Any old iron?

I had my first trip to a scrap yard this week!  I took along all the old copper pipe, lead and electricity cables we stripped out of the house and came home with £140!!!

The taper is starting this week and I spent a couple of days this week making a frame inside the fireplace and putting on the insulation and plasterboard.  I did have Michael helping me with the frame but I'm pretty pleased with my plasterboarding!

My scrap

Tiles for the en-suite 

My fireplace in the dining room

A different view!

Busy, busy!

We have had a busy weekend at the house!  Graham (brother-in-law and plumber, thank you!) has plumbed in our bath and shower tray so they are now ready to be tiled.  I have ordered lovely brick tiles; white for the bathroom and a blue crackle glaze for the en-suite.  They should arrive tomorrow - need to find a tiler now!  I have also ordered lovely seaside fabric to make a shower curtain for the bathroom.

Michael, our dads and myself had an early start on Sunday morning!  The 3 men put up the last pieces of plasterboard on the ceiling and I spent the day pushing in nails in the new wood paneling and sanding down the existing paneling ready for painting.  It was such a beautiful day again and we had our picnic outside in the garden!

Ross came round with the building warrant plans, they have been submitted and hopefully we will hear fairly soon about them.

The plasterer paid us a visit to discuss his work.  He is going to skim our only existing ceiling to preserve our ceiling rose and patch it in at the sides so we can put up new coving.  He's also going to start plastering the rest of the house in a couple of weeks.  Very exciting as we can get going with painting!

It's getting to the stage where I can think about all the nice things like colours and fabrics!  With the boys back to school today I am sitting today picking paint colours and looking for coving and skirtings.  I've also to contact the electrician as we are now ready for him to put in all the sockets and fix up the fuse box.  Once I've ticked those things off my list I can get back to making my blinds and re-covering my Gumtree chairs!

I'm liking my new taps on the bath!

Roomy shower tray!

The door we did not realise had glass will go on the opening to the en-suite

Plasterboard all done on the ceiling in the living room

Plasterboard all done on the ceiling in the dining room

What a difference a week makes!

We had a really busy week during the first week of the Easter holidays.  Thank you to all our parents who helped put up plasterboard, tidy, make food and look after 2 small boys!  We also had our friend Andy in to  fix in the windows and put the shutters back.  He has made a great job - they are looking fab- and they work!

Non working shutters in bedroom

Wood cladding in boys bedroom.  It will be painted so won't look like a sauna for long!

Living room with working shutters.  

Dining room with working shutters.  There is a fireplace hiding under the
plasterboard!  We will open it back up.

View from the dining room to the living room

I am going back up this week with my dad to take more wood paneling to be dipped and take lots more rubbish to the tip.  The building warrant application is now ready so things are progressing with the extension too!

Plans submitted

Our plans have now been submitted for the new extension.  Our lovely new neighbour, Ross, completed the plans the other week and are now available online.  http://public.moray.gov.uk/eplanning/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=M1MU1IBGAK000
Hopefully it won't be too long before they're passed!  Photos of the work done this week will follow in the next few days, got to tackle the washing and putting away first!

Auctions

A couple more bids on items in the auction today!  Check out BBC 2's Antiques Road Trip on iplayer.  Today's episode (March 20th) started in Cullen and ended in John Milne Auction Rooms in Aberdeen!  The cottage we are renting in the Easter holidays appears when the presenters are driving away from the beach!

Up-cycling!

This weather has been great!  I've had some of my furniture out in the garden being power-washed, sanded and painted.  I'm very pleased with the paint results using my new paint spray machine.   Glad I was outside, even with a large plastic sheet the grass is still white!  I've a chest of drawers and a chair sanded ready to paint too.  Back to work tomorrow so I won't get much more done this week.

Shabby wicker chairs from the auction

Now Shabby Chic!

Forgot to take a before photo but it was pine.  Do you recognise it Louise?!

Busy weekend!

Just spent 2 days at Cullen working on the house, having a few drinks and good food to celebrate our 14th anniversary!  I had the best steak I've had in a long time and Michael had 2 huge pieces of fish at The Crannoch.  We stayed there too and had a very friendly welcome from the proprietor.  http://www.crannochhotel.co.uk/

It was a weekend of finishing off lots of jobs that had been left.  The insulation is finally finished downstairs and I have nearly finished attaching the wood panels in the front hallway.  We also started putting on some plasterboard here.  The hallway was maybe not the best place to start as it has lots of fiddly bits!

Michael framed and plasterboarded the new velux in the en-suite.  He also made a frame for the sink unit in the en-suite and installed the fireplace in the boys bedroom.  Remember how it looked before we stripped all the old brown paint off?!  (Bits and Bobs 5th September post).  It looks great and will look even better when we get the wood cladding on.  I spent most of today with my heat gun again.  I am slowly stripping off the layers of paint on the staircase.  I'm going back again tomorrow to try to get more done.

Our dad's had another trip with rubbish and collected more doors from the dippers.  Just when we thought the house had no more surprises we found another one.  A door that we thought was wallpapered was actually glass panels!  I cannot believe we didn't break the glass throwing the doors into the trailer!  It looks lovely and I think we will use it for the en-suite.

Our architect and neighbour, Ross is starting to measure up for our kitchen extension plans this week so things are starting to get moving there too, yay!

Fireplace in boys bedroom

Bath ready to be installed

Newly framed velux and frame for sink 

Shower tray ready to be installed

The wood panels and first sheets of plasterboard

The glass paneled door!

My £10 pine kist dipped and smelling much fresher!