My Home Decorating Project

My Weekend Garden Rockery my weekend garden rockery after 2 months After collecting together all the rubble, rocks and plants this rockery was actually built from scratch in 2 days! Before the rockery I had a small area of soil, which was an odd shape, in between some of the concreted areas in the garden.  The previous owners must have used it as a planting area but there was no sign of any viable plants left.  When I got my new puppy he decided to use this area as a toilet and I needed to distract him from this.  Last year I planted this area with busy lizzy's which did look pretty but with a new puppy I didn't think that filling this area with flowers (for him to dig up and eat) would be a good idea!   Around the garden I had quite a bit of hardcore and bricks as well as large stones so I decided to build a rockery.  It is the first time that I have built one from scratch and probably isn't the best looking rockery but I am pleased with it ...

Transforming a dark and dirty bathroom into a bright and modern family shower room The bathroom before This room was particularly gross.  It was extremely dirty and smelt disgusting!  The first job that we did as soon as we moved in was to rip up the old pee soaked carpet from the floor.  Then we scrubbed the toilet, sink and bath.  We had to live with this bathroom for a few months so it needed to be clean.  The room is fairly small for the size of the house and the sanitary ware was very old and dated.  The bath was an old cast iron one which would have been nice to keep if it hadn't of been so damaged.  The toilet waste pipe was only loosely fitted into a very old, large cast iron downpipe.  The sink was also cracked and had a lot of limescale damage.  The only solution was to rip everything out and start again with a whole new bathroom. Removing the old cast iron soil stack We had to get our plumber to change the so...

The Lounge Before When we moved into this house our favourite room was the lounge. When our home was a pub, many years ago, this room would have been the main bar area. It is quite a large room with lots of windows, a set of patio doors and a huge fireplace.  The decor wasn't to our taste and was quite outdated.  It had heavily embossed wallpaper and brown patterned carpets.  The ceiling looked like it had been skimmed with a sweeping brush and the plastering had more ripples than a river.  There was also a huge, wheelchair size, mobility lift in the centre of the room that could take you from the lounge to an upstairs bedroom. Removing a mobility lift The first job we had to get done was to remove the lift, replace ceiling joists and plasterboard the large hole where the lift went through.  Our DIY skills don't span to this so we had to get a professional in.  Once the lift was removed and all the apertures made safe we were then able to ...

Our New Home We moved into our new home just over a year ago. It had been empty for around 3 years and had been left unattended during that time. The result was a very overgrown garden and a damp and cold house. When we first viewed the house we were immediately able to look beyond it's state of disrepair and see the ultimate potential. We fell in love with it! We knew it would take a few years to transform into anything like how we want it to be, but we were still excited about taking on this project. Moving into the house with young children was quite daunting. We had to prioritise the projects with the children's safety being paramount. The garden lacked fencing to secure the children, there was little heating downstairs and a boiler that was over 20 years old.  The whole house was filthy with signs of mice activity and masses of cobwebs everywhere, together with damp and mould patches. The garden was knee high with brambles, nettles and ivy everywhere. Underneath th...