extremely tack-full

The floorboards in the kitchen are getting ready to be sanded and varnished before the kitchen goes in - the small task of removing the tacks needs to be completed first and there are literally hundreds of them! They don't come up easily either so a long slog ahead of us and a pretty tight timeline before the guys come in to do the plumbing and kitchen! Only half way there.....

grey matter

Once all of the plaster was off the wall we then had the little matter of lots of bits of grey plaster and dust clinging desperately to the bricks! Out came the wire brush but after lots of brushing it still wasn't coming clean! Then our local DIY store recommended an amazing wire brush drill bit so the drill does all the hard work! So much easier - once it was all off we gave the bricks a good wash - ready to be sealed!

plaster masters

Before we can install the kitchen, we need to remove the plaster from the wall opposite the window - the exposed brick look should soften the gloss white kitchen! Easier said than done.....with our new plaster bolster and pretty impressive hammer we set to work taking off the layers of plaster - the original victorian grey plaster complete with horse hair and still very hardy!

floor tiles and concrete don't mix

we then took up all of the lino on the floors to the kitchen/utility and bathroom and prised up the very old floor tiles which were underneath. the kitchen has lovely wooden floorboards but the utility and bathroom is concrete! it was so tough to get them off the concrete but we managed it and after a good couple of hours of chiseling they're all gone! now to find new tiles to put down instead - although the surface is a little bumpy so not sure if we need to lay a screed or not first?!

roping in more friends

another weekend, another group of friends to enlist in 'the project!' - with many hands on deck we made light work of removing the rest of the wallpaper on the living room walls and getting rid of the kitchen units!

finding freebies

We walked down to the amazing organic deli on the lane to grab a sandwich for lunch and thought we'd check out the indoor market - leaning up against the wall was an amazing door with a sign on saying 'free door - take me home!'...so we did! I'd luckily already measured the door width for the kitchen/utility area and it was perfect! phew! so james had the task of carrying it home - lucky it's not far as it was so heavy!

woodchip is easy!

now that we've cracked this whole wallpaper stripping malarky even removing woodchip from the ceilings is easy!! we got most of it off it whole strips! amazing - and everyone said woodchip was a nightmare!! now the living room is nearly wallpaper free.

victorian paper

the living room had thick textured wallpaper which had been painted over so many times that it was totally solid - this did mean that it came off in big strips which was easy! Revealing some very very old wallpaper which is so thin it's basically part of the plaster underneath so think we'll have to leave it on - looks pretty cool though!

before and after

the bedroom is now totally stripped back and ready to fill in the cracks and make it all smooth and ready for lining paper - just one final wash with sugar soap and we're there! although decorating wont start for another few weeks it's still nice to know we've got one room done!

preparation is the key

the woodchip on the bedroom ceiling was a mammoth task but we bought some special wallpaper removal fluid from b&q along with a perforator and spent an hour preparing the ceiling. this tactic seemed to work quite well and we eventually got it all off along with the really tough bits of the walls - at least we're lucky and not all the ceilings have woodchip - well the kitchen doesn't!!

roping in friends

the bedroom walls were covered with 2 layers of painted wallpaper in a lovely shade of yellow. with the help of a steamer and a few volunteers the walls were cleaned back to the original plaster which is actually in quite good condition. phew! hard day's work followed by a beer in our new local - the east dulwich tavern! :)

discovering doors

on first glance we thought all of the doors were newly fitted modern doors - pretty characterless but not a 'phase 1' problem! But when we were ripping up the carpets we discovered that some of the doors were in fact the original victorian doors which had been panelled over! We've now found that we have the original doors for all but the two bedrooms which is great. So now we're skip hunting for the 2 missing doors to make the full set!

stairway from hell

the staircase was probably the most grim part of the house! the carpet was really damp and smelly and the walls are covered in horrid textured paper which is painted a sick mint green! When we started ripping up the carpets we discovered there were actually two layers of carpet which had been tacked down to the floorboards with hundreds of little tacks! A backbreaking day spent pulling it all up and getting covered with dust - but what a difference it made!

ripping up carpets

We ripped up the carpet in the living room pretty much immediately as it was smelly and very old! We were very luck to find the original hearth tiles and beautiful wooden floorboards! :)

keys

We finally got the keys today! - phew! In actual fact it was a pretty quick process in the end, 2 months from having our offer accepted to completion! (who knew you could simultaneously exchange and complete?!) So despite having the slowest solictor in the world we actually got in on the 31st March, just in time for the Easter weekend.