More haste less speed

So I’ve not been very good at keeping my blog up to date lately. There’s just been so much happening, I’ve struggled for time. It does mean I have a few things I can tell you about though. So I’ll pick up where I left off with the tiling. The upstairs bathroom has, of course, now been finished. I actually stood in the bathroom the other week without shoes on. It may not sound like a big deal, but to actually walk around in my socks is big news for us at Number 18!! I love the upstairs bathroom just as much as I love the downstairs shower room. Our tiler has done such a fantastic job.

We’ve also put up the shower head in the downstairs shower room. We just need to get ordering the other things we need. Trying to find an oval shaped sink that doesn’t break the bank is driving me bonkers!!

We’ve painted the kitchen an off-white colour. I didn’t want to stick with white and wanted merely a hint of colour to keep the kitchen looking fresh. I really love the colour, it’s not quite grey, perhaps more biscuity. The fact the paint is called coconut juice makes it even more fabulous in my eyes.

 

We’ve also ordered the kitchen and it’s arriving tomorrow!!! Eeek! We did have a minor problem, but it’s worked out ok in the end. Turns out the kitchen I thought I wanted wasn’t lacquer gloss, when I want a high gloss kitchen. It’s a long story, but the crux of it is I only very narrowly escaped having a kitchen I would have hated all because I was trying to rush getting it ordered. I must learn to be more patient. So we had to go back to the drawing board and finally decided on a metrica gloss walnut kitchen by Mackintosh. It’s a slightly better spec than the Halvanto kitchen we were originally looking at, but we had it on offer so it actually came out a little cheaper. I cannot wait to see it arrive tomorrow!

Nadine x

Et voilà!

 

And here’s the finished kitchen and utility floors. Looking rather swish I think you’ll agree!? Now that the kitchen and utility floors are finished, Dan spent some time over the weekend sanding the cornicing in the kitchen. He’s going to finish the utility during the week and then he’ll prime the cornicing ready for painting. Once he’s finished painting, I’ll get started with painting the walls.

The downstairs shower room has been grouted too. You’ll notice we’ve gone with a brown grout for the mosaics. I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out – just like I imagined. The tiler has also started the bathroom upstairs, which could well be finished by the end of the week. I’ll keep you posted!

Nadine x

Ready. Steady. Go!

And we’re off! The first week back to work at Number 18 has started with lightening speed! But first I’ll rewind a little as I’ve missed out some progress that was made before Christmas. All of which was intended for far more detailed individual posts, so please forgive me.

The plumber returned to fit the boiler and hung the radiators upstairs. We are having a system boiler setup and the plumber will be returning again shortly to install the stand alone tank. We also chose the last lot of tiles which will be going on our kitchen and utility floor. We managed to get a bargain at £11 per square metre, so they didn’t break the bank!

Even with Dan working so carefully trying to hack off around the corbels and arch, it all came crashing down around him – not a good day at Number 18. For a split second pushing him off the ladder crossed my mind, I won’t lie. So after the plastering was completed Kayvic, a local plaster work manufacturer, fitted new corbels. We also attached a moulding to the arch to try and recreate what was there before.

At the same time, Kayvic repaired the cornicing in our lounge, dining room and a small section in the hall. Above is a picture of the cornicing before the repairs. It now requires a bead adding to it and once that’s been done I’ll share some more snaps. The cornicing isn’t the same in all of the rooms. The most ornate is in the lounge, and it’s this cornicing that we had a moulding taken of so that we could replicate it throughout the house.

Ok. So now I’ve brought you up to speed (I hope there isn’t anything I’ve left out), I’ll share what progress has been made over the last week. We’ve had both the tiler start and Kayvic back to put cornicing up on the ceilings in our kitchen, utility and hall landing. We will eventually put the cornicing up in all of the bedrooms upstairs. However, it’s not the cheapest and currently the savings pot won’t allow for bedrooms as well.

Now. On to the tiling, which is actually progressing really well. The tiler has been at the Casa for three days this week. So far he’s done a fantastic job and I’m looking forward to seeing the downstairs shower room finished. I know I say how exciting all of this is alot, but it really is. I love to see my home taking shape just how I’ve always dreamt it.

 

Downing tools for Christmas

This is just a super quick post, last one for 2014 – where has the year gone? As usual I’m very unorganised and I need to start wrapping presents pronto, but I just had to share! Dan has been to collect the two lots of mosaics that will be adorning the walls of our shower room and bathroom. I am so flipping excited I could scream!! The wine coloured mosaics will be covering the back wall of the shower in the downstairs shower room. The stone and gold mosaics will be used in the wall boxes and as a border in the upstairs bathroom. Feast your eyes on these beauties….

I am delighted with the tiles we’ve chosen, which won’t be in their boxes for much longer as the tiler is starting in the New Year! 2015 is going to be a very busy year for us in Number 18 and I’m raring to go! That’s after having a nice relaxing break over Christmas of course. I’m thoroughly looking forward to starting the day tomorrow with our family tradition of eggs royale, courtesy of my lovely sister, washed down with a glass of prosecco or two!

I hope all of my readers have a very merry Christmas.

Nadine x

The hunt continues

In the last few years my parents have built a new house and used polished travertine in all of the bathrooms, on the floors and on the walls. I love the bathrooms in my parents home and knew that I also wanted to use travertine in our bathrooms in Number 18. I just love the spa-like feel of natural stone and even though it’s quite modern, I can’t ever really see it going out of style. Marble would have been delightful, but my budget cannot stretch that far. That being said, at one point I resigned myself to the fact we were not going to be able to afford travertine either.

We searched everywhere for the travertine, but it was just too expensive wherever we went. One tile shop even told us that there was no such thing as polished travertine and that the shine came from the sealant you used. Hmmm. We were advised in another tile shop to use a porcelain tile lookalike. Even the price of porcelain tiles ranged from more than what I wanted to pay for a lookalike tile, to outright crazy!

It seemed we weren’t going to get the travertine tile for a price we could afford, except Dan is the champ of sniffing out the best deal. After a bit of searching online he came across Natural Stone and Timber, who more than halved the price of what we could find polished travertine tiles for locally. I must be honest, I was sceptical. The sample arrived and looked the same as my parents. sceptical I remained. The sample was so small, I worried that the quality of a full sized tile wouldn’t be up to much. Make sure it’s grade 1 dad kept telling us. Grade 1 it apparently was.

I wanted to see a full sized tile before committing to purchasing over 70 square metres and I forget how much the delivery was, but it was cheaper for us to make the trek and travel to the shop in Portsmouth to collect the tiles ourselves. We spent a delightful 7 hours on the road in total, there and back in one day. Always thinking of others, I kept Dan entertained by singing along to the radio – using the empty orange juice bottle from our Maccys breakfast as my mic, of course.

I had reservations about getting to the showroom only to see travertine tiles that weren’t grade 1 and was concerned the tiles may have large holes that had been filled. I hoped it wasn’t going to be a wasted trip. Turns out it wasn’t. I was so pleased to see there were no large expanses of fill and the tiles looked great! Winner! The van was loaded and we were away to go.

The singing continued throughout the return journey and then abruptly stopped when we got home. Unpacking the van wasn’t so much fun. Whilst Dan could carry four tiles at a time (each measuring 600 x 400 mm), I could manage one. And even then I was terrified I was going to drop one. I was so relieved to see my dad, and then our neighbours who very kindly offered to help carry the nearly three hundred tiles into the casa. I was then relegated to unpacking in the back of the van, removing tiles from the crate and making piles of tiles in readiness for the boys!

I’m completely thrilled that we managed to get the tiles we wanted for a great price and that we also avoided a porcelain imposter. The tiles are currently propped against the walls waiting for the tiler to start. I cannot wait to see them being laid.

 

Bargain Hunt

I told you in a previous post that me and Dan have started looking for tiles for Number 18. We’ve spent a lot of time wandering around all of our local tile shops and some a bit further afield, hunting for tiles to go on the floor in the kitchen and utility, wall and floor tiles for both bathrooms and wall tiles to go above the units in the utility.

We are still in the process of getting all of the tiles, but we’ve made decisions on what we want. Ok, I tell a lie – I’ve decided what I want. I’m lucky that Dan, in the main, leaves the interior design part up to me.

For the utility wall tiles, I decided I wanted something relatively plain and also fairly cheap. I then saw a picture of metro tiles and realised they were the exact thing I was going for. What I didn’t like was the average £40 a metre price tag they seemed to attract everywhere we looked. The utility is an area I planned to save money, not go mad. As you can imagine the savings pot is rapidly depleting, so every penny counts!

A few weekends ago whilst out searching for reasonably priced tiles, I stumbled across a clearance section. We had a mooch around, not really holding out much hope to find anything, but we were in luck. For £8.50 a square metre, there were the metro tiles I’d been hunting for! Two metres squared of tiles was enough to do the job, and have spare for breakages. At 17 bucks it was decision made. Don’t you just love a good bargain!?

 

In search of my dream green

During the week I spent one of my lunch breaks in my local B&Q perusing paint in search of the perfect green for my study. I don’t know how long it’s been there, as this has been my first trip to B&Q in many years, but we now have a rather snazzy Valspar counter. With around two thousand colours to choose from, there were rather a lot of greens on offer. I whittled down the seventeen tester cards I had in my hands. Yes that’s right – seventeen. I eventually settled on four colours that I purchased tester pots of to take home and slap on the walls… And then went back for a further three.

The  colours (in the pots) from left to right – back row first

1. Pressed Olive  2. Aloe Vera  3. Rainforest Retreat  4. Emerald Enchantment

5.  Cotswold Hills. 6.  Crocodile Style  7. Garden Glory

As you’ll know from my last post, I was rather taken with a certain pic I’d seen on Pinterest of an emerald green room with leopard print stools. Yet, having put the testers on the walls, I’m really surprised to be feeling rather underwhelmed with the emerald green. The olivey tones however, have exceeded my expectations! I’ll keep you posted on which hue I eventually decide on.

 

It’s a toss up

Things are getting really exciting at Number 18. We’re finally getting to the fun part of decorating!!! This is what I’ve been looking forward to all this time.

I’ve had so many ideas of what I wanted to do with Number 18. Viewing other fellow renovators blogs, home magazines and Google searches have all given me lots of ideas. Pinterest however, is my new best friend for decor inspiration. I just love how I can organise all of my pins on separate boards – I’ve found my inner Monica Gellar!

After being an avid reader of Abigail Ahern’s blog and having fallen in love with her new paint range, I knew olive green had to make an appearance somewhere in the house. I decided the perfect room for the olive green would be the study. That was until I started looking at other greens, mainly emerald green, and there’s one image (courtesy of Pinterest of course) that keeps catching my eye. A firm fave of mine is leopard print, which paired with emerald green makes me go all smushy.

I want the study to be as luxurious as it is practical. I don’t want to be reminded of my desk at work in any shape or form! So it’s time for me to get some colour on the wall and I’ll be making a trip for some tester pots this week!

Nadine x