Looking Behind the Fireplace

So the fireplace in the living room had just been covered up by a wooden surround and a sheet of wood in front of it - not very exciting. There was a slim chance that there might be something interesting behind this but given the age of the property (50/60s?) I kind of doubted it. Anyway, this evening I felt like I needed to do something so I just thought I would see what was behind the piece of wood. Well obviously once I started I couldn't stop there!

This is what the fireplace looked like at first:

So then I took away the wood from the front and there was a bit of a hotch potch of tiles behind:

I hacked the tiles off and found that there were a few layers of wood behind...

Having taken away the first couple of layers (and having to remove the surround which was attached to a socket on the right of the chimney breast!) there was a hacked up door underneath:

So at this point I was pretty sure there was nothing decent underneath and I was proved right in that there was just the remains of the old open fireplace (sorry for the letdown ending!)

So now I just need to find someone to come and block it all up and plaster over it so that I can just hang a wall mounted electric fire on there. I have the electrician coming to give me a quote tomorrow so I can sort out a power supply for it too.

12 July Update

So yesterday my friend helped me to get my wardrobe out of storage and up in the bedroom :-) I really needed her help as it was pretty heavy and not something I could do on my own even if I didn't have a bad back. However, I hadn't quite estimated how deep it was so I will have to strip a bit more wallpaper and paint more of the wall! I'm glad I did the bulk of it behind the wardrobe though.

The man from National Grid came this morning to check out the situation for the gas supply (there isn't one) and says it should get installed quite quickly - which means 3-4 weeks. Oh well the plumber isn't free til then anyway!

Doing things the strange way!

So this week I have started to strip the wallpaper from the bedrooms but I have been doing it in a bit of a strange way! I have a short attention span and so I like to see progress going quickly. So in the 2nd bedroom (which has lots of stuff in) I cleared all the stuff at one end and stripped the wallpaper, filled in the holes, sanded the walls and painted 2 coats of magnolia - just at the end of the room! This means that I can move some stuff to that end of the room and then start on the rest of it while moving stuff round. Oh well it works for me!

So last night I stripped the wallpaper from 1 alcove in my bedroom where the wardrobe was going to go so that I wouldn't have to move it again - did the same thing - stripped, filled, sanded and painted a bit. This afternoon my friend is going to help me get the wardrobe up so I can get the stuff in it that is hanging around.

So the good news is that the plaster is good in the bedrooms at least and should not need replastering - hooray!

  

Getting Quotes

So I had a guy in for some quotes today. He did 2 bathrooms for me in my previous house for quite a good price so I thought I would try him again. I need to keep the costs as low as possible or else there will be no profit in it. At the moment I think it is going to take £10k to do all the work (which I don't actually have!) and that should give me £10-15k profit hopefully. But every extra will eat into this and it seems that there is plenty of extra work that could be done. I just need to stick to my guns and keep it as simple as possible.

Slow and Sure!

So it is a bit of a slow business getting everything started. I haven't yet moved all of my belongings in as I want to sort out what is here first. I have set up a small desk in the living room so that hopefully I will be able to work on the smallish second bedroom first as that doesn't need a huge amount of work. The main thing in there is that the sockets do not appear to work but as I am getting an electrician in for a quote on Tuesday I will have to wait until all that is sorted. There is also cabling going over the wall so that needs to be inset but apart from that it just needs decorating and a new carpet.

Did some more on the back garden - mowed the grass (can't call it a lawn yet!) and did some weeding but the patio areas will need a heck of a lot of work!

I also put down some lino in the bathroom that I had in my studio before as the floor was very sticky from the previous flooring.

The bathroom as it was before the lino went down (not that it looked much better afterwards!)

The patio that requires rather a lot of weeding!

Attacking the Garden - Before Pics

So the first job I did was to start on the garden. As the place had been left empty for at least 3 months before I moved in and there had been a lot of rain in that time, the grass was, let's say, more like a field! Luckily I had a strimmer so that was set to work straight away. Only thing with a strimmer is, how on earth do you fix it so that you can just keep feeding the line through rather than having to take the thing apart even time it breaks?

Anyway, here are some pictures of the garden just before (and halfway through) attacking it:

I Got the Keys!

So at long last, with very little help from my solicitors, I finally got the keys to the bungalow today. It was as I remembered it (including the all pervading smell of urine!) and with plenty of work to do. All my belongings will be moved in tomorrow and I will have to try and do the work whilst living there.

In an hour or two at the bungalow this afternoon I managed to flymo down 2 of the massive long 'lawns' that had been left to grow over the past few months. More to do over the weekend though. I also managed to remove the carpet from the main bedroom and need to take that down to the dump tomorrow as well as trying to get the underlay out before the movers get there at 10.30am.

The bathroom is a bit of a state as it has a shower but no drainage - I guess they must have used it to wash themselves over the sink or something. My Mum decided to help by taking out the bathroom floor which was a great idea in theory but has now left super sticky floorboards to walk on. Ideally I will put in a new bathroom floor soon but I will need to wait until the pipes have been put in for the new central heating system.

Next door appears to be some kind of crack house for teenagers with the smell of dope wafting out the windows. Oh dear.