Home reno/redecorating support group

We're currently in the never ending process of renovating our hall bath. Though, when I say renovate, I really mean installing a hall bath. The previous owner demoed the bath and then never actually did anything so we bought the house with a plumbed room. We've been working on it for way too long, but that's what happens when you only devote 2-3 days/month to a project! Tub and bath tile are finished (finally) and I'm painting this week. Then we'll do the floor and hopefully once the floor is in, the rest (toilet, vanity, lights, fan) will be installed quickly. I'm also hoping the floor is easier than the tub tile (not that that was hard, I was just a little anal and obsessive and banned anyone from helping after I determined that their level but not level enough tile work was causing a whole lot of extra work for me.

At this point though, I just want the project to be finished. Maybe by the end of July? I can only hope...
 
Got the guest room painted, hurray! Will post pics when i get the curtains made & all the wall stuff back up. I really like the color, sort of a dusty pale green.
 
It's already underway...we need an extractor fan in the downstairs shower room. In the absence of one we've ended up with mold all over the walls and particularly over the patch of the wall that has a cold water pipe running underneath it. The space needs to be replastered and we both think it would be wise to get that work done before the windows go in.

We've been here before and most builders can't be bothered with such a small job but i've contacted a couple to see if they will come and quote.

I knew this would open the floodgates.
 
I'm in the ongoing process of hanging my good china on the wall so i have more room in my china cabinet and because I saw several pins on Pinterest that I liked of plate displays. Now I have the interesting predicament of making room in my 2 bedroom cottage (I only have 2 kids),to make room for 3 more kids because my boyfriend has 3 kids and when they are visiting,we need more seating desperately in the living room and at the kitchen table.So,my boyfriend and I need to get benches to put in the corner of the eat in kitchen so we can move the table and make enough seating for all 5 kids.And we're working on the covered patio to create an outdoor living space so the overflow can go outside.We've put up decorative string lights,we were given a wrought iron patio table,he painted it turquoise,we found some cute retro folding chairs,he's in the middle of redoing those. We have an ongoing list of things to do next. I just need to figure out more seating in the living room. I'm wanting to crochet some big cushions for them to sit on.
 
antmanb said:
It's already underway...we need an extractor fan in the downstairs shower room. In the absence of one we've ended up with mold all over the walls and particularly over the patch of the wall that has a cold water pipe running underneath it. The space needs to be replastered and we both think it would be wise to get that work done before the windows go in.

We've been here before and most builders can't be bothered with such a small job but i've contacted a couple to see if they will come and quote.

I knew this would open the floodgates.
Click to expand...

My house doesn't have fans either.
 
Just changed my avatar to show an example of one of my bedroom walls. So far I have 3 sections done out of the 11 in the room. I love the process, and wish I had more time to work on it. I had initially figured it would take me all summer....if this room is done by Christmas, I will be ecstatic! I am on the search for a couple of vintage dressers, bedding, area rug, and lamps, and we will also be buying our first queen size bed (wheeee!). I already have tons of decorative items and art stuff that I have been collecting for a while. I'm actually starting to think I can pull this off without it looking like a grade 3 art project. :p
 
quartz said:
Just changed my avatar to show an example of one of my bedroom walls. So far I have 3 sections done out of the 11 in the room. I love the process, and wish I had more time to work on it. I had initially figured it would take me all summer....if this room is done by Christmas, I will be ecstatic! I am on the search for a couple of vintage dressers, bedding, area rug, and lamps, and we will also be buying our first queen size bed (wheeee!). I already have tons of decorative items and art stuff that I have been collecting for a while. I'm actually starting to think I can pull this off without it looking like a grade 3 art project. :p
Click to expand...

Wow! I love the painting you've done - it looks amazing!

My own update - the new windows and doors are being put in a week on Thursday - it should take three days to complete the work so i'm really excited! We're also having an extractor fan fitted in our shower room so that we can then deal with the old issues that have a arisen due to not having one :cheer2:
 
Well the windows and doors all went in at the end of last week. They worked really hard and got it all done in two days and it didn't tip into the third day. I love the windows and the doors - we chose a contemporary design for the front door and absolutely love it. The quiet is what we noticed first. We're so used to hearing noise from the road, and the motorway further afield, horses clip-clopping up and down our street constantly and we can't hear any of that any more. Funnily enough even listening out for the dogs barking to come back in at the back door is seriously hampered :lol: We can already feel how much warmer it is inside the house so we can only imagine the benefits during the winter.

And it has caused a cascade of jobs to be done. The alarm guy came this morning to refit all the window sensors and fix some issues we'd been having. We went and bought new curtains for our bedroom and living room (then took one set back because while they were very pretty, they were too lightweight and didn't block any light :lol: ).

The plasterer is coming on Friday to patch up the bathroom and the dining room walls where we have had damp problems, then we will spend the weekend painting the bathroom and the kitchen to get them sorted.

I'm biting the bullet and splurging on the ridiculously priced wall paper we found that we plan to use as accents in the hallway and on the landing and also as a feature wall in the dining room. While we're going to paint the bathroom and kitchen/dining room ourselves, we;re going to get someone in to do the hall, stairs and landing. It needs all the lining paper stripping, new lining paper putting up, and painting white all over, then putting the accent paper up and papering the feature wall in the dining room. Stripping and papering seems like to much hard work so we both think it's best left to professionals.
 
So the escapade of curtain buying turned out to be quite frustrating but ultimately ended well. The pretty curtains we picked for our bedroom were too light and let in far too much light so we took them back. The Black chenille curtains i'd earmarked for another room went up in the bedroom instead, but weren't quite wide enough. Mr Antmanb took them back the next day after we discussed increasing the width and the drop. He picked up the wider ones but didn't check the drop so they were still too short. Another night with the curtains up, I finally took them back yesterday and got the right ones, but not before getting out of the car and thinking i'd picked up the wrong colour, but it was just the light shining on the plastic packaging around the curtains.

The bargain curtains we bought for the lounge are costing us all of the saving in having them taken up 5 inches :angryfire

And even though we haven't really discussed redecorating the bedroom, we ended up buying this wallpaper to use on a feature wall in our bedroom: http://www.lauraashley.com/en/uk/invt/3552535 so it looks like the bedroom is also on the list.
 
This week has brought a new side door to our house. It's nothing fancy, but it has a window in it which does wonders for the very dark staircase it opens up on to. I can now see when dogs are waiting to be let in too which is very nice. I have beautiful new bedding now so I think this summer's project will be our bedroom. I haven't painted since we moved in almost two years ago, because I had no idea what I wanted to do but I think I'm ready to tackle it. We ordered custom roman shades somewhat impulsively which is a good start and I'm going to convince my husband to put in a new door for the ensuite. Right now it's one of those crappy fold up accordion style doors and it drives me crazy. I'm really hoping I can swing new flooring but that might have to wait until next year.
 
I am slowly but surely making turtle-like progress in my galaxy themed bedroom, maybe about half way through the painting process. There's a couple spots I am not happy with and will likely redo, unless furniture placement or artwork will cover them. All the trim has to be re-painted as well. I hate painting trim. My previous house had all century old untouched woodwork and it saves a ton of time not having to deal with that.
The only un-painted trim in this house is in the living and dining room, and the exciting news (well, for me!) is that we have a date to get the floors in those room refinished....Sept 26!! They are soooo ugly and I can't wait to get them done and somehow we have to pack everything up in these two rooms and find somewhere else in my itty bitty very full house to put it all.:yikes:

We also need to purchase a new bed & bedding, couch, loveseat, dressers (will look at antique shops for these), and rugs, which is another :yikes:, because even though we need new stuff, we hate, hate getting that debit card out and having a whole whack of money sucked out of our account very quickly.
But we haven't had anything new around here for years, other than the 1930's dining set I got last year. We are way overdue for all this stuff.
 
Our dining room is finished. The table came out great, I re-covered our chairs so they coordinate with the table, and I got a bench for one side. (Our old table was rectangular so we had six chairs; the new one is square so we needed something else.

And last week I finally ordered tile for our kitchen; it'll be here in another week or two and then we can hopefully get it installed before the end of August.
 
This week, we removed the tile and the wall from the area below the window in the shower, rebuilt that area of the wall, and put the tile back up. Grouted, sealed, caulked. Bought new toilet seats for that bathroom and the downstairs. Now it looks like we completely redecorated. :lol:

We still need to replace the wall lights in the upstairs bathroom. And we're going to retile the backsplash in the kitchen, and install a new countertop. We picked up some tile samples at the Home Depot when we bought the toilet seats, and one of them looks to be a winner.
 
The skateycats are house hunting! With our budget and what's available, I am sure there will be some renovations and redecorating involved. I am completely home decorating challenged. I could get away with being that way in a rental, but as a homeowner my sense of responsibility ramps up...
 
We have a project coming up this week sometime.We have been given another set of bunk beds(4 boys and 1 girl),so the boys room will have 2 sets of bunk beds in them.So Papa and my bf will be stacking the wooden beds back into bunk beds and we'll be bringing in the new set as well and reorganizing the boys room. Seating in the living area is still a problem.Seriously considering just looking for a bigger house lol There's a plantation style house built in 1900 for sale in our area.Would need some repainting/updating inside but...it's under consideration anyway.
 
We can't install the tile for a couple of weeks :wuzrobbed

Husband just found out he has to fly to DC on Sunday for work and be there for 9 days, so the next two weekends are out.
 
We skateycats looked at a house that met all the major criteria (3+ bedrooms, 2+bathrooms, right town, at least a little space between us and the neighbors). It needs about $15-20K worth of work, but stuff that doesn't scare us, one bathroom, one section of the back deck, minor stuff in the kitchen. Somewhat off putting was that the tenant was in the house, there was popurri burning meant to disguise one of the major local industries (marijuana), other indications of involvement in the local industries, and strands of (unopened, at least) condom packets on two of the beds. At least the house showed no indications of having been used as an actual grow house. Yay.

We may wait and see if no one is desperate enough to grab it up, then make an offer that reflects the work that needs to be done.
 
The husband says well it's supposed to be crappy weather on Saturday, how about we go couch and bed shopping?
In our 35 years together, 32 of them have been cohabiting, and we have have been couch shopping twice and bed shopping once. Ugh....we want, and need, new stuff, but we hate new furniture shopping. I can spend all day in antique and thrift stores, but shopping for new stuff is :slinkaway
 
Backsplash tiling is on schedule for next weekend. Got the grout today, we are borrowing the wet saw from a friend down the street, and another friend's husband just started a handyman business and is scheduled to take the hood off the wall and reinstall it when we're done.

Now I'm getting an urge to paint at least one wall in my office, but not sure what color I'd want.
 
Couch shopping success!! Our first criteria was that we must sink in, not bounce off. Then, because our livingroom has a lot of chestnut wood trim, with a golden honey colored finish, it had to blend with that. Which is quite difficult with the trends being grey and espresso colors. We also wanted Canadian made. So we managed to check all those boxes and spent a lot less than we planned. Like HALF. :encore:

Didn't see any area rugs that quite did it for me, so I am looking online. I'm also debating new paint colors for the walls; at the moment I have narrowed it down to: a bright apple green, a teal blue/green, a soft, pale blue, or a bolder emerald green. I love playing with paint chips. :D
 
I ordered a rug last night in shades of blue, pale green, gold, brown and orange, with a sort of Victorian acanthus scroll design. So, I have different blue paint chips up on my wall now. :D
Looking at a brighter sky blue called Windy Hill for most of the living and dining rooms, and a rich teal blue called Peacock's Plume which I am thinking of using on the fireplace wall, the inside of the arch between the two rooms, and in my foyer.

I have to wait 3-4 weeks for the rug to come in and 8 weeks for the couch and loveseat, but if it all works together like I think it will, it looks like I've got this figured out. I'll be moving a table and chest of drawers from the livingroom to my upstairs bedroom, and moving the sideboard from my dining room where those pieces were.

I've been giving little hints to my husband about the practicality, storage, and space saving benefits of putting built in shelves along one whole wall in the dining room, and I'm pretty sure that will come about later. :p

As for my galaxy bedroom, it's been way too hot to be painting upstairs this summer so that's on hold for now.
 
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