Fatherhood² | Henry's Blog » Our First Flat

Fatherhood²: Home DIY kitchen WIN!

Henry Elliss — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 21:08:37 +0000

Long ago, before I turned by blogging efforts towards the subject of fatherhood, I had a number of other blogs – most of which can be viewed in the categories to the left, if you’re interested. One of them, entitled “Our First Flat”, was a chronicle of the efforts we made on our house when we first moved in – decoration, DIY, building and the like.

We kept it up for a good few years – until summer 2008, coincidentally when Robert was born! We’ve done a few big jobs since then, including replacing our kitchen (on our own, in the most part!) and of course a selection of child-related projects. But the one we’ve just completed seemed worth a post, since we’re so proud of it.

If you ever read our old blog, you’ll know that the woman who lived in our house before we bought it was a BIG fan of bodge-jobs and half-arsed solutions. If there was a choice between properly fixing something or bodging it, she’d invariably opt for the latter, making out life difficult years later on a number of occassions.

Ever since we moved in, we were curious about a small patch of badly-covered wall in our kitchen, under the stairs. It looked like somebody had drilled a small hole to look behind the wall, then covered it over again. So, our curiosity eventually got the better of us, and we did this to it:

After further exploration, we discovered that there is a cupboard (of sorts) under there, which had at one point been used (though was in a very bad state) and then at a later date covered over – though once again in bodge fashion, with plasterboard laid right over the door! Here’s what it looked like when we got it open:

That was about 4 months ago. Finally, with Freddie having arrived and the house becoming increasingly messy, we decided to get the space sorted. We got some builders in to do the plastering/finishing, and I spent the past few weekends laying laminate flooring and painting the walls. Below is the (almost) finished product – a nice usable space which now houses a new freezer, our microwave and some very useful storage space! What do you think?

The final carpet arrives

Henry Elliss — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:02:30 +0000

With the arrival of our first baby imminent, Sara finally decided she could cope with the bare floorboards no longer and ordered some carpet for the hallway. The carpet fitters, seeing her condition, promised they would try to get it fitted before baby’s arrival date of the 26th of June. As you can see from the shots below, they did this – well, sort of! They delivered and fitted the carpet on June 19th, but as some of you will know, the baby decided to make his way in to the world on June 14th! So it was quite hectic in our house on that day, as you can imagine. The finished result looks pretty good though, don’t you think? And it’s certainly a lot nicer to walk on, which is handy for all the walks up and down the stairs to change baby’s nappy!

Summer tidy-up – Garden and Garage

Henry Elliss — Sat, 31 May 2008 20:21:48 +0000

Since the baby is due any day now (well, in the next 4-6 weeks anyway) we thought it would be a good idea to make a little more space in the garage – you never know when another kind relative will drop off a spare cot or moses basket! So Henry set to work cleaning up the garage, and a heavily-pregnant Sara decided that the garden needed weeding. We followed a day of hard work with the first barbecue of the season – WAY later than last year’s first BBQ (April I believe) but hopefully the first of many to come…

Finishing off the loo

Henry Elliss — Sun, 18 May 2008 19:55:00 +0000

We finally got round to putting the finishing touches to the lavatory this weekend. Having sanded all the rough plaster last weekend, we were able to paint the end of the room that was once hidden by the crappy cupboard the previous occupent had bodged. Once that was done, all that remained was the skirting board and beading (why do they call it beading?!). As you can see from the photos below, we managed to do a reasonable job of it and the bathroom finally looks presentable.

Tearing the floor up at New Year

Henry Elliss — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 17:42:52 +0000

Having got back from a busy Christmas all over the country, Sara decided to take some initiative and rip up the kitchen floor! Parts of it have been peeling up intermitently for a while, but after we left the fridge defrosting while we were away a lot more of it had come up. So we both got down and dirty and ripped the rest of the (disgusting) old parke flooring up – parke flooring which had been glued to the old vinyl and then glued to the floor. Needless to say it was quite hard to get off…!

Then, today we finally got round to putting up the first of three bannisters that we need (both for fire regulations and pregnant ladies!!) on the stairs – we decided to do the main stairs first (the small stairs and the front steps both need bannisters as well!) and it worked out okay, as you can see below.

A (still) unfinished job

Henry Elliss — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:20:00 +0000

This is a bit of a work-in-progress job – sorting out the part of the toilet room that was previously behind a cupboard. Sadly, the previous owners decided not to bother plastering it properly when they installed the new boiler, and instead just stuck a load of cruddy posters and letters over the top. Obviously we wanted to take the photos off, but it wasn’t until we did that we quite realised how bad it was.

We attempted to patch over some of the holes with filler, but the right hand wall (the one you can see Henry scraping in the photo below) is so bad that it will probably need to be covered in plasterboard. Not quite sure when we will get round to doing that!

Filling in the gaps

Henry Elliss — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 17:07:00 +0000

One of the few areas which we hadn’t already painted is the area outside the bathroom – for the obvious reason that we were waiting until the bathroom was finished so we knew where to paint! Now that it IS finished, we’re painting the bit outside the door to match the rest of the hall (i.e. two shades of green) and the inside a nice light blue, in waterproof paint of course!

Almost finished!

Henry Elliss — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:41:58 +0000

Today was Tony’s last day at the house, and he managed to finish everything he planned to. All we have to do now is decorate a bit – paint the bathroom, treat the new doors etc. Henry also managed to hang a new door in the bedroom, which was a bit of a bonus!

Some more updated photos

Henry Elliss — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:46:49 +0000

The bathroom is very nearly finished now, with the door and toilet-sink being the only things left to do..

That sink(ing) feeling…

Henry Elliss — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:25:00 +0000

The building is coming along fast and furious, though the Reading Festival has eaten our builder for this friday so it probably won’t get finished this week. The bath is almost completely finished now, the sink is on the wall and plumbed in, the floor has been leveled and laminated, and the radiator’s on the wall.

The remaining jobs list is getting smaller, and now only features getting the shower enclosure up, building a door for the room and adding a small sink to the toilet room.