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The end of an era

We have finally got carpet a year after moving in and what a difference it makes!

The house began to take over our lives, which neither of us wanted so in came a professional to finish the last bits. He was great and decorated almost half of the house in the same time it would have taken us to pick up a paintbrush. Here are a few photos starting off with some before and afters of the second bedroom.


This fireplace had even more layers of paint than the main bedroom. Alan did most of the work stripping the paint, which is a horrible, horrible job.




Here is the landing before, during and after.

Here is the new mirror in the living room.

This next picture shows that we're still living in what looks like a building site. The dado rail has just been fitted and the decorator is due to start on either this Monday or a week Monday. I can't wait to get the carpet down afterwards.

Carpentry

Two carpenters were working at the house on Wednesday. We've had the dado rail fitted in the hall, stairs and landing and they've also fitted the frame and door for an airing cupboard in bedroom three. One of them will be back next week to finish the airing cupboard and fit the skirting in the kitchen.

We had thought that getting someone in to fit the dado was a bit lazy but now it is up, we're so glad we didn't attempt to do it ourselves. There are way too many corners or angles for us to get very wrong.

Now we're just waiting on the decorator to give us a date to start then we'll be able to order the carpet, which is a stage I thought we'd never get to.

Plumber, Carpenter & Decorator

Plumbing - Finished (almost) on Friday so we now have the water softener working, the cloakroom all plumbed in and the bathroom is just waiting on a replacement hose and thermostat valve, which were faulty.

Carpenter - We think we've got him booked into to do the dado rail in the hall stairs and landing and airing cupboard in 3rd bedroom for Wednesday but haven't yet had this confirmed.

Decorator - If the carpenter can do his work on Wednesday, we can book the decorator if we can decide on what we want. Am thinking Dulux Overtly Olive for the wall paper at the bottom and something like Natural Calico for the plain wall above.

Some finished rooms (now and before)

Here is our lovely living room. Quite a transformation from a year ago. All we need is a mirror to go above the mantle piece.


Here is the kitchen. This turned out way better than I could have imagined and we spend most of our time in here. It still needs skirting board and a proper pot for our big plant.

This is what it was like before.

And this is what it looked like at Christmas last year. Needless to say we weren't living here at the time.

The studio is finished!

So good to have another room finished. The flooring was fitted today and as you can see Alan has already started setting up his equipment.

And a view of what it was like before

We've just got to saw the bottom of the door off so we can rehang it and we're ready to rock!