Living Room Renovation!

Phate said:
I've spent 10k on mine so far, when I get back from holiday the only real effort left is new sockets in the living room and throwing a new floor in. The rest is just bits and pieces as and when.

My god it's been stressful though.
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Try completely gutting the place back to brick and timbers. Scary as hell when you see them ripping all the old ceilings down and taking the floors up! Also, knocking through the downstairs was terrifying to watch!

I agree that it can be a really stressful experience. It made perfect financial sense though, plus I have the place the way I want it with wiring, sockets, etc etc. 4 years here and I'll move methinks.
 
codec said:
tv on chimney breast
speakers either corner of the room
bookshelves either side of chimney breast

I'm not sure how your fireplace looked but if there was a hole I'd have kept it for storage.

if it's filled in, put a white shelf there to go with the book case below tv

edit: I used to have those speakers, can't remember how long the stock wires are.
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Think I would have done this, just had the hole blocked up and smoothed, plaster inside the cavity and put shelves in there for the sky box etc and chased the cables into the wall/up the chimney
 
PianoBasher said:
Try completely gutting the place back to brick and timbers. Scary as hell when you see them ripping all the old ceilings down and taking the floors up! Also, knocking through the downstairs was terrifying to watch!.
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Best way, works out cheaper in the long run, but it's amazing just how much rubble you make,even though I burnt a lot of the old timber, I still filled a 8yd skip with the old plaster, etc.

SilverTongue: Nice if you can make a feature of the fireplace & find a use for it.

And Phate, PianoBasher: It can be stressful, especially as you start stripping back a old old house, you usually find it brings other unexpected problems to light.

But, the finish results makes it all worth while in the end
 
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Evoss said:
The TV isn't centred :(
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I'm using something like this, it's in it's 'parked' position.

krooton said:
Not only that, it looks like it has been set at classic bad height of standing eye-level.
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GSXRMovistar said:
Aye, looks very high you ideally want it placed so the middle third of the screen is in line with your eyes from your regular viewing postion. Saying that you may usually watch tv standing up. :D
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Classic jump to conclusions :p the window cill is only 400mm off the floor and we haven't got uber cool sit on the floor sofas we have standard G Plan sofa, at most it could be inches too high
 
PianoBasher said:
Try completely gutting the place back to brick and timbers. Scary as hell when you see them ripping all the old ceilings down and taking the floors up! Also, knocking through the downstairs was terrifying to watch!

I agree that it can be a really stressful experience. It made perfect financial sense though, plus I have the place the way I want it with wiring, sockets, etc etc. 4 years here and I'll move methinks.
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I'm not trying to compete :p

Although if we had an upstairs I imagine thats what we would have had to do :)

So far we have done:

My room - completely stripped back to bare walls, installed new sockets and run the cabling then fully decorated.

Bathroom - completely 100% gutted and rebuilt
Kitchen - same as the bathroom

Living room I am in the process of stripping (see my 'I've broken the electrics in my house thread :p) as I have a plasterer and decorator coming in the next couple of weeks :)
 
Still got skirting to fit in three rooms, manage to get 80mtr of 100mm b/n mdf off Ebay for £30, but I still can't find a decent sliding mitre saw at a sensible price.

So, the skirting is still lying up the stair case, only place long enough for it to sit.
 
Phate said:
I'm not trying to compete :p

Although if we had an upstairs I imagine thats what we would have had to do :)
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Haha no competition. I just had no choice, sadly - it's an old house that had all lath and plaster partition walls and ceilings. The amount of mess that made was mental, it coated the whole road's cars with dust. Oops!

I agree with the unknown issues thing. Once you start hacking things away you can run into nasty surprises. It's why I ended up knocking through the downstairs as the load bearing wall was in a right old state (not even tied into the walls) and the guys practically kicked it down after they'd hacked away the plaster! The gaps at the end were stuffed with old newspapers??? :eek:
 
Mark A said:
Or simply mark the mitre with a square and then cut it by hand. Will probably get just as good a mitre as with a crappy sliding mitre saw.
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Don't forget loads of tubes of caulk :p also mistake I made don't try and gripfill and pin skirting to fresh plaster, at the very least mist coat first otherwise the gripfill only sticks to the latent and falls off later.
 
Ah! Gripfill brilliant invention, lost count how many tubes I've used for coving & skirting.

But, it's too good at it's job, used a few blobs to help support a small sink in a temporary position, come to move it last week, would it move, would it hell.

Will end up having to buy a another new sink.:mad:

Maccapacca: seen one of them, it's the roll royce of saws apparently, badly made & overpriced in my opinion, prefer my makita, bosch.
 
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Me, my dad and brother ripped out our living room chimney breast. One of the messiest jobs I've ever done and definitely not for the faint hearted. The amount of bricks, dust, soot, muck and all sort that comes out is unreal.

Rented a kangol to get through it all and even that was hard work as the thing weighed a tonne!

On the other hand, if you can deal with that its been a definite bonus as our living room has way more floor space as it was quite a big chimney breast.
 
Build something in the alcoves. I know you're not likely to do it, but having ripped out one of my two chimney breasts... I echo that it's a lot of work, very expensive and personally speaking, not worth it in the lounge (but arguably it is if the upstairs is a bedroom!).

Comparison of work involved across both lounges:

Lounge 1 - Chimney breast removal

Annoyingly I don't have a before pic. But things to consider:

Insane amounts of dust, I moved out for the week
You will have a hole in your ceiling, your floor, your coving and your skirts

1_1.jpg


1_2.jpg


1_3.jpg


1_4.jpg


Lounge 2 - remodelled for wood burner but key thing is I used the alcoves to build shelves

The bottom tier of the shelves will have a set of doors attached whilst the second shelf will hold a TV on the left and Sonos and speakers on the right.

2_1.jpg


2_2.jpg


2_3.jpg


Difference between lounge 1 and 2 is about £2k in labour. It also cost me £300 for a company to come and take a mould of my original coving and refit...
 
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Nightglow said:
Looking at your 2nd photo, you very lucky not having the rest of that stack coming down, or is it the camera angle hiding support metalwork.:eek:
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It's a semi, bricks are tied and feathered out of wall. Surveyor, builder and building control were happy enough! In fact, the guy doing the sums said it would likely be fine without support barring any hurricanes.

Still, when I drove back the next day I was glad it was still up :)
 
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