Self_Build_Dreamers

Week 80 – Heat pump delivery plus we have power!

And so, another week, and the electrician has been back yay!! We officially have power! As we have mentioned previously, we have a 3 phase electrical system, and so it has taken a little longer than a typical system. But it is up and running and we’ve been able to use the remote control garage door! Next up switches and more lights…we should be up and running in week 81.

And the heat pump arrived..look out for a more detailed post when it’s good to go…

Plus more deliveries, overlay panels for the underfloor heating upstairs. Wow there was a lot, Andy was pretty achey after moving them all.

Eeeek glad I was at work..this spider would have freaked me out ha!

And the front door is ALMOST finished, just waiting on the door company to sort out the letterbox as they’ve made the hole the wrong size. Fun and games! I’m so pleased with how it looks, though, and the peacock doorknocker. Plus we couldn’t decide where to position the central doorknob, and then realised that it should probably be central to the door height ha!

I’ve been so tempted to get a peacock Christmas wreath, but I might wait until next year, and enjoy the current look!

Also!! Almost forgot to paint the last window sill ha! Andy’s been keen to take down the scaffolding so that he could carry on with the flooring in the hallway, luckily we remembered otherwise that would have been fun!

Plus more flooring chat from Andy…check out our YouTube…

And that’s it for another week, week 81 should see more lights, and switches. We are actually going for smart switches…look out for more on that!

Selfbuilddreamers

Caz and Andy x

Weeks 78 and 79 – More flooring plus guest bedroom architrave!

Week 78 was a little quiet, given that the electrician has been held up on other jobs. So, just some more flooring and light deliveries!

These ones were out of stock for a while, but luckily, they were available again, phew! And they are the plaster lights mentioned in previous posts..we had only ordered one initially, so yes, very lucky.

And Andy finished the flooring in the tiki bar, wow, it looks so good! And it’s so strange having a finished floor. We have popped an electric heater in the new house so that the wood flooring is installed at the optimum temperature.

And this Jenson bench from made is actually from a John Pye auction and a steal at £42! We just need to decide where to put it! Maybe the hallway or as a seating option in the dining area… If you haven’t checked out these online auctions, they really are worth a look! So much variety, and they are also worth a visit to check out the quality of items before bidding. They sell kitchen appliances and TVs etc. too!

I can’t wait to take the site fence down! We’re just waiting on the digger to arrive to sort out the drainage, then we will be able to, not a good look!

And another decision…skirting boards! There are so many, aren’t they?! After much deliberation, we have decided to go with the “Groove One Square MDF” nice and simple! And that will be a job for me when it arrives…lots more painting, joy ha! We think we’ll paint them the same colour as the walls rather than white throughout.

Plus, Andy had another day off to carry on with the flooring and has branched out into the open plan area…happy days!

And we decided to finish off the front door, if I’m totally honest, I’m not sure why we hadn’t done this already! I think I was a little nervous, as the door knocker actually needed drilling into the door. Given its new, it did freak me out somewhat!

But we persevered, and it does look beautiful, however the bolt for the striking plate isn’t long enough, and so we have had to order another…and we’ve also found out that the door company have made the letterbox hole bigger than we had requested. Ugh! Not quite there just yet but hey ho, it’ll be worth it in the end…

And we put up our guest bedroom border! It’s actually architrave from B and Q…we wanted something really simple, and I think this works! The dado rail is back ha! Check out our YouTube for more…

So that’s it for another two weeks, it’ll be great to get electricity soon and be able to do stuff after work! Fingers crossed that’s in week 80.

Selfbuilddreamers

Caz and Andy x

Week 77..we have a floor!!

Another week and the first of the flooring has been laid, in the soon to be tiki bar! We decided to measure from the centre of the house, as the same floor will run through the whole of the ground floor. And as luck would have it, our house is so symmetrical, the herringbone pattern is central in the tiki bar, central staircase, and living room ha!

Doesn’t it look good against the Inchyra Blue (living room colour). I love the grain, and finish, so so pleased with this!

And it’s been taking shape in the tiki bar along with the Hague Blue walls! Andy’s been mixing up the boxes to add a bit of interest to the floor, and character! Plus we love the little knots here and there…

One weekend later and we pretty much have one room done yay! It’s a good job we have some holidays and Christmas off, given we both work full time! Such a shame we aren’t retired ha! And Andy is laying the floor himself, using Murexin

This flooring is called 70mm Engineered Brushed & UV Oiled Smoked Charnwood Oak Parquet Block Wood Flooring and is from Ambience hardwood flooring

Plus before Andy starts on the hallway, the staircase will need a good sand in week 78..we have a concrete staircase. We then need to decide whether to just seal it and add some wood treads, or go with a microcement…stay tuned!

We love this look and hopefully can keep the concrete as is, and add similar treads…

Watch this space!

Selfbuilddreamers

Caz and Andy x

Weeks 75 and 76 – Lots of flooring plus more painting and the first of the lights!

Lots more painting this last couple of weeks! We are almost there now, I’m so over painting ha! It’s just so messy, I can’t wait to have a good old sweep up and a tidy..and put away the paint brushes…and the sprayer!

We actually did the walls of my dressing room and our bedroom with a roller, as it would have proved difficult covering up the ceiling to use the sprayer! We will do a more detailed review of the Sprayer soon, now that we’ve pretty much finished..stay tuned.

Dressing room Ceiling – Setting Plaster
Walls – Green smoke

And we’ve painted the guest bedroom in multiple colours ha from Farrow and Ball Again, using the sprayer for the ceiling, and a roller for the walls for ease of prep..

Guest bedroom: Ceiling – Setting Plaster
Walls – Sulking Room Pink and Off Black

We also plan on using an architrave for the paint join between the two colours on the wall..stay tuned! We have made a start on this in week 76 but we’ll do a more detailed post!

Sidenote..In other news, I bought a chair! Could not resist this little beauty from Bombinate Not sure where for just yet but I love it!

Topaz Retrostar Chair Premium Velvet Line

And Eddie the electrician has been back for the second fix! We have lights! These Antique brass up down ones from Arrow Electrical will look fab with the soon to be door ironmongery.

Plus black up down ones at the back of the house…

And lots and lots of flooring arrived! Over 200 boxes to be exact! We will be busy….

This is called 70mm Engineered Brushed & UV Oiled Smoked Charnwood Oak Parquet Block Wood Flooring and is from Ambience hardwood flooring Stay tuned for more details!

Plus the kitchen island light is up..

And my vertigo pendant light…also known as a hat light is looking beautiful! Together with black spotlights and a couple of cool wall lights

I almost forgot about these ha they were bought that long ago! And we will be having bigger versions of these on either side of our bed in the master bedroom..

And that’s it for another two weeks! Check out our YouTube together with some timelapse footage…speedy cinema room spraying and just a whole lotta painting!

Selfbuilddreamers

Caz and Andy x

Plaster up down lights…

I love these lights, the Astro Kymi 300 Indoor Wall Light in Plaster. They look so sleek and it’s great that they can be painted to suit your wall colour!

And in our case, we’ll be having two on this wall…

And, after a couple of coats of the same paint (Charlotte’s Locks Farrow and Ball colourmatch) it blends in with the wall perfectly. And so do I ha!

On a separate note, the colour of the wall really changes with the lighting!

And we’ll be having two more of these on the opposite wall in the double height area plus 4 smaller ones in the hallways, but we can just leave them as is, given these walls are white!

Watch out for more lights…our electrician is back in week 76 eek!

Selfbuilddreamers

Caz and Andy x

Selfbuilddreamers

Week 74 – Let there be colour! Plus we can officially have electricity!

The 3 phase electric meter is now good to go and we can ask the electrician to come back..more importantly, yay!! Apparently there aren’t a lot of installers available to do 3 phase, but luckily for us we only had to wait a couple of months. We’ve heard that others have had to wait a lot longer. We have 3 phase rather than 1 due to having a heat pump and a car charger.

And we had a wasted morning on Saturday…tip for anyone with a whole lotta painting to do. Make sure to decide on your colours before you start, especially if you are using a sprayer! We were going to paint the ceiling in the open plan area a mustard yellow, and having prepped all the walls, we decided to just do the window reveals. If we had made this decision sooner we could have done this with the sprayer, before we did the white walls but instead we had to roller and it took so much longer. Lesson learned…if you’re going to use a paint sprayer, plan out your colours to reduce prep time!

If you look close enough you can see the India Yellow in the window reveals..this is a Farrow and Ball colour, however we colourmatched using Valspar

Plus Hague Blue in the tiki bar, and we bravely painted the ceiling too! Again, another colourmatch…

Andy looks like he’s living his best life…covered in paint all the time ha!

And alas, we decided to do this wall with a roller as it would have been so much prep to use the sprayer just for this little area. We would have had to cover all the freshly painted Strong White (another colourmatch) and it just wasn’t worth the prep time…

Charlotte’s Locks farrow and ball colourmatch

Plus check out the Setting Plaster paint colour in the guest bedroom..another ceiling colour!

And in our bedroom and dressing room too…

Plus! Tiki bar paint spraying video below….sidenote the paint sprayer is a Wagner Control Pro 250m

Next up more colours in week 75 eeekkk almost done with the painting!

Selfbuilddreamers

Caz and Andy x

Week 73 – More paint spraying, white paint samples..plus go big or go home….!

And so, this week we finished all the undercoat painting, and we used Express Coat by Valspar from B&Q. This one can be used on fresh plaster and doesn’t need watering down, always a bonus!

The downstairs took around 4 hours for 110 metre squared which isn’t bad going at all! I do love this paint sprayer, the finish is pretty flawless and you could almost just leave this undercoat as is, but we have a whole lotta colours in mind so that’s the next job!

And oh my goodness, the white paint decisions have been some of the hardest. I actually read an article about this and apparently, because there are so many undertones when it comes to white paint, it can be much more difficult to choose compared to colours.

We had thought we were going to go with Blackened from Farrow and Ball, however when we sampled it on the actual wall it looked a little too grey for us and probably wouldn’t flow with the other colours.

Then we were thinking maybe Ammonite or Wevet but we were still a little unsure. And so, because we are sick of pretty much living in B&Q ha! We bought a few more samples and tried them out in the car park…as you do! And after all the messing around, decided to go with Strong White for the hallway and landing. This is a grey based white and looks fab against Crittall…something which we will be having. And Wimbourne White in the open plan kitchen area. This is a white with yellow undertones and looks really fresh, and can work well with colours such as India Yellow, a colour we are looking to incorporate into the open plan colour scheme…watch this space!

And with that we made a start on the finished coats! Eek that is so strange to say. And, because we are so logical ha, we are going to start with the whites and lightest colours, using the paint sprayer, and work our way down in the dark stakes! We’ve also come up with a little list based on where the same colours will go etc. so we’re not cleaning the machine unnecessarily.

We have started with the Wimbourne White, and then next week, we should hopefully do most of the colours!

Plus we’ve decided to be a little daring with the lower wall on the landing and use something pretty bold to make it a feature in all the white…

We think Charlotte’s Locks might be the winner, looking forward to trying it out properly and hey its just paint, we can always change it, if it doesn’t work out…

Selfbuilddreamers

Caz and Andy x

Week 72 – The paint spraying has begun..plus staining wood and another light!

It is so strange to be at a stage where it is down to us and the progress is actually ours to control…mu ha ha! And it is quite simply, based on how proactive or lazy we are feeling on any given week ha!

And so this week Andy’s been sanding more of the unfinished Oak parquet blocks and then giving them a stain to check we are happy with the finish….we are thinking of having this throughout the house mainly because we haven’t found a finished parquet we have liked

Plus these blocks are so versatile and the floor will be an original parquet floor pretty much!

As you can see the before and after is pretty good, and as we want the bevelled edge, the sanding has worked well so far…

This is the stain below, however we will be using a wax as well to make sure it is super sealed! It does actually say on the the tin that it isn’t suitable for floors but I think it is more because of the potential high traffic, and so going with a wax as a top coat should be the way to go..we just need to decide on one! Once we’ve had a good play around I’ll do a more detailed post.

Plus another light, and this one is for Andy’s ensuite, he just can’t decide how many to use. He actually has 9 potential spotlights in this room but he might go with 3 of these and the rest a more standard spotlight…

How cool do they look in situ……

And we did some window prep upstairs ready for paint spraying!!

The Wagner Control Pro 250m is ready to go too….check out our unboxing here…

And B&Q have 3 for 2 on paint at the moment which couldn’t have come at a better time!

Plus we realised that we needed a whole lot more paint for the first coat than we first thought! We ended up using 60 litres for upstairs! However, as we are using a paint sprayer, we have been able to avoid two coats…

What do you think to our outfits?! Suited and booted as they say!

And we are so pleased and relieved as to how easy it has been to use, and therapeutic might I add! The prep took longer than the actual painting in all fairness..

Check out how we are getting on so far in our YouTube video below.

Next up downstairs paint spraying!

Selfbuilddreamers

Caz and Andy x

Week 71 – Site Progress!

Annnnddddd the plastering is now finished woop!! All done by Friday and now it’s just drying out before we start painting next weekend…eek! The plasterer said we could probably leave it just a few days before making a start on the painting, but we think we’ll wait…patience is key ha!

Love love love the landing area…this is going to be fun to paint though!

And we paid a visit to B&Q to buy some window prep masking film…3 packs of 20m should do it!

Plus, we quite like these tiles for the guest ensuite from B&Q, they should work well with microcement walls and also they don’t need sealing..bonus! It feels a little surreal to be actually picking the finishes; We have been planning for so long and bouncing ideas around, its still hard to believe that we’ll be living in the new house soon!

And window prepping, we’ve made a start on the fixed windows, but as we want to open windows, to dry the plaster, we’ll wait until the end of the week to do all of the prep….

Quick note as well, we have been experimenting with sanding and staining a parquet unfinished hardwood flooring…the before and after look pretty impressive, however we really need to calculate the time to do this rather than going for a finished wood…watch this space for more!

Selfbuilddreamers

Caz and Andy x

Week 70 – Site Progress..plus we have a front door!

Busy week plastering, and wow what a difference it makes! Also Andy has been fitting some of the borgos before plastering in our bedroom…

Plus..the big one…the front door arrived! Yaassss! And wow I love it, I was so nervous that there might be something wrong with it or the colour might not be quite right, but it’s perfect!

And now for the cover up while we do all the messy jobs…its ready for Halloween ha!

Loving our bedroom/dressing room/ensuite….

And, one of the plasterers can actually do microcement too. If you are unfamiliar with this, it gives a similar finish to the plaster. I actually love the peachy tones of the plaster so I might have something along these lines in my ensuite, together with terrazzo tiles (siena finish)

And we’re going to do the guest ensuite in one of the greys…just need to pick one! It is around £80 per square metre

And that’s it for another week! Week 71 should see the completion of the plastering and then we can make a start on the painting once the plaster has dried out. Andy’s uncles’ farmer friend should be dropping off a skip this week too so we can get rid of all the rubbish outside…cannot wait to do this!

Selfbuilddreamers

Caz and Andy x