Renovating my new house.

£15 · 13 Jul 2013 at 13:20

My house renovation.

I've been watching with great interest all the threads on people's house renovation projects and decided to start my own, documenting some of the work we're doing to our new house.

It's a 1930s semi, in-between Liverpool and Southport. A 3 bed, with drive and small gardens to front and rear. It's only our second house and another fixer-upper. The previous being a 2 bed, terraced town house with small yards front & rear. We lived there for over 12 years and expect to be here for at least that amount of time also. We out-grew the previous property (now have 3 kids) and it's taken a long time, with many hiccups, to get here. (Last house was on market for over 2 years.)

We moved in middle of May, so the timeline may be a little jumpy until I catch up.

I'll start with the work that's been going on most recently - an understairs toilet and network room.

Details and pictures to follow...

On that subject: All my pictures are on SkyDrive - what's the easiest way to insert/link to them? (I've never done it.)

I'll try sharing a folder for now. But I think I need to have the pictures showing in the thread, so I'll sort something out as soon as I can. At the moment, my son is pestering me for a water fight!

Brozart · 13 Jul 2013 at 19:13

I use tinypic or imgur, size 800x600. Then post the link they provide that starts with

Derek W · 13 Jul 2013 at 21:26

or use imgur.com upload then it gives you the BB code to cut and paste

£15 · 15 Jul 2013 at 17:23

Sorry for such an awful start to my thread. Pictures will be along shortly.

It's ironic - I'm too busy either earning the money to pay for the home improvements, or making the home improvements, to actually write about the home improvements. :rolleyes:

Edit: As an aside, as it's sort of related - I bought 4 Gorilla Tubs for doing clearance work. That is, rubble, soil, stones, plants, etc from clearing garden ready for new lawn, tiles from house etc. I got small, medium, large and x-large. I bought genuine ones as I was led to believe they'd be the best and very, very tough - the medium and large have both holed on the bottom. They're 4 weeks old and not had a hard life, I'm sure. Not impressed at all.

It's not all bad though. I bought them from the big 'A' and through an online chat session have replacements on route and get to keep the old ones as they're too big to send back.

(Although what I'll do with them is another matter!)

Nightglow · 16 Jul 2013 at 19:42

BadMojo said:
As an aside, as it's sort of related - I bought 4 Gorilla Tubs for doing clearance work. That is, rubble, soil, stones, plants, etc from clearing garden ready for new lawn, tiles from house etc. I got small, medium, large and x-large. I bought genuine ones as I was led to believe they'd be the best and very, very tough - the medium and large have both holed on the bottom. They're 4 weeks old and not had a hard life, I'm sure. Not impressed at all.

It's not all bad though. I bought them from the big 'A' and through an online chat session have replacements on route and get to keep the old ones as they're too big to send back. (Although what I'll do with them is another matter!)

Only four weeks old, had mine over three years, been well abused, one is used regularly for mixing plaster with a drill & paddle, & none have ever leaked, & none have holes yet.

As to the holes, get large rubber mats or similar & cut out circles to fit in the tubs, even though I have no holes, I still the rubber mat trick on a couple as the stones rubble can be abrasive & sharp.

£15 · 23 Jul 2013 at 22:41

I think that's what's happened - they had rubble in them and have been dragged across the floor and over edges of trailers, skips, etc. You can see scuff marks on the underside.

I'm using the damaged ones for the same sort of work (still clearing tiles/plaster from kitchen) but treating the new ones with kid gloves.

I've uploaded some pictures to Photobucket and will post a few links before I hit the sack. Again, sorry for the delay, but I've been working on the house, or working at my job, or sleeping! I have the electricians in at the moment for a full rewire and we've moved into my parent's house for duration. They love us and their grandchildren, but I'm sure they don't want us to stay too long.

I've started with pictures of the garden. Some of what it looked like when we were viewing (winter), then a few of it after we moved in (summer), then as we cleared it, then preparing the soil for turf which took a fair while. I turned it over several times, removing huge amounts of roots, stones, glass, clay and a few toy soldiers.

Some pre-turf fertiliser to finish the prep off and turf ordered. It was laid on a very sunny day, in quick time, as it was drying out so quickly.

Lots of waterings since and a few cuts and I'm really impressed with it.

There's also a few shots of the decking my dad & I made in the sunny corner of the garden. We've used it several times during the good weather recently for our evening meals. It's such a step up from the tiny yard we had in our last house.