My Flat in Progress: March 2017

Time for another DIY update!

In March my flat took two steps forwards and one step back, as we ticked a whole bunch of DIY jobs off the list but also uncovered some new ones that needed doing - which was, as I'm sure you can imagine, rather frustrating.

We swapped the bright pink blind in the kitchen for some plain but functional curtains, plus voiles for privacy (because if I can see into the kitchens of the houses across the way they can definitely see into mine).

The curtains were a great find, really thick and cheap as chips as they'd been discontinued and heavily discounted. We hung them up quickly without taking the time to properly pull the cords and I am slightly embarrassed to admit that a year later this is a task that remains undone! I shall have to add that to my To Do list.

The purple blind in the spare room got replaced with lovely grey curtains and more voiles (which had been sticking out from below the curtains like this for a whole year until writing this blog post shamed me into finally turning them up)...

 

... and we took down the old curtain track from the living room bay window to give it a good scrub (which it very much needed!) so we could save a few quid and avoid buying a new one.

 

After sanding and filling them in February, we painted the window frames in the living room a lovely fresh gloss white which made them look so good that I still actively enjoy dusting them (this probably makes me a total weirdo, doesn't it?).

Elsewhere we put up new smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms, cleaned doors and scrubbed windows, and I got a new (actually waterproof) shower curtain (after discovering, via puddles on the bathroom floor after long showers, that my previously purchased shower curtain was only "water resistant").

Juggling work and life and DIY continued to be a bit chaotic, with the spare bed under a dustsheet...

 

... the landing full of craft supplies...

 

... boxes piling up in my bedroom...

 

... and DIY detritus everywhere.

Running my business was also still an interesting challenge, as my work and my home renovation competed for time, space and daylight. It led to some funny moments though, like the morning when I photographed one project while my dad was sitting on the floor next to me painting skirting boards, each of us carefully trying not to bump into the other!

As well as painting the skirting boards in the living room, we painted over the replastered areas of the living room walls (see February's post for in-progress pics), began painting the wall surrounding the window... and discovered a whole other section of wall in need of some TLC.

Then (most frustratingly) we made the error of saying "all we need to do now is paint the skirting boards and we'll be able to get carpet down in the spare room!" and immediately discovered more plaster in need of repair.

Working on a big project like this - doing a bit here and a bit there and finding new tasks to add to your list along the way - it can sometimes feel like you're not making any progress at all. But slowly, gradually, you're moving towards the finish line... and looking back at these photos makes me realise how far we've come already!

I'll be blogging about the rest of our Spring 2017 progress sometime soon. In the meantime, follow the links to catch up with December & January and February.

My Flat in Progress: February 2017

If you've been reading my blog for a while you might remember that I moved to the seaside about a year ago and bought a flat. It was a big change, and an exciting one!

I'm living walking distance from the beach, which is amazing - I've been on so many walks since moving here and have started actively pining for the sea if I'm away from it for too long. My flat is a bit of a fixer-upper, though, and we (myself, with lots of help from my parents) have lots of projects to do to get it looking at its best.

We had a busy few weeks after I first moved in, cleaning everything, buying loads of important stuff like lightbulbs and a fridge and a new loo seat, and making a start on the decorating and DIY. Click here to see what we got up to!

February continued to be pretty DIY-focused and slightly chaotic. I was living out of boxes, with everything piled up in a corner of my bedroom next to two single beds (one for me, one for whichever of my parents was visiting that week), while we worked on the living room and spare bedroom.

Every time my parents came to visit, they brought me a few more boxes of my stuff (which was mostly still in storage at their house) or a bit of furniture. Moving in gradually like this meant I didn't have to spend money on a moving van, but also meant we had plenty of space to work on the messy DIY without worrying about where to put everything.

 

Juggling my creative business and my home renovation project was tricky at times and led to some interesting photo set-ups! (If you're curious, you can see the photos I was taking here and here).

 

This is one of the ways I was really lucky to have my parents helping me out - I'd put in some hours working towards a deadline, then join them in whatever bit of DIY we were working on that day. Together we moved everything forwards much, much quicker than I would have done on my own even if I had the skills to work solo on this stuff (which I do not). 

February was all about the walls.

The walls in the spare room were like the surface of the moon, lumps and craters everywhere, which took a lot of hours of filling and sanding to get looking smooth (god bless my dad and all the dust-covered hours he put in with the sander).

The spare room went from looking like this (on the left is how it looked when I moved in, on the right how it looked mid-filling)...

... to this. New light shade, freshly painted white walls, and new new wall vent (the new vent we'd fitted in January turning out not to be sturdy enough for the strong winds we get here on the coast!). Still lots to get done, but "finished" enough to serve as an actual bedroom for my first official houseguest!

 

We also filled and sanded bits of the living room walls, and my dad did a bit of replastering.

Was it fun discovering patches of the wall that needed replastering? It was not. Did it give me anxiety looking at this corner of my living room when it looked like that? It absolutely did.

It was a great relief getting everything patched up neatly!!

 

After I'd photographed those rather fabulous paint layers, of course.

As well as sanding, filling, replastering and painting assorted walls, we started prepping the window frames in the lounge (more filling and sanding)...

 ... and (after much online browsing and umming and ahhhing about prices and features) I bought some new appliances: a vacuum cleaner (I'd been borrowing my parents' hoover before then), and a washing machine. I was so excited about the washing machine I took a photo of the ceremonial first wash, haha.

 

As you can see, we patched up the underside of the kitchen counter a bit before installing the washing machine. The cabinets in my kitchen are not in great condition and are so musty that I'm not actually using them. I have a couple of shelving units standing in a corner instead, and the rest of my kitchen stuff packed up in crates.

It's not ideal, but - just like camping dormitory style surrounded by boxes, and doing photoshoots on a dustsheet amidst DIY chaos - it's only temporary and will be totally worth it in the long run!

More flat updates coming soon...

My Flat in Progress: December & January

A couple of weeks before Christmas I made a big change: I moved across the country (to the seaside!) and bought a flat. Since then I've been busy with lots of DIY and new-home admin and cleaning... as well as buying what feels like half the contents of our local branch of B&Q! I'm incredibly lucky to have my parents helping me out, gifting me their time and expertise and giving me lifts to the shops, but there's still a lot to do between us.

As this is going to be such a big ongoing project in my life for a while, I thought it might be nice to do an occasional blog post about how my flat is progressing. I've been taking lots of photos of all the changes we're making and I thought it might be fun to share some of them - I hope you'll enjoy following along in the coming months.

Moving day: using a box as a makeshift table for our first cups of tea!

The first of what will no doubt be many bits of flatpack furniture from IKEA (I love IKEA).

I shared this pic a few days after I moved in because it made me laugh that I had hardly any furniture and no fridge or cooker but I did have a big pile of handmade blankets. Priorities. I'm moving all my boxes and the few bits of furniture I own gradually, so I can live out of part of the flat while decorating the other rooms.

In the first few weeks after moving in we did lots of cleaning and I bought what felt like all the things: everything from paintbrushes to curtains to an ironing board to sandpaper to a plug for the bathroom sink.

I won't bore you with the full list (it's a very, very long one!) but I also bought a new thermostat (wired in by my dad, what a star), a fridge/freezer (and a cooker! hurrah!), some super energy-efficient LED lightbulbs (which also look much nicer than those old long ones), and some moisture-absorbing thingummies to help prevent damp (weird looking but very effective).

Mostly though I have bought DIY equipment, which is starting to take over the place.

The flat has some lovely old features, like the doors...

... and some less lovely newer features! Yes, that is an iron mark on the carpet. Luckily it's a carpet I was planning on replacing anyway.

My mum has been gradually painting the living room white - she is a whizz with a paintbrush and is happy to paint pretty much anything as long as you keep her well-supplied with cups of tea. We're cheating a bit by painting over the wallpaper in the living room instead of stripping it but after several coats it looks pretty good.

It's amazing how much lighter and bigger the room looks replacing the light grey with brilliant white. It all looks very bare at the moment but this is a blank canvas for all my colourful stuff, not the beginnings of a new minimalist lifestyle. I'm quite excited about the possibilities of those alcoves!

We've also started prepping to decorate the spare room: filling and sanding the walls and replacing the wall vent.

We've made lots of little changes too, including: updating the light fittings and adding simple white shades; putting up a new white curtain rail, some thick curtains and some sheer voiles in the bedroom; giving the radiator in the living room a fresh coat of paint (and cleaning inside and behind it too - those things trap so much dust!); and moving one of the bathroom mirrors to a wall with better light.

Oh, and I'm not going to show you a photo of my new loo seat but: I got a new loo seat! I never thought buying a loo seat would make me happy, but it totally did! We also put up a shower rail in the bathroom, bought a new shower curtain which turned out to not be entirely waterproof (not great), took down an old cabinet, and painted over the lilac bathroom walls with more white paint.

Not bad for a month and a half, right?

Sewing Station

I've been busy sewing lots of Christmas ornaments - and writing those tutorials. The second one will be posted very soon but in the meantime here's a quick snap of where I'm working today (in the corner of our kitchen) ... quite tidy for me!