Extreme Decorating

Gosh, it is a long way up. Mr SLS has taken a week of his annual leave to decorate the loft.
He rented this super long ladder and has been up and down it all day decorating the new landing and stairs. I have been on duty in the bedroom doing the less adventurous decorating with just a small pair of steps!! What a guy.

So this is what the loft room looks like with the base coat.

My shoulders are killing me!!

The plumber was here last week. He installed the shower tray, and so now we are waiting on the tiler to tile the ensuite.

Please note that that is a plastic cap covering the chrome waste!

In other news (!) as we have the carpets up in the hall, stairs and landing, and the skip out front, we decided to rip out the dodgy bath room on the second floor, and the loo on the first floor. When we moved into this house, we had a little toilet and sink on the first floor, and a bathtub and sink in a very small bathroom at the top of the house. Here is a photo of the before for your viewing pleasure:

Ack. So horrid. This is what it looks like now:

Somehow this offends me less!!!

This is the little loo

I don't have a before picture, but imagine a symphony of beige toilet, sink and brown tiles and you wouldn't be far off the mark. SO the plan is to refit the bathroom with a shower (900x800) and a loo and sink, and the little loo will be a cloakroom. It is ridiculous really, as we will wind up with 5 toilets in our house and there are only 4 of us, but it is hard to know what else to do with the space. Anyway, the plumber was due here on Monday to first fix these bathrooms but unfortunately his wife is unwell. So I need to put the plasterer on hold until the plumber is back. I was starting to wonder why we even started doing these on top of all the work in the loft, but just looking at that photo with the dodgy green floor and the horrid fittings and I now realise a bit of pain now will be worth it in the end.

I am, however, burnt out on tile selection for this room. I am going to drag Mr SLS away from the paint roller tomorrow to have a look at tiles to see if we can find something. I would really love to use glass on the shower walls but sadly I don't think the budget will tolerate it! So a tile shopping we will go!! No doubt I will fall in love with something hideously expensive.

Let there be light!

What an awful lot of fuss over what seems like not much to me!!! The rooflight has gone in. The project manager came back to me with a letter regarding the installation, somewhere from £180 - £280 to install it. Given that we wouldn't be using the polycarb dome that was in the original quote (£350+vat) we were actually in credit. What a silly arse. So if he had just kept it all to himself, I wouldn't have chased up this extra money. Whatever, it is in. It makes SUCH a difference to the light in the hall, it is so much better up there. I was really worried that the new flight of stairs would make the hall even more gloomy than it had been, but I would say that it is about the same as it was before with just a small velux. The top landing is absolutely flooded in light, which makes me happy, I love bright spaces.

So where are we? As we go into week 7 (!) we are at that stage where there are a million and one 'bits' that need doing/finishing off. The electrician has been an absolute star (and he is SO lovely, if anyone needs an electrician, please do send me an email or leave a comment, as I would so happily recommend him, same goes for the roofer). In connecting up the loft electric supply, he noticed how 'shocking' our electrics are throughout the upstairs. He has rewired the whole upstairs for £1000 (we had a quote for £20k to do the whole house when we moved in, which we knew was outrageous, but we then decided to do it in bits as we redid the house). As the kitchen is new, the wiring is fine there, so we only have the playroom and front room left to do. Really pleased to have had it done, as it did worry me. The previous owner was a DIY bandit, the electrician reckons he did most of the wiring himself. Given that he was a fireman (!) I find it surprising that he would let his family live with such crappy wiring. Anyway, needless to say I am so glad to have had such an easy fix. The electrician that did our kitchen extension was so crap, so I am glad to have met someone so thorough and happy to help me!! He also put a light on the first landing which has made it so much brighter.

So we are waiting on the plasterer coming back to plaster in and around the rooflight. We also need the electrician to come back and do some more bits for us and to hook up the new circuit board (lights on the top of the house currently run from an extension lead!!). We are also waiting on the plumber. The plumber is a really nice bloke, but I would say he is more of a tortoise than a hare. I suspect he will get there in the end, and it will be done properly, but he is certainly s l o w.

Bathroom currently waiting patiently in my front room....



My vola tap!! Sexy, everything about you is so sexxxxy.... 10 points to the person who can name the band??


Shower valve, so close and yet so far.....


Soil pipe in, but loo still to do....




No lights yet.

But we do have doors!!! Horrible fire doors, but they do open and close.

So that is the current state of affairs. I can't wait to have the plasterers finish so that we can get going with the decoration. Yes, that is right, we are decorating it ourselves. Mr SLS is very good at decorating, and every time we have someone else do it, he is p*ssed off with the finish, so he is doing it himself!! We didn't really have a summer holiday this year as we had a bit of a 'summer of austerity' to save for the loft conversion, he has loads of annual leave yet to take. So he is taking off the first week of December to paint the loft room, the ensuite, and the hall stairs and landing. I will be assisting in between school runs (and the gym, and coffee mornings, and all the other very important business that I attend to every day!).

Would love to know what you think if anyone is still reading!!