He thought it was just some small holes in the pointing outside (pointing is the seams in between the bricks of the house where the concrete goes FYI) and he filled them with some putty stuff for FREE.

What a man.

To be honest I thought the pointing was OK, but he showed me that even small holes can let wind and rain get into the brick so it's best to seal it all up nice and tight.

If you live in the Manchester area and need someone to come and check out your walls for damp then Trevor is so your man. He is lovely, friendly and loves Dexter. What's not to love?

Gratuitous and completely irrelevant picture

Hanging

2012-01-17T14:10:00.000-08:00

To cheer myself up a bit after yesterday's Damp Gate, I decided it was time to get some more art up on the walls. Putting pictures up was always the first thing I did when moving into rented places. I love how homely it makes a place feel and I've been desperately missing it since we've moved in.

I was given two Stanley Chow prints for my birthday and Christmas and have been saving them for the dining room and living room once they were painted, which they finally are.

Stanley Chow is a brilliant artist & illustrator and he does some amazingly clever portraits of celebs, film stars and sports personalities, but the prints I have mean a little more to me as they are both of Manchester.

Tonight I put up 'Manchester Arndale'. Doesn't sound very glam does it? But it's awesome.

I love the colours and the simple shapes he uses to represent our fair city.

The second print is called 'Welcome To Manchester'. Ben bought it for me for my birthday and I love it. It's so...cute. I love the dude with the rain clouds welcoming the other dude with open arms. Classic Mancunian hospitality.

I've yet to put this one up as I'm waiting for our new sofa to arrive as it will be going above it and I want to get the height right.

Check out Stanley Chow's work on his site!

It's Curtains

2012-01-17T07:02:00.000-08:00

The reason we discovered the effing damp in our dining room last night, was because I was about to go and put up our new curtains when I noticed it. Due to the mini meltdown that was had following the damp discovery I've still yet to take ANY pictures of the dining room, with curtains, without curtains, with paint, without paint...you see where I'm going here.

I do, on the other hand, have pictures of the same curtains in the living room. The good old, reliable, non damp living room.

It didn't take too long to decide on what curtains to go for. I mentioned before that I was keen on some Chevron patterned ones. I was imagining grey and white loveliness. But Ben wasn't keen and then we went and got the Chevron rug, so that was kind of off the cards.

I don't know about you, but as far as I can see, full length curtains from anywhere aside from Ikea just seem to be so incredibly expensive! That is unless you want them to be satin, which makes it a bit cheaper...but I'm not a huge fan of satin so really wanted a heavy cotton. Correct me if I'm wrong though and I'm missing a trick somewhere! I'd love to know! There are still more rooms in our house that need curtain-a-fying. Either way it kind of narrowed down the curtain price spectrum a bit.

Anyway, after briefly considering making some curtains from scratch (!!),I took one of many thousands of trips to Ikea to have a look at what they had to offer. It's all well and good searching online but I wanted to feel the material in real life.

And so for £45.99 a pair, Vilmie Linje were purchased.

They look a bit tea-towely in the picture, which is why I wanted to check them out in real life. I thought they might look a bit like those scarves everyone was wearing a while back. (I just Googled that and it turns out the Tea Towel Scarf has its own Facebook hate group).

Anyway it turns out they don't look anything like a tea towel or a scarf. They are lovely and heavy and the stripes are just enough detail to not compete too much with the zillion other patterns we have going on.

You can see them hanging in out living room in the terrible picture I took on on iPhone. I promise I will improve on the picture quality asap. It's shocking.

I can't even do a close up shot for you as iPhone will reject it. Le sigh.

I hemmed the bottoms with the iron on stuff you get in the packet. It's not too bad you know. I realised the trick is to iron both sides of the curtain to make sure it melts properly and bonds the material together. I hemmed them while they were up on the curtain pole...I think I might have gone a bit renegade but I for me it's the easiest way. I find it means you don't have loads of material getting dusty on the floor and you can check the length as much as you like. Obviously I used a tape measure throughout to keep checking the hem size but you get the picture.

Hanging wise, Vilmie Linje have a pocket for your curtain pole to go through and also a stip of hooks which you can use with curtain tracks/hooks.

And that, as they say, is curtains.

EUGH

2012-01-16T13:24:00.001-08:00

Who said owning a house was fun?

Let me shoot them.

We came home today to find the paint we so lovingly applied at the weekend (in the dining room, I was yet to post about it) was starting to peel itself right back off.

You heard it, we have DAMP.

Or should I say more damp, as we'd already tackled a shit load of it as we moved in and thought we had it sorted. Apparently not. Trevor the damp man is coming to investigate on Friday.

I'm sad :(

Blue Sun Tree

2012-01-16T06:15:00.000-08:00

Even as website names go this is a pretty obscure one, but bluesuntree.co.uk is well worth having a look at if you want to get some design classic replicas at more affordable prices.

I've no idea how I came across the site originally. I think I was at work a few years back, Googling things for my wish list for a make believe house when I lived in London. This morning I thought I'd have another look to see what they could offer in the shape of Eames replica dining chairs. Turns out they can offer a lot (another post), but I didn't want Ben to have a stroke on finding out I'd just purchased a whole dining set without any input from him, so I've waited (how PATIENT OF ME) and I went a little smaller and got this little guy for our bathroom instead.

He's a replica Componobili and the three door version is £45. Not bad right? Considering he isn't made of wicker and linen like SO MANY bathroom storage units these days are. Seriously! When are they going to get over it and realise that wicker doesn't make for easy drawer sliding? I'd basically given up looking so am so happy to have finally found some bathroom storage I love!

The original Componobili designed by Anna Ferrieri for Kartell is gorgeous and I love it, but it retails at about £86. I know that's not going to break the bank, but when it's going to be used to store deodorants and shower gel in our bathroom I'd rather cut the cost where I can if you know what I mean.

They have various different versions of this replica Componobili on the Blue Sun Tree site FYI, so you might want to take a look before you head towards the wicker.

PS This whole post sounds like a big ad for Blue Sun Tree. They have no idea who I am, I just like their site.

I Love Lamp

2012-01-11T05:57:00.000-08:00

Well not lamp, light shade, but I wanted to squeeze an Anchor Man quote in.

Next didn't show the goods when I went to see if I could find this lamp shade so I gave up. We had painting to do and as usual my attention span is on par with a gnat.

Later that day Ben and I headed to B&Q to get some sugar soap for the weekend's painting (on a Friday night I'll have you know, cos that's how we roll) and I dragged him round to the lighting department 'just in case' and low and behold we found a lamp shade that is nothing like I have be obsessing about, but awesome none the less. It's like something from an old Star Trek episode. Sort of.

Behold the Cupola Metal Shade in white. It's big (like half a metre in diameter) And it was cheap. £25.98 to be precise!

Thank you B&Q.

Before and In Progress - Living Room

2012-01-10T03:02:00.001-08:00

BEFORE

IN PROGRESS

Painted Living Room

2012-01-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

We finally painted the living room this weekend. I'm still off my face on paint fumes.

I can't find the camera so I had to take some terrible pictures on my iPhone (3g FYI. Oldest iPhone ever. It's terminally ill, poor thing).

The whole process of painting two coats on the walls, priming and glossing the wood and putting everything back together again took about a day and a half. The first day was a bit of a bitch, I'd forgotten quite how boring painting can be once the first coat is in place.

Here's how things look when we started on Saturday morning:

Ben staging a point at nothing in particular.

And here's how things looked on Saturday evening post two coats on the walls and some primer on the skirting boards, archway and cabinet.

To be honest you can't really see very much because the pictures are terrible, but here is a little list of things I'd learnt by this point:

1. Dulux Trade Paint is the bollocks. Like, seriously the best thing in the world. I'd drink it if I could. It goes on incredibly smoothly and we could have really gotten away with only one coat, we were just being meticulous. It's so thick and wonderfu,l it is well and truly worth the extra few pounds it costs in comparison to normal Dulux paints. You can buy their Trade paint from any Dulux Decorator Centre and you will love yourself for bothering.

2) You don't need to bother sugar soaping the walls if they have been painted in the last few years. We just ran a cloth around the skirting and coving to get rid of dust and cobwebs.

3) Use a decent primer if you are painting over varnished wood. The house was basically like the inside of a cuckoo clock when we bought it. Varnished wood from floor to ceiling. We are slowly trying to rectify that and part of that process is painting the skirting boards, the archway and the built in cabinets a nice glossy white. We used Dulux Super Grip Primer, which again is brilliant. You apply one coat, it dries in six hours and then we only needed one coat of Satinwood! Amazing!

(PS I wasn't perked by Dulux for any of this btw, although I'd like to be. Dulux, Dulux, Dulux.)

4) Eat breakfast before you get started or you will end up in ridiculous argument about how to use a roller.

Here's the almost finished result:

Still a million things to put back in their place but you get the idea. It feels so much cosier in there already. Very happy. Take two next weekend with the dining room!

Next up curtains and light shades! Oh the excitement.

Let There Be Light Shade

2012-01-04T13:15:00.000-08:00

I've got a habit of imagining something I wan't, looking for it everywhere and then having a tantrum when I can't find it...them promptly forgetting about it.

I thought that this little dance was going to take place once again when I was looking for a large plain lamp shade for the living room, but I've definitely not forgotten about it.

Seriously though, how hard is it to manufacture a large, plain, drum light shade. Really. I really don't think it's asking for much. We can't be the only people in the world who have high ceilings and a large-ish living room. EVERYWHERE sells those pokey 'basic' multicoloured light shades, they are all tiny and would look lost in a space any bigger than a toilet. WHERE ARE THE BIG ONES?

I got my heart a bit set on this light shade I saw on the blog Young House Love. They modified it slightly by adding a light diffuser, but the size and the drummy-ness is exactly what I am thinking.

After stalking the interwebs for the last few months, I thought I would try a bit of real life shopping and headed down to Barton Square, Manchester's mini homestore heaven. They've got loads of stores there, Dwell, Next Home, M&S Home, Laura Ashley, BHS...the lot. But nada. No shade. I was a bit pissed off. I came back with a serving spoon for God's sake.

Then today I thought I would give Next one last try on the account that I have a gift card burning a hole in my pocket, so I had another look on their site and would you look at that:

A large (45cm) White String Shade for £38. It's nice. It's not exactly what I was looking for (the glitteryness of the string isn't quite my bag) but I am going to give it a bash none the less in the hope that it's not quite so tranny-glittered in real life. The thing is Next won't let you use a gift card on their site unless you've bought something from them before, which I think is a bit ridic but I'm hoping that if I pop to another branch of Next Home I might find it.

Fingers crossed, I don't want to have a paddy.

Back in 2012

2012-01-02T10:52:00.000-08:00

Back home in Mancunia from 10 days of cheating on it with various parts of the country.

We have crap loads of paint, about 50 brushes and I've got a bit of a cold, but painting will shortly commence!

Pictures will follow!

Until then I am going to have a bit of a lie down and a take away.

Happy New 2012

Owl Be Seeing You

2011-12-24T05:09:00.000-08:00

It's not even Christmas day yet and I've already been spoilt with some effing AMAZING gifts. There is a bit of a theme going on and I'm clearly very predictable in my tastes, but that is why I love my friends in a very gay way.

Sorry if I'm a bit gushy, I'm watching A Muppet's Christmas Carol and it always gets to me.

So presents.

I was given this gift from my lovely friend Laura:

A little white porcelain owl from Marks and Sparks.

Before I say any more the next present is from my wonderful friend Nat:

White owl book ends from Laura Ashley.

I think you get the theme. Things that are white and things that are owls.

I love anything white and anything that's an owl! It's so simple! I'm so simple! Ben has a tattoo of an owl on the inside of him arm. That's why I like him.

I actually bought Ben this blackboard for his Christmas present...he loves owls too, obviously.

I've had some other wonderful presents including this gorgeous (white) fruit bowl, some seriously cool original pen and ink art work and a gorgeous scarf and tomorrow is still Big Present Day, otherwise known as Christmas Day. I am very excited.

Proper Crimbo!

A Lot On My Plate

2011-12-21T08:38:00.000-08:00

I was looking at the walls in the living room the other day, trying to figure out where to hang our framed prints once the walls are finally painted, and I realised that a) we don't have enough stuff framed yet...frames cost a lotta monies (even from Ikea) when the print is the size of a house (and many of our are) and b) surely we could put something other than prints on our walls now that we OWN the walls and don't have to get a deposit back based on how few holes there are left in them.

So now I'm on a mission to get together a wall of plates.

So I pitched the idea to Ben (god it's really annoying having to have the ok from the other person who...ya know... owns half the house) and he liked it. So we had a look around on the internet to see what we liked. Bare in mind Ben was involved in the choice of these, there are brains and skulls a plenty, just to 100% confirm that he is 'such a boy'.

Here they are:

Skull Plate $25 from Etsy

'I love you more than zombies love brains' plate $16 from Etsy

Bee plate $30 from Etsy (The Bee is a symbol of Manchester so this would be pretty cool)

Fox plate $18 from Etsy and also seen in the home of Kerry over at The Seventy Tree

Camera plate $30 from Etsy

So yep, they are all from Etsy, but it's got a good search tool so it's pretty easy to find some really nice plates that aren't too pricey. Am going to have a look around some charity shops and what not too, but I'm pretty in to graphic-y things and that genre hasn't quite hit the charity shop circuit yet.

They might look nice together though, could be a fun little home improvement project...

Smug

2011-12-18T14:31:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling a bit pleased with myself today.

This is because I managed to get my hands on an A2 framed poster for under £10. UNDER A TENNER. A2.

It was £9.94 to be exact.

I'll pause from being smug to explain. It's basically a sheet of wrapping paper I found at Magma for £2.75 with a print of the New York Subway system on it. (I can't find it on Magma's site but they have similar wrapping paper on there)

Do many people think it's reasonable to spend £2.75 to wrap a present? I resent paying that much for a whole roll of wrapping paper! They have loads of different rolls of wrap in store at the moment with really cool framable prints on them though and for that I am thankful.

I planned to put this up in our bathroom as we've not wanted to hang any of our other decent prints for fear of them being ruined by steamy showers, so this is kind of perfect and very replaceable. Read c-h-e-a-p.

I went to Ikea and bought a £7.19 Nyttja frame which fits it perfectly and BOOM, it's up and looking slick. FYI those Nyttja frames are cheap for a reason, they aren't amazing, they only have perspex instead of glass and the back is made of what looks like a bit of old box, but again, for something that might get ruined in a year, the extremely exact price of £7.19 was not to be sniffed at.

These pictures are telling me we need a better camera.

Table Talk

2011-12-15T05:11:00.000-08:00

We are slowing down on the DIY/home purchases on the lead up to Christmas so we can afford to do things like eat and put the heating on, alongside buying presents for people.

But obviously I still can't stop searching for stuff and adding things to my Pinterest boards.

One of the next big things we are going to have to buy will be a dining table. We have one at the moment but as you can see from this picture (please ignore curtains) it's a bit of a joke:

Aside from the fact that it's teeny tiny it's also exactly the same colour as the floor now we've had it sanded.

It's basically camouflaged. We keep bumping into it.

I've got this idea that I'm going to find a beautiful vintage table that I will lovingly restore with paint and varnish. Will that happen? I've no idea. I mean that's the kind of thing that happens in blogs right? But firstly I have no idea where this loving restoration of a massive table will take place. It can't happen in our outhouse like smaller projects can, it can't happen outside because we live in Manchester...so logistically I'm not sure. But you never know.

There are plenty of second hand furniture places in Manchester. I think it's something to do with the huge student population. There are millions of landlords looking for a cheap deal to kit out their student rental properties so that poor students can sit on 8th hand broken sofas that somebody probably passed away on in the 70's. Either way, there is a chance that I will find my ideal table in there and the loving and restoring may commence.

Talking of this ideal table, it's going to be round. Ben agrees round too so that's good. I've got another little day dream of sitting around the lovely round table, drinking coffee and playing around on my computer. I know that's not quite the dream of having a happy young family around the table eating breakfast together or something, but I'm just not there yet.

So anyway I've found a few alternatives to my vintage fixer upper on the interwebs. One is rather more than I would like to pay, but it gives me an idea of what I am looking for.

First up there is a trust Ikea number, the Liatorp coming in at £179:

This is exactly the style I'm thinking of the only thing that puts me off is that it is totally white, and I was thinking a little more along the lines of white legs, wooden top. Talking of legs, I'm really liking the pedestal style legs. Aside from that, in the words of Sir Partridge 'It's an extender'.

Next up, another great bit of furniture from made.com, it's the Bergman which is selling for £199:

I do love this table. I love that it's round and that it has nice rounded feet. What I don't like is the fact that the wood is way too light. It will look like a floating table and I'm done with camouflage. If it had a darker stain on the legs this one would be a winner. That's something that could be overcome.

Lastly there is this table from John Lewis. It has no name. No Name costs £299:

No Name is also an extender. I like the colour of his top, it's exactly what I am after.

So there you have it. If those tables had a threesome and made an illegitimate table-baby I would want to adopt it.

Chevron Love

2011-12-12T13:41:00.000-08:00

Like everyone else at the moment, I'm a bit in love with anything that has a chevron pattern on it.

I tried to convince Ben for ages that we should get some chevron patterned curtains, but he just wasn't buying it. So I moved on to rugs and it appeared that he was much more comfortable with that. I have no idea why.

We found this bargain of a massive chevroned rug on the Urban Outfitters site and managed to coincide buying it with a one day '20% off everything' sale they had going on a few weeks ago. So we managed to get three and half square metres of rug for just £52...which I think is really cheap for so much rug.

We were finally able to put in down on the floor last night, now that it has fully cured after the sanding and waxing. I think it looks sick.

It will look a lot sicker when the new corner sofa is in place and a whole host of other stars have aligned to make our perfect living room, but until then it will do nicely.

The Secret Life of Paint

2011-12-12T07:40:00.000-08:00

This weekend, aside from a confusing 'part Christmas shopping part house shopping' trip, was mainly about paint.

Lovely, lovely, expensive, mine fieldy paint.

It's really hard to figure out where to start when painting a wall. That sounds ridiculous, but the options are endless and the painting also feels endless. Seriously, painting a wall white makes you want to kill yourself part way into the second coat...I learnt that with the bathroom.

Anyway, we need to paint the whole downstairs of our house. It is ALL white at the moment, but it's also scuffed and grubby and depressing. We wanted to add a bit of colour but not go too bonkers as we have a lot of art work, curtain ideas, cushions and what not that are all pretty colourful.

The downstairs of our house is all one room pretty much, as you can see from the floor plan:

...everything is pretty open plan. So we needed to make a paint choice that would basically work for the whole thing...the whole massive room. And it couldn't be white, mainly because that's what we have already and it's pretty cold, but mostly because we would end up dead after the first coat.

After mooching around on the internet and mooching around B&Q we had narrowed it down to the fact that a) we wanted to use Matt Vinyl paint as it's pretty much standard for walls and also shows up less flaws and b) we needed to use a high quality paint so as to reduce the amount of work we would have to put in. As tempting as own brand cheapo paints are, you'll end up having to paint 4 coats and that's a false economy if I ever did see one.

Ben's dad used to be a painter decorator and now works for a company who decorates on a huge level. He knows his shit when it comes to what paint to use. He strongly recommend us using Dulux trade paint. It's thicker and stronger and you can get away with one coat pretty much every time.

So on Saturday we headed off to the Dulux Decorating Centre in Salford. I felt like a bit of a plumb when we first walked in, the same way I feel when I go to a garage to get my car fixed...like I have to be a bit hard core and pretend I know what I am talking about. But Ben jumped in and was all "yeah mate, can we have some tester pots mixed up, yeah cheers"...he puts on a cockney accent when trying to be uber manly.

Anyway long story short, they mixed us up 4 testers, which came to £15 which I believe is a bit more pricey than your average B&Q tester, but we thought it was worth it.

And this is how our wall now looks - we decided on 'Dove' for the wall with the fireplace and 'Swansdown' for the rest of the living room and dining room. Just so you know we picked colours that were on their basic 'Naturals' colour chart and didn't bother getting anything mixed for us specifically. Not this time anyway, the simpler the better for the moment.

I learnt a while back that you should always paint the tester paint on the exact wall you will be using the colour on. It's crazy how different colours can look on different surfaces. We were after a warm grey colour for the fireplace wall, so we painted the tester paint straight on there and then the lighter colour for the rest of the room went on the adjacent wall so we could get a good idea of exactly how it would look.

And THAT is how it's going to look until after Christmas when the painting will begin and we will finally be able to have a cosy living area that doesn't feel like a shed.

As a side note I also painted the kitchen this weekend (while Ben cleaned the house and hoovered - that's how it rolls in our house) but I didn't take any pictures and to be honest it was reasonably uneventful. It was white on white paint (kill me) and it looks pretty much the same, just a little less grubby. I also cut loads of corners and didnt paint on top of the units or behind the fridge...I figured we could get away with it as the kitchen is actually pretty new and the walls were only really marked from when the previous owners moved all their stuff out, so it was more of a touch up job.

BIG

2011-12-12T05:10:00.000-08:00

This isn't strictly home-owning/DIY news, but it will be IN my house so it's going on here.

Last week I was at my office Christmas party, on the beers and on the internet. We probably all know that's a bad combo, but in this instance it landed me with this amazing original cinema advertisement poster from one of my all time favourite films BIG.

Ebay + Peroni = Risky Little Game (that paid off this time)

It's MASSIVE. It's going to cost a fortune to frame (it was only £20 btw) but I don't care. I bloody love BIG. It has exactly the right amount of magic without being too cheesy. Of course I wanted (want) the penthouse apartment with trampoline and pinball machine and spent days of my life trying to work out and remember the words to this:

The space goes down, down baby, down, down the roller coaster. Sweet, sweet baby, sweet, sweet, don't let me go. Shimmy, shimmy, cocoa pop. Shimmy, shimmy, rock. Shimmy, shimmy, cocoa pop. Shimmy, shimmy, rock. I met a girlfriend - a triscuit. She said, a triscuit - a biscuit. Ice cream, soda pop, vanilla on the top. Ooh, Shelly's out, walking down the street, ten times a week. I read it. I said it. I stole my momma's credit. I'm cool. I'm hot. Sock me in the stomach three more times.

Getting Rid of a Sticky Mess...mehehehe

2011-12-11T10:35:00.001-08:00

Getting rid of a sticky glue residue mess.

I'm talking about the glue left over from the 90's decal of doom that's been sat on the glass door waiting for some attention since last weekend when I gave up, after inhaling too many nail polish fumes and giving myself a disfigured hand from all of the scrubbing.

Anyway I googled what the best thing to remove such glue from a glass surface was and DW40 came up.

We had some in the house after using it to remove the manky sealant from around the shower. That stuff is just incredible. I am in love with it. It sorts out EVERYTHING.

I just sprayed some on to the glue, left it for five minutes and then wiped it off with a cloth. Simple as that. No need for claw hand. No need for narcotics based highs.

Apparently it's also good for people who have arthritis.

Massive Bargain

2011-12-10T10:57:00.001-08:00

We snagged these two wicked little vintage bedside units today for £3 each! £3!!! That's less than a bloody Subway!

Can not wait to sand, prime and paint these bastards. They are going to be a SAWEET DIY project.

FYI they are from the Hope Direct charity shop in Moss Side. It's amazing in there. A bit scary, but amazing.

More 90's Decor

2011-12-07T02:12:00.001-08:00

We are rocking a bit of a 'Changing Rooms' rag rolled look over the fire place at the moment.

It's just a base coat of rubbishy cheap B&Q White Emulsion, to cover up the darker browny/grey colour discovered under the wallpaper, but it it's amusing letting people think that that's the look we are going for, especially as it will be staying this way until after Christmas when the real painting will commence!

Christmas Is Coming

2011-12-06T05:58:00.001-08:00

The Christmas Tree is up. It looks both lovely and ridiculous in our predominantly empty living room. All good in da hood though.

In the background you can just about see my amazing Dr Yes chair, it's an original Philippe Starck design. My sibs and their partners got it for me for my 30th and I bloody love it. It's surprisingly comfortable too.

Big List Update

2011-12-04T12:41:00.001-08:00

Just as a little pick-me up, I've crossed off a few bits that we have done from our initial list. A new list of the next bajilion things must be written, but I'm content to check things off of here before I start that.

Living Room:

~~- Wallpaper needs to come off from around the fireplace~~
~~- Damp proofing and re-plastering around the fireplace~~
~~- Floor needs sanding and re-finising to a lighter wood. At the moment it's a reddy brown and NOT GOOD.~~
- Walls and ceiling need to be repainted a non "We've been smoking in here" colour
- Ceiling coving needs re-glossing
~~- Curtain poles need to go up~~
~~- Blind and curtains need to go up at the window~~
~~- Holes left from previous owners need to be filled and sanded~~
- Hardware on cupboards needs replacing

Dining Room:

- Walls and ceiling need to be repainted
~~- Holes left from previous owners need to be filled and sanded~~
~~- Curtain poles need to go up~~
~~- Curtains need to go up~~
~~- Floor needs sanding and re-finishing~~
- Hardware on cupboards needs replacing

Kitchen:

~~- Cooker and Fridge need to be installed~~
- Vent needs to be sorted out as it's all wonky and strange
~~- Holes left from previous owners need to be filled and sanded~~
- Solid wood work surface need to be oiled and massive strange stain needs to be dealt with.
- Tiling behind work surface
- Walls need fresh coat of paint.

Bathroom:

~~- MASSIVE CLEAN~~
~~- Shower needs to be re-sealed and de-limescaled~~
- Tap on bath needs fixing
- Holes in the walls need filling and sanding
- Walls and ceiling need painting
- Need to find new toilet lid and currently there isn't one!

Bedroom 1:

- Holes in walls need filling and sanding
- Strange shelf on the chimney breast needs to come down
- Curtain poles and curtains need to go up
- Wallpaper needs to come down
- Walls and ceiling need to be repainted as does all the trim
- Hideous light fitting needs to be burnt

Bedroom 2:

- Blind needs to come down and replace by a non broken non blue one.
- Carpet either needs to be properly cleaned or replaced
~~- Holes in walls need filling and sanding~~
- Walls, ceiling and trim need to be painted
- Cupboards need to be repainted and hardware replaced

Hallway:

~~- Damproof course and replastering needed~~
- Walls, ceiling and trim need repainting
~~- Floor needs to be sanded and refinished~~
- Light fitting needs to be replaced

Stairs and Landing:

~~- Holes in walls need filling and sanding~~
- Walls, ceiling and trim need to be repainted
- Carpet needs to be replaced so that it is not RED

Outhouse:

~~- Needs cleaning~~
- Shelving needs to be installed
~~- Padlock needs to be replaced~~

In Your Face 90's Door Decal

2011-12-04T12:26:00.001-08:00

We inherited this patterned glass door when we moved in to the house:

It reminded me of a boho bottle I got from Camden market in the late 90's. Not good.

It's taken me the 7 weeks we have lived here to realise that I could actually peel off the mock stained-glass design. That's a bit annoying really as every day it's made me want to cry a little bit and all of that heart ache could have been saved had I just looked at it a little closer.

Anyway this evening I peeled that mo fo off literally just using my fingernails. It went a litte something like this:

I was left with a lot of sticky residue from the self adhesive lead and sticky backed coloured plastic. So far I've used about a quarter of a bottle of nail polish remover, ruined our scourer from the kitchen and have only managed to remove the central flourish stickiness from both sides of the glass. I've yet to tackle the four corners, but I've developed a bit of a claw hand so it's going to have to wait for another time.

Not looking too bad though. I feel disproportionately happy about it.

More Floor

2011-11-28T06:01:00.001-08:00

So, we've had our floors sanded. It looks loads better. I mean LOADS.

We initially thought about hiring in a sander and doing the job ourselves. After a bit of research we figured out it would cost us about £50 a day to hire a sander, plus extras like the sanding discs and an edge sander to get to the skirting boards and in tricky places. Definitely within our budget.

Then we realised that a) we had zero free weekends between now and Christmas which would have meant taking time off work to do it, which neither of us could really afford to do and b) It is the WHOLE downstairs of our house. ie if we fucked it up, we would have fucked up the WHOLE downstairs of our house. Scary prospect.

So I went on to ratedpeople.com and put an ask out for someone to come and do the job. I got a response back from The Wood Flooring Company pretty much straight away, a husband and wife team based locally. They came round and quoted us £480 for the job. Our budget was £500 and they seemed really nice, had great feedback on ratedpeople.com and really knew what they were talking about when it came to wood floors.

Sold.

It took two and half days and a two man team to complete the floors. I'm SO GLAD we didn't attempt to do it ourselves. I can't imagine how long it would have taken two amateurs to get the job done in-between shouting at each other for accidentally sanding all the way through the floor or something.

The whole process wasn't really too inconvenient, the only thing that was a pain was that initially we had booked in the job to take place while we were away in London for a weekend, meaning we wouldn't have had much disruption, but sadly two of the employees were sick and couldn't make it so we had it done on the Mon-Wed and had to forgo any use of the downstairs of our house for a few days.

I was a bit worried about how much dust there would be, but it really wasn't that bad. We took some precautions and put up a drop-sheet in the kitchen doorway, chucked some bin bags over the cupboards in the living room and obviously moved all of the furniture out of the space and upstairs. After they were finished all that was really needed was a bit of a wipe over the exposed surfaces like the window sill and the fireplace. Not bad at all.

Anyway here are some pics...

The floor in all it's scratched dark browny-red glory:

...and here's how it looks now all of that has been scraped away and two layers of clear Wax Oil put in its place:

You can sort of see in the last picture that there are a few spots which are slightly darker on the new floor, there's a similar patch near the fire place. I had a mild panic attack thinking it was damp, but we were told this is basically the state of the floorboards depending on how much air has got to them over the past however many years and there's not really much you can do to cover it up. It's not too bad though and basically just adds a bit of character. Once all the furniture and rugs are in place I doubt we'll notice it.

If anything the nice new floor has emphasised just how much other stuff needs doing to the downstairs of our house. We can't wait to get painting and getting rid of the rest of the varnished wood that's clashing like a bastard with the exposed floor.

Sofa So Good

2011-11-15T13:34:00.000-08:00

We just bought a sofa.

Just like that.

Whilst Ben was watching the England game I was pootling about with a tape measure and some masking tape trying to see if the original sofa we were thinking of getting (Ikea's Karlstad) would fit our living room. It wouldn't. I'd neglected to notice that the bloody radiators, which are under the window and on the opposite wall, take away a good 20cm out of the room, meaning the Karlstad would have had to live partly on the fireplace.

We had a budget of about £900 for a new corner sofa, so knew that Ikea was pretty much our best bet. Yes CSL and the Furniture Village do lots of 0% APR/Buy Now Pay Later deals, but all of their sofas are rank. Unless you want a corduroy multicoloured monstrosity with integrated cup holder (which you might, but we didn't) then, on such a tight budget, there isn't really a lot of choice.

Enter Made.com. I've been checking their site on and off for a while now. They are a great little set up who employ designers and craftsmen to make furniture to order and cut out the middle man. They don't have a showroom or a warehouse or a real life shop, they just make furniture to order. So you get simple clean furniture with about a 70% discount on normal 'high street' prices.

Anyway, like I said, I'd been checking their site on and off for a while, but they only had one corner sofa and we didn't really like it that much. Until I checked today and they had this beauty available:

The Vittorio:

It's just really nice and dead simple. That's ALL we wanted! You'd think CSL and co would have cottoned on to this but apparently not. Or maybe that's the reason why they have to offer so many bloody deals...I don't know.

Anyway the Vittorio will fit our living room which is a start! It also has this really nice dimpling which I've seen on a few higher end sofas and really liked:

Obviously we've never sat on the thing, so that's a big risk, but then they do offer a 7 day no quibbles refund so that's good to know if we sit down and it feels like someone has stabbed us.

So we bit the bullet and plonked down £899 plus £55 delivery. There is a count down clock on the site which marks when the next batch is being made and it's at 5 days, so within the week our new sofa will be conceived. And within 14 weeks it will be born. Almost like a real baby, only comfier.

Floor update soon and also a massive rant about NPower and the nightmare of a broken down boiler now we are homeowners. Lucky you.

Bye Bye Boring Wallpaper!

2011-11-12T12:30:00.001-08:00

Today was the DIY day to end all DIY days. The reason behind this is a little thing called Madeline Hernandez. My mother. My mother who doesn't understand the meaning of the phrase "I'll do it tomorrow". So we did everything today.

Here's what we did:

- Cut down the rose bush and hydrangea bush in the front garden
- Planed down the garden gate
- Planed down the bathroom door
- Replaced every single missing light bulb in the whole bloody house
- Finally bought some wood worm treatment for the skirting boards
- Bought a blind for the bathroom
- Fixed the bathroom door handle
- Fixed the blind in the spare room
- Fixed the table in the dining room
- And last but not least, scraped away all of the boring wallpaper in the living room!

Ben did most of the scraping to be fair, but we are both so glad to see the back of the wallpaper of bore! Ok, so we have been left with a dark brown wall flanked by two gold walls (delicious) but we don't care! We can PAINT (soonish).

Here's what the wall looked like this morning (some of the wallpaper had already been ripped off by me the day we moved in, so we had a constant reminder that this job NEEDED doing asap):

My favourite part of the whole project was scoring the wallpaper. I can't believe we nearly didn't buy a wallpaper scorer! There is no way that the bitching paper would be off by now if we hadn't bought this baby:

It's a Stanley Maxi Orbital Wallpaper Scorer. To be honest I didn't really want to get it at first as I thought that over a tenner for a wallpaper scorer was a bit much, but it really did make the whole process a shed load easier.

It basically makes loads of little holes in the wallaper, without damaging the wall underneath. Then when you soak the walls, all of the wallpaper remover can seep through and losen the glue. It's especially good on the thicker, shiney wallpapers that are basically water resistant.

You can just about see the holes in the picture above...it basically looks like brail.

Anyway then we soaked the whole wall about 7000 times and finally the wallpaper-that-time-forgot started to lift and Ben got to work with his scraper, and an hour later he was allll done!

CAN I GET A WOOP WOOP?

Next stop FLOORS. We are having them sanded down this weekend . It feels very luxurious and also a bit like '60minute makeover'.

Bathroom Fun Times

2011-11-09T10:04:00.000-08:00

We F-I-N-A-L-L-Y managed to get started on some pretty basic DIY this weekend! It only took a month of owning a house to be able to bring out a paint brush. Le sigh. We've been so effing busy though that everything's been put on the backburner until now.

So on Sunday morning we whipped out the Crowne Kitchen & Bathroom paint and got cracking to attempt to turn our bathroom from 'We've been smoking a lot in here' to 'We are nice clean people'.

Here is Ben looking silly and painting the ceiling. He had to do it because his arms are stonger than mine and he is a real man:

And here is the delightful original wall colour (Note bin bags over the taps. Stay classy!):

It didn't really take very long to be honest but the wait for 4 hours between coats was a bit annoying. After we had done two coats we left it for the day and the next morning it was clear we would need a third coat.

Fun times!

So last night I got back into my painting clothes and blitzed the whole thing again in about two and a half hours. Thanks very much.

This is how it looks now sporting some white paint :

It feels LOADS cleaner in there now. I can't wait to start putting in the pretty things! We need a cabinet, a mirror, a blind and some art work up on the wall. Plus I've just popped to Next and used a birthday gift card to buy these shit hot Egyptian Cotton towels in Slate. NICE.

So there we have it for now.

Next up, stripping the wallpaper from around the fireplace in the living room. That's a job for when Mama Hernandez hits the mean streets of Manchester at the weekend!

Floored

2011-11-01T07:44:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have been pretty overwhelming but lots of fun. Aside from turning 30th and having a fun filled four days with family and friends, we have been to-ing and fro-ing from our old house to the new place with boot loads of...well...crap really. With the help of a generous friend and his van we managed to get the last bits of furniture over and last Monday night we slept in our new home for the very first time!

I'm so excited to get started on making the house our home, but there is so much to be done that I'm a little apprehensive. I think first things first is the way to tackle it.

We need to have the floors refinished. No matter what we do to the walls they won't look great until the floor is less scratched and beaten. I've been contacting a few local businesses to get some quotes and it's looking like a job that will cost around £500. We did think about hiring in a sander and doing it ourselves, but the problem we have is lack of time. We have no free weekends until 2012 or something. Also with such a large area of our home being the floors, if we mess it up (which is a large possibility) then we are going to have a big job to fix.

I've been looking around the internet to see what floor colours we could go for. So far this seems to be my favourite.

Basically as far away as humanly possible from this reddy-brown nightmare....

...not a brilliant picture, I've not taken any of the floor since we've moved in...but you get the problem.

Anyway, I think slicing up all of these crazy tasks into bite sized pieces is the way to go so that we don't have a joint nervous breakdown.

Fingers crossed.

A Big List

2011-10-13T08:55:00.000-07:00

We have a lot of plans for our new house. We want to take it from boring, uninspiring and bland to something fun and creative and relaxing. But to start with we have a long list of things that need doing before I can get excited about tables and pictures. Here goes:

Living Room:

- Wallpaper needs to come off from around the fireplace
- Damp proofing and re-plastering around the fireplace
- Floor needs sanding and re-finising to a lighter wood. At the moment it's a reddy brown and NOT GOOD.
- Walls and ceiling need to be repainted a non "We've been smoking in here" colour
- Ceiling coving needs re-glossing
- Curtain poles need to go up
- Blind and curtains need to go up at the window
- Holes left from previous owners need to be filled and sanded
- Hardware on cupboards needs replacing

Dining Room:

- Walls and ceiling need to be repainted
- Holes left from previous owners need to be filled and sanded
- Curtain poles need to go up
- Curtains need to go up
- Floor needs sanding and re-finishing
- Hardware on cupboards needs replacing

Kitchen:

- Cooker and Fridge need to be installed
- Vent needs to be sorted out as it's all wonky and strange
- Holes left from previous owners need to be filled and sanded
- Solid wood work surface need to be oiled and massive strange stain needs to be dealt with.
- Tiling behind work surface
- Walls need fresh coat of paint.

Bathroom:

- MASSIVE CLEAN
- Shower needs to be re-sealed and de-limescaled
- Tap on bath needs fixing
- Holes in the walls need filling and sanding
- Walls and ceiling need painting
- Need to find new toilet lid and currently there isn't one!

Bedroom 1:

- Holes in walls need filling and sanding
- Strange shelf on the chimney breast needs to come down
- Curtain poles and curtains need to go up
- Wallpaper needs to come down
- Walls and ceiling need to be repainted as does all the trim
- Hideous light fitting needs to be burnt

Bedroom 2:

- Blind needs to come down and replace by a non broken non blue one.
- Carpet either needs to be properly cleaned or replaced
- Holes in walls need filling and sanding
- Walls, ceiling and trim need to be painted
- Cupboards need to be repainted and hardware replaced

Hallway:

- Damproof course and replastering needed
- Walls, ceiling and trim need repainting
- Floor needs to be sanded and refinished
- Light fitting needs to be replaced

Stairs and Landing:

- Holes in walls need filling and sanding
- Walls, ceiling and trim need to be repainted
- Carpet needs to be replaced so that it is not RED

Outhouse:

- Needs cleaning
- Shelving needs to be installed
- Padlock needs to be replaced

Phew. I'm sure there is a LOT more where that came from, but those are just the basics!

We're IN!

2011-10-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

HOORAY!

Yesterday at about 4:45pm we finally had the keys to our very own house in our mits! It was very exciting and also very strange. Ben said he felt physically sick. We didn't say a word to each other on the way to the house from the estate agents. My brain was buzzing and I JUST WANTED TO GET THERE.

It's lovely. It's in a bit of a state at the moment, the vendors left in a hurry and clearly don't clean that often anyway so we have a bit of a job ahead of us. Nothing was a big surprise though so that was nice.

There are quite a few big holes in the walls where they have been pulled apart in the process of removing mirrors and wall fittings, but I don't think it's anything that some Poly Filler and a bit of patience can't sort out.

Another fun thing we discovered by accident is that the house has a panic button! It's a strange box in the main bedroom with a huge red button on the top. When you press it all hell breaks loose. The house alarms started blaring and we were frantically running around trying to find the scrap of paper that had the alarm code on!

Anyway, we are very happy and excited and probably a little nervous. I think we will get used to it though.

Almost Complete

2011-10-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

We complete on the house tomorrow.

I feel very excited but a bit sick.

Bargain Range

2011-10-07T08:14:00.000-07:00

In less aggressive news, we finally bought our new range cooker!

Very excited indeed!

It's all down to Mama Hernandez who kindly emailed a brilliant "10% off of Range style cookers at Currys" voucher code to us!

Here she is (the cooker not my mum):

I even included the nice beige looking man in the corner. He's right though, it was free next day delivery if we wanted it (we didn't, the vendors hate us enough without us sending a cooker round their house while they still live there) but we got free delivery none the less and it's arriving on the 16th of October. Rejoice!

It's the Kenwood CK404FS Dual Fuel Range Cooker at costs £599 without the voucher. Admittedly this is one of the cheaper range cookers on the market - they go right up to £2000 if you want something really swish...but because the most use it will get out of Ben and I on a regular basis will probably be oven chips and the odd roast dinner, we thought this bad boy would suffice. Plus at least we have heard of the brand before.

It's got two separate ovens unlike the cheaper version which is £499, that has one massive oven space and would probably take a month to heat up. I think it was worth an extra £100.

We also added on installation at £74.95 as we didn't want to blow ourselves up trying to install something involving gas. In fact, I think you might have to have things like this installed by a pro these days.

Anyway this was the discount...we ended up with a whopping £60 off!:

So if you put RANGE10 in the box when you are ordering it will knock 10% off of any range cooker in the Currys collection. The code is only available until the 12th of October so you might want to hurry up.

Nice Work Guys!

2011-10-07T07:53:00.000-07:00

Well...Phillip James Wilson Estate Agents and Virgin Media have a LOT of to answer for today! The fact that everyone is still alive after I was finished with them is a miracle.

Let me explain.

I thought I was being nice and organised by booking in our internet/TV/landline to be installed in the new house after we have moved in on the 12th October. I went ahead and booked everything in online to get hooked up at the end of October. Happy days, I thought. When I received an email from Virgin saying the current owners have an account with them and that there can't be two accounts at one address, I promptly called them, explaining we wouldnt be moving in until the 12th and by that point the current owners will have either moved their account or cancelled it. Done and sorted, Virgin said they would chase them up to make sure they did one or the other by the 12th. Thanks.

Then, yesterday evening, Ben received the RUDEST, most CAPITALISED email ever from our estate agent PJW to say the vendors have called to say their Virgin has been disconnected as YOU have informed Virgin that the property is empty. Erm, you what?

Er, we didn't. Where do you get off accusing us of something you have no idea is true or false? In what world could we get someone else's Virgin cut off without being the account holders?

A swift (and angry) call to Virgin revealed that they had indeed cut the vendors off but nobody knew why.

This morning a swift (and angry) visit revealed that Phillip James Wilson are a bunch of rude, retarded, dick heads without an ounce of common sense/decency between them. I went in and shit went down let me tell you. I made them call the vendors while I was there to make sure I could hear every word said between all the 'tards. Turns out a manager at Virgin had told the vendors I'd said the property was unoccupied. Again, big fat lie.

After pulling a semi automatic on their arses (I SO WISH) it was Virgins turn! FUN TIMES! They are investigating it for us. Whatevs! I left it with a nice man called Liam who is apparently calling the vendors to assure them it was nothing to with us and that the blame lies fully with Virgin Media.

I should probably be more angry with Virgin than I am with PJW, but their staff are so fucking rude and have been nothing but agressive and unhelpful since the moment we had our offer accepted on the house. I want them to go DOWN. Falsely accusing someone of something like this is pretty serious and I'm not taking it lightly. THEY WILL PAY.

Breathe.

Grown Ups

2011-10-02T12:28:00.000-07:00

We spent a sunny Saturday afternoon wondering around Comet and Currys along with all the other middle aged Mancunians looking for a fridge and a cooker. I genuinely thought it might be more fun.

It wasn't.

To add insult to injury I found out we couldn't get an American style side-by-side fridge freezer because there isn't enough room in our kitchen. :(

Seriously the world is SO unfair. I'm SO HARD DONE BY.

Oh, the roller coaster of buying a house.

We did pick out a couple of cookers we liked though. Basically the cheapest and the second cheapest. The vendors are taking their amazing range cooker with them (selfish) so we need to get another to fit the space it's leaving in the kitchen. It's a bit of a buggar as there is only two of us and we don't have much use for a massive cooker, but in a strange way I'm quite excited about it. I think it makes up for the sad loss of my dream massive American style fridge.

What can I say, I like over-sized white goods.

EXCHANGE!

2011-09-29T08:14:00.001-07:00

It happened! Hooray!

We now should have a house by the 12th of October! If we don't then we are in for some serious compensation so I'm not too worried!

WINNER!

Exchange?

2011-09-28T11:40:00.000-07:00

Right before we headed off on holiday we FINALLY agreed on an exchange and completion date with the vendors. Only took a MONTH!

The exchange date was the 28th of September. Oh, would you look at that? That's TODAY'S date! And did we exchange? NOPE! Ben and I got up at 6am after a 7 hour flight to drive 4 hours back to Manchester to get to the bank to send over our deposit ready for exchange.

Then we waited. Then we waited some more.

About 6 hours later our solicitor called to say it didn't happen. Someone along the line is playing silly buggers, we have no idea who or what but either way - no exchango.

Maybe tomorrow. Bite me vendors.

Wow...

2011-09-14T04:26:00.000-07:00

...buying a house really DOES make you feel like you are having a nervous breakdown. People are right.

Playing The Game

2011-09-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

I'm really, REALLY not enjoying this whole 'buying a house' process. I don't understand why it has to be so incredibly old fashioned. Why has conveyancing not dragged itself into 2011 yet? Why does it take people THREE WHOLE DAYS to answer an incredibly simple question?

We heard back from the vendors today. They still only want to pay half the money it is going to cost us to sort out the damp problem in the house. Co-incidentally their solicitor, who is clearly on smack, accidentally sent us some incredibly personal information on the vendors in a forwarded email. We now know they don't have their mortgage secured on the house they are buying and suddenly have allll the timmmmme in the worllllld. Which is funny because only three days ago they wanted to complete and be moved out this coming Friday. Funny indeed.

We have decided how we are going to proceed, but it's going to be long winded and boring. Luckily I'm going to document it ALL HERE.

I Spoke Too Soon

2011-09-06T15:44:00.000-07:00

I hate estate agents. Everyone hates estate agents. I also hate hormonal women who have no patience (I'm included in that sweeping generalisation) and pushy emails.

We've gone from hearing nothing to silly nagging emails about exchanging in 10 days time! 10 days! That seems so soon! Maybe we are just panicking because we are spending a hundred and twelve grand or something.

Still no Hause

2011-09-05T15:28:00.000-07:00

We've not heard anything from the solicitors, the estate agents or the hormonal vendor in a week now. I think we are both enjoying our time off from being grown ups. I also believe that neither of us want to be the one to call up and ask any questions for fear of what can of damp/electric/exchange date worms it may open.

Maybe we can just leave it to sort itself out. Or just leave it and forget any of it ever happened!

This is a story all about how our lives got flip turned upside down...

2011-08-26T03:53:00.000-07:00

...we'd like to take a minute just sit right there, to tell you how we became...first time buyers. (Crappest. Rap. EVAR)