Clare and Will's Wedding

Spent the weekend in the beautiful surroundings of the northern coast of Northern Ireland for the wedding of the lovely Firepoise and her musician man. And while it was raining in the rest of UK, in Northern Ireland it was sunny and clear and the happy couple had a stunning wedding-come-handfasting ceremony in front of a waterfall. 

Thank you for having us Clare and Will ... Big love to you both :)

Back Lounge Part 9

And the first coat of paint went on this evening ... wooooo its so light in there!

Back Lounge Part 8

What an intense weekend ... after much pasting, wallpapering, cutting, sawing, hammering, nailing etc ... we now have tidy walls and a new floor :) 

Back Lounge Part 7

On the left, as of this morning, on the right, as of this evening ... So much happened today including more sanding and filling; clearing out underfloor; insulating plumbing pipes; netting; insulating; semi-permeable membrane covered; and even laying a few of our new floor boards down to see what they look like ... Kudos to Sunshine as I think he suddenly got his go on ... I was WELL impressed by how much he got done ... the process is pretty much the same as in our front lounge so I haven't really documented it here ... woo ... home stretch now ...

Sunshine is back at work for the next couple of days so the plan is to nail the new floors down over this coming weekend ... hopefully the new raditor arrives in time too.

Back Lounge Part 6

Today the plumbing happened ... we decided that we wanted a short fat radiator on the back wall (to the left of Ted) rather than a long one on the long wall (you can see on the wall where we have removed the old radiator brackets ... (hoping we can neatly patch up the lining paper rectangles ...).

Our friend Ted came round to help (he's just quite good with pipes...) while I kept on doing the filling and sanding, filling and sanding, filling and sanding on the wall where we have taken the lining paper off ... that wall is SO neverending ...

Back Lounge Part 5

Today started out a bit frustratingly for Sunshine ... he was a bit slow yesterday as his ankle hurt. This morning he woke up and could barely stand on it his achilles tendon hurt so much. So, up until noon he was in bed while I went off to do food, ice-pack, ankle support and pain-killer shopping. By the afternoon he had managed to give it a bit of a stretch and was determined to get on with the main gist of this back lounge project, which is to pull up the floor boards ...ankle all strapped up, he went for it all by himself .... and by dinner time he had done the lot ...

Passing them to me while I stood outside meticulously banging out every single rusty nail ...

Back Lounge Part 4

Another slow day spent out in the shops sourcing things, trying to get Sunshine some new clothes and his sister a birthday present, and then visiting our favourite kite historian to see what tools he had in his garage that we could borrow ...

Then it was back home to fill and sand, fill and sand, fill and sand ... man are we bored of this wall now ...

Early evening with dinner at Sunshine's parents ...

Back Lounge Part 3

Although it feels like we skipped yesterday ... we didn't. We were just a bit slow going and spent the day running between stores trying to source materials, and in the afternoon doing more peeling back and dust making ... today though, on to filling and plastering! Look at all the different fillers and plasters for all the different holes we need to fill ...


And in other news, we went round the corner to our friends' David and Jodie who are also doing up their house, and Sunshine helped them pull down one of their old iron (?) gutter pipes; in exchange for David (in the green t-shirt) then coming round to us with his plastering tools and helping us do some fantastic plastering ... I mean, just look at those holes that used to be in the fireplace ... all filled in now ... I was so mesmerised by the speed and grace a which David filled them that I completely forgot to take pictures of him at ours ... oops!

Back Lounge Part 2

Today was mostly Sunshine in the room generating lots of dust and rubble recessing plug sockets, switches, wires and breaking up the ex-(concrete) fire place hearth ... while I stayed a good distance away, making sure my man was fed and watered, and coming in occasionally to take photos and come and tidy up ...

Back Lounge Part 1

So, we have been mostly DIY-free since the back bedroom last Christmas ... but its Easter and Sunshine has time off work so we've dived into the next project ... the Back Lounge! In most people's homes this is the dining room - but we prefer to dine in our kitchen so this is going to be our lounge as its nice and sunny (south-facing) and opens out into the back garden. Here it is all cleared out ... we are replacing these floor boards (and possibly selling them in the process) so I thought I'd better take some photos in situ before we pull them out ...


We hadn't planned to do anything with the walls apart from paint them ... they are FLAT! No textured walpaper like the upstairs rooms! BUT ... when we looked closely, we found that one corner looked like it could do with some replastering and levelling. I think it had had some kind of damp damage in the past which made the paint start peeling and leave lumpy marks behind the paper ...


So this is end of day one .... we ended up pulling off the paper from the old fireplace - its really uneven; and on the other side the long radiator has been taken off and a new one ordered ...

Guests

What do you do when you have visitors ...

... get them to help you move furniture! Thank you miss JPY ...

Floors! Floooooors ...!

They have arrived ... :)