Our First Flat

New carpet and the world BIGGEST wardrobe

Well the time has come at last for the new carpet to be fitted - after almost a year of having bare floorboards in both bedrooms (slippers a must!) we ordered a new carpet from the nice people at Carpet Right and had it fitted it this week. Since Henry is off on 2 weeks holiday from work, we had the time we needed to move all the furniture out (it got spread between the garden, garage and round the rest of the house). Thankfully the weather stayed nice for a short period of time, so the matress being in the garden didn't matter too much.

It took us 2 days to move the furniture in and out, and all of about 1 hour for the carpet fitters to weave their magic. Still, it was worth all the work in the end - the carpet looks great, particularly in the master bedroom, and there were enough off-cuts left over that we could (temporarily) lay some down in the hallway until we get that done.

One consequence of moving all the furniture round was that Sara's wardrobe finally needed replacing. The bottom legs broke off when we remove the carpet originally, and when we emptied it to move it we realised just how bad shape it was in. So a trip to Ikea was needed (including a tedious hour waiting at their new large-furniture collection centre) and we ended up with the bigger wardrobe you've ever seem - over 2.3 metres tall. Honestly, you can see how big it is in the photos below, but if we ever need anything off the top shelf I think we'll have to get a ladder in!

Absolutely A-door-able

Having had a lot of success with the new bathroom door, we decided to push our luck and see if we could repeat it with a new door in the lounge. We plan to eventually replace all the doors, but considering the bedroom doors and the kitchen one will all get replaced when their respective rooms get completed (i.e. new carpet) we thought that the lounge would be a good one to begin with.

It wasn't quite as easy as the bathroom door - as with everything in our house, the frame seemed to have been put on by a blind man - literally every side was wonky, so we had to plane it quite a bit. But after the effort Henry put in cutting the last door down to size, we decided to buy a better (plugged) Jigsaw for this one, which made the whole excersise a lot easier!

Small room, to(i)let

For a small room this is going to be a BIG update! At long last (especially in Sara's opinion!) we got round to starting the mammoth task of re-doing the bathroom this weekend, with the daunting yet satisfying task of replacing the crap ('scuse the pun) old toilet with a sparkling new B&Q loo. The photos below tell the majority of the story, though the highlights were:

• Once we got the old toilet off we realised we would have to put a floor down too, so we opted for a laminate floor (again from B&Q)
• The pipe Henry bought to connect the water pipe to the cistern inlet wasn't quite long enough, and because it was a Sunday we ran out of time and had to run the hose through the cat flap for the night (you flush the loo, you fill it up with the hose)
• Since the laminate would be a lot higher than the original floor, we would have had to plane the old door down, so we took this opportunity to rehang a brand new door, and we made it open outwards to boot (in order to fit in a new sink - eventually - in the toilet)

All in all it was a fairly successful weekend, and hopefully nothing will go wrong from here on in - if all this works out fine, the next stop is the new shower!!

 

The new sofas arrive at last!

Being the first day that the builders weren't coming for over a week, we thought we might get a lie-in today. But alas that wasn't the case, as the men came to deliver the sofas at possibly the earliest time they could have - just after nine o'clock. This was quite good though really, since it meant Henry could make a doctors appointment and then we had the rest of the day to relax.

We're very pleased with the sofas themselves, they weren't very expensive and it's just as well since they've quickly been covered up with throws to protect them from the kittens!

Almost finished now... well, this room at least!

We awoke on Monday morning to find that in a couple of patches where we'd painted over Damp-proof paint - only on the walls where the stupid old tenant had papered over plaster - had peeled off. So we decided to do the sensible thing and actually peel off what we could and fill it properly with filler.

We also touched up a few areas that we'd missed, and then set about the mammoth task of getting the room back in to shape again. The first thing to do was put together the new desk we'd bought (smaller, but more storage area) - we managed it in 45 minutes, almost HALF the time the instructions recommend. RESULT!

The next morning before work Henry put the computer back together and moved the Sofabed back in to place.

eBay fun with furniture

Having been looking around for sideboards and garden furniture in all the traditional places, but to no avail, Henry made the big mistake of introducing Sara to the delights of eBay. 10 minutes later and Sara had bought a sideboard. 3 days later and we'd apologised to the seller for cancelling our bid (Henry didn't like said sideboard) and bought a different one. We also bought a nice set of garden furniture, and both were at bargain basement prices.

The garden furniture arrived first, and there was almost no putting together necessary - the kind of furniture we like! However, the sideboard was flat-packed so Henry set about putting it all together - not once, but twice! The problem was that Henry stupidly put it together so that a certain part was in the wrong position - have a look at the photos below and see if you can spot the different. Answers on a postcard to the usual address...

Once the sideboard was in place we decided the room needed a bit more light, so Sara went shopping and came back with two brilliant new lamps - and very achey arms. We think you'll agree they look pretty nice - the lamps I mean, not the achey arms. And even if you don't like them - tough, we're keeping them.

To lounge or not to lounge...

Following our decision to have a completely sober January, along with our exciting new-year diet of Slim Fast and home-made soup, we have found ourselves in need of distraction, especially at the weekends. So, with a whole weekend free we decided that now was the best time to tackle the lounge.

First we cleaned the walls and ceilings - not very well mind you, because we both got bored of that job. No obvious results you see - very boring! So we fast-forwarded that bit and proceeded to paint the walls, ceilings and doors instead. After a couple of coats the room looked completely different, and we decided that in order to complete the transformation we needed a few more bits of furtniture. So, in classic fashion we got in the car and drove to the London Ikea.

4 hours later we were home again, and had gained a TV cabinet, a book-shelf, another DVD tower and lots of knick-knacks, like new duvet covers etc. This was all courtesy of various Christmas monetary presents, so thanks to all who contributed for that! After we put all that together, we were both knackered, but satisfied that the lounge was looking pretty good.

The Cryin', The Titch and the Wardrobes...

Yesterday we finally found some floor laminates we were happy with, and we bought 20m²-worth of it (with underlay) from Floors-2-go. We would have liked to have bought real wooden floor boards, but the two main problems with this were the cost (we're rapidly running out of money!) and the fact that they would have made the floor (in an already low room) even higher.

Today we bought two new wardrobes from B&Q, so we can finally get rid of the crappy old built-in one that's taking up loads of room in the spare bedroom. Henry assembled them while Sara marked some mock exams, and it all went relatively smoothly - though the lack of a long-screwdriver in Henry's rapidly-growing tool collection did require a last-minute run to Wickes. We also bought some nice looking no-more-damp paint for the bedroom, and a stupid Humidifier too - we meant to get a DEHUMIDIFIER, but didn't look cloesly enough at the box - either that or we went for the cheapest one, you decide!!