Tag Archive | Flat

1 year on – New Kitchen Floor!!

Jan14

Poor blog I have neglected you for far too long! I can’t believe I have had this lovely little flat for a whole year now! In honour of this anniversary I finally have a new kitchen floor!

Here is the old floor:


Not a bad floor, but ever since I moved in I really wanted to brighten up the kitchen as the wood effect floor made it all look a little bit too dark. So my dad is rather gifted in the art of DIY and dedicated a weekend to transforming the kitchen floor.

Of course the kitchen was exactly like the rest of the flat:


Multiple floors under the existing floor! Every room in this flat seemed to have three others underneath it.


Ta-Da!!! So much brighter! A very much appreciated first flat anniversary present! Thanks Dad 🙂

Day 6 – Banned

Jan26

The flat is being glossed today so I was not allowed in through fear of sticking to a newly glossed door or smudging a painted skirting board. The decorators banned me which is pretty much fair game as I am incredibly prone to falling over my own feet and genuinely cannot be trusted. That’s ok though because I had a very successful trip to IKEA and the Range in Reading instead. I demonstrated the exact reason why I was banned when we went to IKEA and mother trod on the back of my shoe and I stacked it going up the escalator. It is a good thing I am used to these moments.

I did pop back to the flat afterwards though as I bought a doormat. So under the pretence of “dropping off the new doormat” I snuck to the flat. Anyone who knows me personally will know that I am a bit of a hedgehog. Prickly on the outside (in personality, not physical appearance thank you very much), prone to frequent hibernation and runs away to curl up into a small spiky ball when scared. However once you get past that grumpy spiky appearance (or I have had a cup of coffee / it is past 8am in the morning) I am the craziest but friendliest person you will ever meet.

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Got this little creation from the Range. So if you ever come to visit me you’ll know I’m the flat with the bonkers doormat. Dad hates it though so I have been warned there is a very high chance of a little bit of paint falling its way onto it. He wouldn’t dare I’m sure…

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Day 5 -A Hole in the Ceiling

Jan25

Rather mixed day today. The painting is done and looks fabulous. Turns out I underestimated the amount of paint needed by about 10 litres resulting in a dash to B&Q early this morning. I’m really happy with my plum feature wall and now I can see the living room nearly done I’m definitely happy with yesterday’s choice of carpet. However there is a small issue of a hole in the ceiling. There was what looked like an old water stain on the ceiling in the bedroom upstairs and when we rolled the new paint on it has dampened and weakened a rather awful attempt of a repair. Luckily we have tested it for damp and there was no moisture reading so the ceiling is completely dry and obviously just old which is good, just a shame that I now have a hole in my newly painted ceiling! Seems like we will be sending dad up into the rafters later on this week strengthen and replace the shoddy work previously done. I’m contemplating sending him up with a load of loft insulation while he’s up there and he can distribute it out like a little rodent. Anything to reduce the electric bill right?

However in better news the plum wall is done and I love it!

Tomorrow is glossing day so I am sadly banned from the flat until at least 5pm in order to let it all dry. I don’t appear to be trusted not to stick to a door or smudge a skirting board. Even the painters know my clumsiness well it seems!

Day 3 – Paint

Jan24

We have paint on walls! Not finished yet but it is definitely a start. Base coats are more or less on and some rooms are looking nearly finished! However I’m assured we are no where near finished but to me it’s looking pretty good already. The kids wallpaper is definitely gone in the second bedroom and where the feature wall was in the living room has been filled and is now looking a lot better.

Currently having the big debate which colour carpet to have. I know I want a fairly neutral tone so that I can choose to redecorate in the future without having to turf my carpet up! I know I am an indecisive human being but this is taking the biscuit.

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The White Mist I chose for the walls has a grey tone to it rather than a peachy or beige tone so I am leaning more to the grey end of the spectrum to compliment it. I have never had to choose a carpet before so I have no idea what angle to tackle this from but I am rather tempted by stripey carpet up the stairs!

Day 2 – More Destruction

Jan23

Due to a lack of internet Day 2 is actually being posted on day three. Day number 2 and my lovely little flat is even more destroyed! However I am sure the end result will be 100% worth it! Thanks to the lovely Chris and Victor the ceilings are now nearly all painted. My lovely brother visited today and chipped in by removing the carpet from the stairs so now all the carpet is gone. I spent the day helping remove laminate flooring which we had finished turfing up and scraping an underlay off the floor so I guess you could say I was helping! We decided to put my car into the garage (I have a garage!) to make some more space to park the van. Turns out I have a garage which is too small to fit my car in! My car is a tiny little Vauxhall Adam so I didn’t think I’d have a problem, I just assumed the garage would be big enough. When I went to view the flat I never thought of asking to test the garage to see if the car would fit! Lesson’s learnt I guess. However on the flip side we have discovered that there is a pizza place a 3 minute walk away which makes amazing pizza! You win some and you loose some!

So still not much change apart from the fact we have even less flooring and slightly more painted ceilings! The walls have all been filled and rubbed down so when the paint goes on it should look pretty perfect! Only a few more days until we should start seeing results 🙂

Day 1 – Destruction

Jan21

I have had the keys for 24 hours now and the first full day of work is done! We have had a very productive day of filling, destroying a laminate floor and removing a carpet!

Click here to see what it looked like only 24 hours ago!

Little bit of destruction happening here huh?

All will be worth it in the long run! We were a little bit confused as to why the laminate floor in the lounge felt a bit squishy and it turns out there was a whole layer of carpet under there! I quite enjoyed turfing up the laminate floor and scraping the underlay off of the floor, I may be banned from actually constructing or painting anything but I can destroy well!

Shall see what day 2 brings tomorrow! However as it is a Sunday I think it will be quite a quiet one, don’t want to irritate the neighbors too much after the noise and chaos we have created today!

Emergency Little Kettle

Jan21

Being English we are a stereotypical family of tea drinkers. Love the stuff. Yorkshire Tea especially along with Twinings Fruit Infusions, Chamomile and Earl Grey.

We are currently at the new flat. There’s lots of work being done by my dad and the decorator who is called Chris. Dad warned Chris not to let me near a paint pot or any filler so I have been relegated to the very important role of “Tea Maker”. I do make a good cup of tea! Before my first visit to the flat yesterday I bought tea, coffee, hot chocolate and milk. I offered my dad a cup of tea before realising I hadn’t moved any mugs in yet! So there was no tea for dad that night.

However this morning I was prepared for my job as Tea Maker. To avoid going through all of my stuff to find some mugs I borrowed some from the parents and took them to the flat. I offered Dad and Chris a cup of coffee and went to the kitchen to make it. I got the mugs out and went to boil the kettle. It then dawned on me that there was no kettle. Having failed at my job for the second time in two days I snuck over to the petrol station across the road and got two lattes. A small thing like a lack of kettle will not stop me from fulfilling my job as Tea Maker. However as I was not actually making tea I should probably rename my job to “Beverage Maker”. Actually I did not make the coffee either due to lack of kettle so I think in fact it should be “Beverage Provider”.

Anyway, I knew in order to fulfill my job I needed to acquire a kettle. I have a lovely little purple kettle waiting to be moved in but this is all packed and I am rather reluctant to unpack anything due to the amount of dust that is currently being generated by the knocking down of a piece of wall and lots of filling of the walls. So I went on a little trip to the shops to locate a cheap kettle. I went into Argos, filtered their Kettles by price and this little beauty popped up:

“Simple value cordless white kettle” which cost me the pricey sum of £5.49. I was a little bit concerned that there was no plug on the kettle so resorted to unpacking it in the middle of the town centre just to check. Turns out that when they say “cordless” they mean the actual kettle, not the electric bit it sits on and there is infact a plug! Who knew?! 

It looks and feels exactly like what you would find in a budget hotel room and is absolutely perfect for an emergency little kettle. Tea making can commence!! As long as you don’t mind waiting 10 mins for the little kettle to boil I’ll make you a lovely cuppa in exchange for you dragging all the laminate flooring we’ve turfed up down the stairs!

Nearly forgot, look at the instruction manual!


Made that very clear didn’t they! Good old Argos…. 

SOLD

Jan21

I got the keys and went to the flat for the first time last night! Couldn’t go over until the evening but when I got there was presently surprised as I was expecting to find it really creepy with no furniture in it but it didn’t actually look that cold or creepy. My “SOLD subject to contract” sign was still there marking my territory 😀

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Thought I’d take some photos so I can compare how it looked when I moved in to how it looks when I’ve made it my own.

So it has been left pretty blank for me to do what I want with, got the decorators coming round today and the next couple of days to put that lovely White Mist paint on the walls and redo the ceilings so they are not as shiny. Also very tempted to get a carpet laid in the living room but I think that might be a bit of a stretch to the budget! We shall see 🙂

Can’t wait to be able to move in all the furniture and for it to start looking like home. I timed my commute home from work at it 10 mins! Currently thinking of all the extra sleep I’m going to get…

I’m off to go paint a wall, thank you for reading my blog and feel free to come grab a paint brush!

Moving Day Eve

Jan19

18 Days with no post is definitely not good, but it’s all for a good cause! I’ve been a very busy bee packing up my entire 24 year existence to move to my new flat! After collecting the keys tomorrow I will officially own my very own little bit of the world! Little bit excitable, can’t lie! I think I’m going to be spending the day tomorrow staring at my phone waiting for the phone call to tell me that the keys have arrived and generally being very over excitable and hyperactive. I apologise in advance to anyone who may cross paths with me tomorrow and I promise to do my best not to suffocate you with my excitable mood. Unless of course you are the horribly rude delivery driver who has delivered to me two days in a row with the most awful attitude I’ve ever met in any human being. The first time I gave you the benefit of the doubt but today sir you took liberties and as a result I will suffocate you, not with my happiness however, but with something else which I cannot actually think of right now as I am not naturally the violent type. But trust me sir if I see you again you will not win this time!

Aplologies I have digressed a little, or a lot. Back to the main purpose of this post: Look how not-so-shoddy my packing is!!

Proud to say I have picked paint!

I had no idea how difficult it would be to pick a paint colour. I spent a whole evening sat on the floor surrounded by colour cards and paint brochures completely unable to make up my mind which shade of white I wanted. I thought there was just White but it turns out white has it’s own colour spectrum. Why did no one ever tell me this? Don’t even talk to me about the Magnolias and the Creams, the choices just went on and on. This colour is going to be layered all over the walls of my lovely little home for the foreseeable future (or at least until I can afford to paint over it, and I’d rather spend that money on wine!) so it has to be done right first time!

So, drum roll please…

White Mist! Not too yellow, not too grey, no orange tinge and it’s not just plain white! Fingers crossed it was the right decision, I am happy with it but I know things look different when it is all over the wall.

I also knew I wanted a feature wall to brighten up the living room but this was an easy choice. Sumptuous Plum was the colour chosen for the feature wall back at my parents when I lived there and it is such a lovely colour that I had no trouble choosing this shade of purple for the feature wall. I am a little worried about putting a darker colour on the walls through fear of making the room look smaller but there is currently a dark colour on it already and I don’t think it looks small so we shall see.

Decided the easiest way to ensure I have everything is to make a list. I do like my lists, second only to a spider diagram. Luckily my flat comes with a lot of the essential bits that would have been most costly to buy. After tomorrow I will be the proud owner of a fridge, freezer, oven, hob and washing machine. Definitely adulting a lot more than I feel capable of adulting.

I think I have most of the essentials (I’ve even got a hoover!) but I know I’ve probably missed something… pasted my list below and if you find the thing that I’ve missed then I owe you a drink! Oh I am missing an iron and ironing board but do people actually iron?

Kitchen

  • Toaster (Purple of course)
  • Kettle (Purple, I’ve always wanted a matching kettle and toaster!)
  • Microwave ( Thank You Boxing Day Sales!)
  • Crockery (Thank You Santa)
  • Cutlery (Also Thank You to Santa)
  • Oven Gloves (Gifted from my Flatmate!)
  • Kitchen Stuff (If anyone knows what you call this stuff please let me know, we are talking Ladle, Potato Masher, Can Opener, Spatula that sort of thing – From the lovely Robert Dyas)
  • Spirilizer (Not needed I know… but I have sliced my fingers so many times using the old one from Amazon that I treated myself in the January Sales to an electric vegetable spirilizer…)
  • Blender
  • Saucepans
  • Wok
  • Glasses (I’ve gone a bit overboard here… Red Wine, White Wine, Champagne Flutes, Big Glasses, Little Glasses, Jack Daniels Glasses…)
  • Chopping Board
  • Knives and Knife Block (Multicoloured from ProCook)

So based on this list I believe I need to hunt down Tea Towels, A Bin and a Clock which is not too bad!

Living Room

  • Sofa (With the Flat)
  • TV
  • Dining Table and Chairs (GumTree Bargain!)
  • Brunch the Hamster who will of course be coming with me ❤

Just gotta hunt down a coffee table

Bedrooms

  • Bed & Mattresses x2
  • Wardrobes and Storage x2
  • Bedside Tables x2

Bathrooms

  • Are pretty much ok!

 

So thank you for reading my post on the eve of moving day! If anyone has any advice please throw it my way. I currently have a massive collection of butterflies in my stomach as the reality is sinking in but the massive sense of achievement that I have finally made it onto the property ladder after 8 years of saving is literally the best feeling ever.

Homeless: 250 Ducks

Nov9

When I moved into my lovely little old flat 15 months ago we inherited a rather large built in display cabinet. Neither of us had much of value to put in it and so it was decided that the Ducks could move in. 


The Ducks were lovingly arranged into the cabinet by my flatmate Ellie, they have been a lovely central point to our living room ever since and earned our flat the title of “The Duck Residency”.

It has suddenly dawned on me that I do not have a big display cabinet in my new flat. Where will the Ducks live? 😦