That 'big project' I've been banging on about for a few years now....

[James Harrison]

Back to the sitting room; when I laid my new floor I had to take the door off its hinges.  Well, high time I think to put it back.  Slight complication; the floor is now 18mm higher than it was.  So about 20mm of the door bottom had to be cut off. 

But once that was done;





This was an awful job from start to finish - firstly cutting the bottom off, then trying to re-hang it single handed without wrecking the room.  You might also see that I've found time to stain the door. 

I think, that I can now tick the sitting room off as finished, or practically finished.  I do want to replace the curtains, but I haven't decided exactly what to do with them yet - the main problem is actually the rail, so whether I take the whole thing down and replace it with venetian blinds, or individual curtains, or something else entirely is a debate at the moment. 

[Synistor 303]

Nice Rug! William Morrison? I know there is a business over there that makes them from William Morris original designs.

[James Harrison]

It's a Morris rug, but I don't think it's a Morris design, if that makes sense- the company survived him by a considerable margin. If I remember rightly from the sales blurb, this is a reproduction of a 1920s Morris Company item.

[James Harrison]

Right, I think time to reflect and decide what still needs doing. 

Back in December I set my goals for this year as being;

1) Lay a new path in the front garden - done

2) Complete the hallway - err

3) Complete the sitting room - more or less done

So, what's left on that list?

Front garden - I've decided I also want a low brick wall.  Also, there's the small matter of repairing various cracks and gaps in the sitting room window sills. 

Sitting room - just the curtains to sort out really.  They're a  to close though, being in a bay window, so the debate is whether I instead go for shutters or blinds.

Hallway - I said I wanted a new radiator (hasn't happened), I said there was plasterwork on the ceiling to be repaired (hasn't happened), I said I wanted to replace some of the floorboards (I have actually done that). 

The problem is that if I were to push on with the hallway, it would just get wrecked whilst work continues on the three upstairs rooms.  So I'm not convinced there isn't an argument to be made to leave it as-is at the moment and come back to it when everything else is finished.

Not to announce the 2024 programme prematurely but I am desperately aware that there are two rooms that do need to be looked at, that they will be expensive and that after next year I have no idea what my mortgage payments will look like.  So at least one of them needs doing next year if it is to be done at all.  The issue there is that to achieve that, means starting to save up for it now. 

So, I think viewed all round it's probably best if I call the 2023 programme at this point, so far as heavy expenditure is concerned. 

[James Harrison]

Sitting room is finished.







This week;

 - I ordered some new venetian blinds;
 - Took delivery of a new sofa;
 - Took delivery of said new blinds and installed them;
 - Took down the old curtains.

So that's the end of the 2023 Programme...

[Synistor 303]

Need some 'before' pictures to compare, but looks really good!

[James Harrison]

I might struggle to find some general, room-wide shots...







This was when I first moved in (February/ March 2020).



This was when I finished my first go at the room (May 2020).  So this was when the bookshelves were fitted just to the one wall, the timberwork was still gloss white, the light fitting was still just a bare bulb, and the vinyl flooring was still in place.  I think this was a few weeks before the day I got bored and drilled through the radiator, as you do.





Then moving on to the September/ October of 2020 and the new light fitting and radiator were installed.



May 2021 saw some more bookshelves added.

And then from December 2022 to September 2023 I've stripped down and stained the woodwork, added a picture rail, repainted the whole room, changed the flooring, cleaned up the fireplace and replaced the curtains.

 

[James Harrison]

I've had an interesting little issue develop over the last month or so.



My new wooden flooring has settled slightly by the doorway.  I'd expect it to warp and move a little as it fully acclimitises to the room, so I'm not at concerned about that. 



But in doing that, it's wedged right up hard against the door architrave.





And in response to this pressure, the architrave has sprung itself off the wall, about halfway up.  The gap's wide enough that you can look through it. 





The only way I can see to actually fix the issue, rather than just cover it up, is to cut through the architrave as close to the floor as I reasonably can, and remove the bit acutally in the depth of the floor itself. 



At which point the gaps spring back shut. 



And the bits which came out, actually have a dent in them where the floor was pushing in. 

[James Harrison]

The plans for 2023...

There's the front garden, which needs new paving.  I did actually start this this Summer just gone but had to stop because I ran out of room to store the spoil.  That's now been disposed of but it took so long to get rid of it that the weather has turned.  I can think of more pleasant ways to spend freezing cold, wet days than breaking up inch-thick mass concrete.  So that's a job for the Spring through Autumn.

Well.... that got done. 

Before:



And after:

Then there's the hallway and staircase.  You're probably thinking there can't possibly be anything left to do here- it's been replastered, repainted, I've sanded the staircase down, taken up the new tiles to expose the original floor.... and you'd be right, but also wrong.  So working from the top down there's some plastering and repainting needed on the ceiling, then it really needs a coving fitting for the joint between wall and ceiling.  Then the floorboards need replacing.  The railings around the staircase I might repaint (they're stained at the moment) just to lighten upstairs a bit.  I think there's an argument to be made for cleaning up the stairtreads a bit more, and then I want to fit a stair runner and stair rods.  Then there are some cracked and broken quarry tiles that need replacing, and if that isn't enough to be getting on with I also want to replace the radiator. 

This got progressed, somewhat.  It's still not finished but as it's the main throughfare through the house it's probably best left as the last job to do. 

Some work got done there this year though;

Before:



And after:



And in fact actually the new boards have been stained now too.

The project that I'm really looking forward to though is completing the sitting room.  This is the room that I fitted out with bookshelves in the few weeks between moving in and shutting down for plague, and then painted the first Summer I was here.  So the room really is already a couple of years old and although I still think the dark blue is just right for it... it has got a little tired.  It attracts fingermarks, it's got covered in brickdust in places which just hasn't washed away, there's a small white salt (?) patch in one corner that just keeps on coming through... it just needs I think cleaning down and maybe another coat.  I've also decided that the picture moulding in the dining room worked really well, so I'm going to do something similar in this room.  Not all the way around though.  It's going to be at the same level as the top of the architrave (which coincidentally is also the top of the bookshelves) and it's going to run from the bay window to the fireplace.  It's going to avoid the fireplace and it's going to start up again in the opposite inglenook before running into more bookshelves.  Then it's just going to run straight along the back wall and back to the window.  I'm going to paint the walls above this in a pale cream, so the room's going to have a dark blue/ pale cream paint scheme.  The fireplce wall is going to stay dark blue from floor to ceiling, but I've found a nice William Morris wallpaper pattern that I'm going to recreate with paint.  I might have a go at actually block printing this rather than stencilling.  All of the skirting boards are going to be taken down and stripped back to wood, then stained.  Whilst they're down I'm going to take the vinyl floor up and replace it with real wood flooring- the same as I did in the dining room.  This might uncover a couple of areas of the floor that are structurally suspect....

This got done, happily not revealing any structural problems.

Before:



And after:

So if I can get all this done, by next December I should have the main downstairs living rooms and the hallway finished, and at that point I think it would be fair to say the project's probably about half finished.

Hahaha, not by a long shot.  I've got two rooms that are going to need completely gutting and refitting, two rooms that 'just' need redecorating, the paddock, the main facade, the back and side walls....

[James Harrison]

And onto the 2024 programme. 

The thing in the back of my mind now is that in early 2025 my fixed rate mortgage switches over to a tracker type.  Which means that it's going to become more expensive and - crucially - I don't know how much more a month I'm going to have to pay.  This means that if I want to do expensive things, they're going to have to be done next year or else put off to a later date.

The first thing on the list is to finish off the window renewal programme.  There are two windows still to be replaced - in the back bedroom, and the bathroom. 

Ah, yes, the bathroom.  I really, really don't like the existing bathroom suite, or bathroom layout.  It's perfectly serviceable, but it's really not compatible with the rest of the house.  The problem is that bathroom suites weren't really a thing in the Edwardian era.  And the Victorian/ Edwardian 'style' ones available just strike me as variously still too modern, too twee, or just plain unconvincing. 

This obviously is a part of the project that is not DIY-friendly.  I don't have a timeframe for when this bit will get underway. 

I'm also going to have to have part of the sitting room replastered.  The radiator has started to pull away from the wall, and whilst I've shored it up with some pieces of wood, clearly that's not a long term solution.  No, what is needed is for the radiator to be taken down and the crushed and crumbling plaster behind to be replaced.  Perhaps that's a Summer job. 

Then I want the flashing around the chimneys to be renewed, and I also want flashing to be installed around the bay window roof. 

Now you might be looking at this list and thinking 'well James, what are you personally planning to be doing this year to get this done?'  I should have thought the answer is obvious.  I'm the one going out to work to pay for it all...

[James Harrison]

First component of the new bathroom has arrived...

[von Corax]

Ooh, shiny!

[James Harrison]

I've done myself a mischief here.  Ideally I want matching taps. 

I can get chrome taps.  I can get (for a bit more money) gold-plated taps.  But can I get copper taps?  More to the point, can I get Vicwardian copper taps?  That I can actually, you know, afford without beggaring myself?

....

I'll get back to you on that.  Just going to see someone about selling a kidney. 

[James Harrison]

To alleviate at least a bit of the boredom between Christmas and New Year, I'm thinking of doing a Q&A video.  So if you've got any questions (relevant ones - I don't know where Lord Lucan is, or what happened to Flight 19), fire away.

[Madasasteamfish]

So if you've got any questions (relevant ones - I don't know where Lord Lucan is, or what happened to Flight 19), fire away.

What about Shergar, or Glen Miller?

[James Harrison]

So if you've got any questions (relevant ones - I don't know where Lord Lucan is, or what happened to Flight 19), fire away.

What about Shergar, or Glen Miller?

Add two more to the list....

[Cora Courcelle]

Are you considering calling the house Area 51 .....

[James Harrison]

Are you considering calling the house Area 51 .....

Add another to the list 

[montysaurus]

What pitfalls should someone starting on a project like this, try an avoid?

[James Harrison]

What pitfalls should someone starting on a project like this, try an avoid?

Ooh, that's a good one.

[von Corax]

I won't ask about Amelia Earhart because I know Charles Lindbergh killed her to cover up that tragic toilet training accident.

[Sir Henry]

Having just laid fake wood flooring on our stairs and hallways I'm curious - have you managed to find any right angles that are actually 90 degrees in your house? And how do you deal with the variations?

_{I have yet to find one here.}

[The Bullet]

Where did that 10BA nut go?
It rolled off the bench and disappeared even before hitting the floor.

[James Harrison]

At some point, this should be available to view. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqUzKDFr7S0&feature=youtu.be

[SeVeNeVeS]

As no one else can be bothered.

Thanks for taking the time to post that.