Trip to IKEA and YouTube commenters!

 

I had a lovely day with my DIL, my eldest son's wife visiting IKEA in Glasgow.  I had a list and I stuck to it!!  I knew exactly what I wanted to see and what I wanted to buy.  I got a table and chairs for my kitchen.  It's Pinntorp, a gateleg folding table.  It fitted the space I had perfectly!

My DIL helped me build it.  We're both pretty handy with DIY so table and chairs were built in a couple of lazy hours.  It extends easily to seat at least 4 maybe more at a pinch.  I don't do big family dinners any more so I don't need a big table.

Ignore the 'mess' on the left hand side as I quickly moved stuff to set the table up.  But I'm thrilled with it especially as it leaves me room to fit in a second freezer!! 🎉 I make my last car payment this month so there will be some extra cash in the budget next month!!  I really miss having a big freezer so 2 wee ones will have to do.  More space to store bargains 😊

Thanks for all your lovely comments on my YouTube adventures.  As of tonight I now have 871 subscribers!  And the £1.76 video has had an astonishing 11K views!!! On the whole the commenters have been really supportive but I actually laughed and even put a 😂 in my reply to the woman who said she hoped my food was rotten.  Someone else commented on my £400 mixer (I'm assuming she thought I had a brand new Kitchen Aid and not a knackered 18 yo Kenwood!!)  And someone thought if I can afford to shop in M&S I shouldn't be using the food waste shop.  It's as if they didn't even watch the video!!! 😂😂😂 

New handles

 

It's been bugging me since I moved in that the 3 doors in my small living room all had different coloured and shaped handles.  One was even on upside down and the tubular latch had been removed.  No idea why!

So today I replaced the latch (don't look closely if you're a joiner!!) 😂

And I fitted new handles to the door that leads into the hallway and stairs.  This means I can close this door properly when I have to answer the front door and keep Luna safely in the living room.  The handles are just from B&Q (Breage is the design) and costs £25 for a pair.  The design is very ergonomic and actually feels nice when you hold it.  It'll cost another £50 to do the other 2 doors so hopefully I can get them done soon.  In the past when I've tried to match light sockets and switches throughout the house they stopped making the design I used.  So I don't want to wait too long, just in case!

I made another video while Luna was at daycare.  I was practising my editing skills on this one.  I can't believe the response I've had on the first video and I've got an amazing 343 subscribers! 😮 Apart from one narky comment, everyone has been so lovely!

My DIL asked me if I had ideas for more videos.  I've got a few but if there's anything you think I should cover let me know! 😊

It's starting to look colourful!

 

While Luna was at daycare today, I finished painting the first wall and some of the woodwork.  I haven't painted the door yet as I was undecided on the colour and it needs a new handle.  You can see how dingy and grubby it is compared to the white surrounding woodwork!  I had a thought about painting the door the same Natural Calico colour as the walls.  I did a quick research and was delighted to discover that paint colour actually comes in Satinwood!  Hooray!!  So I did a wee click and collect order from B&Q on the way to collect Luna.  I'll paint the door next time.

My books are back in the bookcase, the orange is peeking through nicely. This chair will be reupholstered when I've saved up.  I'm thinking green velvet or similar.

My Harry Potter items are back on top but feels like something is missing.  It needs something else on the left hand side to balance the height of the books.  I'll have a think about that.

I'm planning on painting the radiator red to pick up the red roofs in the painting above.  I had ordered some samples of radiator paint from B&Q and they came today.

They come in sets of 6 in the same colour family.  This is the red set.  Costs £5 and was free postage.  I'll test them in situ before deciding which one although I'm leaning towards bottom right one.

This wee stool was painted in Annie Sloan's Emperor's Silk a few weeks ago and waxed.  I gathered up Luna's toys into a basket to keep them tidy but she keeps emptying it! 😂

I took the chance to give everything a deep clean and hoover while I had uninterrupted peace (Luna barks at the hoover!!)  It felt good to get that done.  My living room is starting to come to life with colour! 💖🧡💛💚💙💜

Making (slow) progress

 

Yesterday was Luna's first gotcha day!  It's hard to believe that it was a year ago this wee lunatic came into my life and turned it upside down!!

Exactly a year later barking at birds outside on the road at 8am on a Sunday morning!!

Today she went back to day care for the first time in 3 months!!  It was fab for me and I know she had a ball.  I was able to paint the wall behind where the blue and orange bookcase will stand.  It's now had 3 coats of Natural Calico (free from my Lovely Mum as she bought too much!)  Bits of it still look like it needs another coat.  That mocha colour is proving hard to cover!

I started the other side of the door into the kitchen and it's had 2 coats now.  It definitely needs another coat. 

It's taking shape slowly.  I've booked Luna in again for Thursday so will hopefully get the woodwork done too on that wall then the bookcase can be moved back and the books will go back in.  I've accepted I can only do a wee bit at a time so I'm not setting myself a deadline on getting the whole room finished.

I had hoped to do a wee bit of gardening today as well but it's rained heavily.  Yesterday my neighbour kindly came into my back garden and fixed some wobbly planks in the fence.  He had removed an overgrown vine from his side that was damaging my side and is adding more planks to his side.  So my fence will be nice and secure thanks to him and his son 😊

Tomorrow I finally get rid of the prepayment meters for my gas and electricity.  Hooray!!  I've already paid 2 months worth of direct debits so I'm building up some credit for the Winter already.  I'll have a Smart meter so will hopefully be able to monitor my energy usage more closely.

Orange and blue

 

Here are the almost finished bookends.  I think they need another coat of wax.  The Harry Potter figures are temporarily fixed to the holes but you get the effect.  Pre painted cast iron bed thingies HERE.  The bookends are to hold my HP books which will sit on top of the blue and orange bookcase beside a painting of a niffler.  In case you didn't know, I'm a huge Harry Potter fan!!! 🪄

The bookcase is painted and varnished.  I had the bright idea 😱 to paint the wall behind it before I moved it back into place and put all the books back.  Yeah, that's a much bigger job than I thought!!  It's going to take several coats of paint to get rid of that brown/mocha/coffee colour!  You can see the painting where I got the orange and blue inspiration.

I'm trying to do some 'nice' crafty things in between the hard graft bits so I don't get too scunnered by doing it all on my own.  

Painting and digging

 

I'm a bit at a standstill until I get my new shed put up as all my main DIY stuff is still packed away in boxes buried deep at the back of the spare bedroom.  But I ordered some paint any way and managed to find some random paintbrushes.  Yes that's bright pink kitchen cupboard paint! 😉

The bookcase has had one coat of Annie Sloan chalk paint in Giverny blue.  It's much brighter in real life.  It'll get another coat and then finished with wax to protect it. The inside and shelves will be orange.  Barcelona orange to be exact! But I'll need to decant all the books first 😂

I'm using some old cast iron bed supports as book ends so they've just had a first coat of orange. They're really heavy!  I love chalk paint as there's no prep and you can literally paint anything!

Outside, I've been digging out the existing border in my back garden.  It was so full of weeds and no plants at all!  The right hand corner wasn't too bad but as I've got over to the other side I've found some old rotting membrane under the weeds.  I knew it was there as Luna has been ripping off the bits sticking out and chewing them!!

Both my brown (compostable garden waste) and black (non recyclables) bins are now full so I've laid the offending membrane on some cardboard to dry out so I can maybe pull off more of the plant material.  If the bins are too full or too heavy they won't get emptied!! 

I'm planning to fill the border (once I've painted the fence) with the plants I brought from my old garden and maybe just a few from bargain corner too!!

A quick bathroom fix

 

The shower screen in the bathroom is useless.  It has a 1cm gap at the bottom and just isn't big enough to stop water splashing out all over the floor.  And I was being really careful!  So I decided to get a shower curtain instead.  Isn't it pretty?!  I used one of those tension no drill rods so we'll see how long it stays up!!!

I did try to take the glass screen down but the screws are so rusted in and it just wouldn't budge.  I can swing it out the way against the wall though.  It just fits neatly beside the heated towel rail which was once chrome but someone painted white.  Badly! 🙄

The sealant around the bath was very dodgy so I've covered it up with a sticky caulk strip.  It looks better but again I'll see how long it lasts.  Just a few quick DIY fixes so I can have a shower or a bath without flooding the floor!! 🚿🛀

Costs: shower curtain £11.99, shower rail £20.87, sealant tape £7.99 for 2 x 3m rolls (I only used 1 roll)

Happy 1st birthday Luna!

 

Luna is one year old today!  It's hard to believe that she's completely healthy and all grown up.  She's now 26kg which is about the average weight for a female Lab her size/build.  She's booked in for her wee op next month so there will be no wee Lunas running about!!

Today she 'helped' me build a flat pack bookcase.  I've made a mistake putting a bit at the top that should be on the bottom and vice versa.  But to undo it would mean me taking the whole thing apart and that ain't happening for a decorative piece of wood!!  I'll maybe add a trim over it and call it a hack!  My plan is to paint it a bright colour, maybe orange or turquoise.  Paint samples are on their way!

But I have too many books and not enough space to build another bookcase anywhere else.  I need to cull some (I've already culled them by half before moving!) or find other ways to display them.  I have at least 2 more boxes upstairs plus the ones in my bedroom 😮

How much???

 

Have you seen the price of sheds???  Oh my goodness I went down a rabbit hole and know more about sheds than I thought I ever wanted to know!  I need a 7ft x 5ft shed.  That's the size of the slabbed area where the previous one stood!  At least I don't have to pay for that!  They range in price starting at around the £400 mark.  That's just for the shed.  Sometimes you need to buy the base and the floor separately.  You might need to pay extra for delivery.  And if you want someone to build it obviously that's extra too!

I considered a cheap one and I considered putting it up myself (I've built a small one myself before) but in the end I took Groatie's suggestion (huge thanks!!) of using a local company that build bespoke wooden structures.  Shed, delivery and construction in my garden is costing me £890.  I could have bought one from B&Q for a similar price so I'm really happy I'm supporting a local family run business.  My Lovely Mum gave me some money as a house warming present so I'm using that to pay for some of it.  It should arrive in 3 weeks!

Once I have a shed to store things, I can start to play Tetris with all the 'stuff' in the back bedroom then I can get started with the serious DIYing.  In the mean time I'll be stripping the wallpaper in the lounge and painting something in the kitchen 😉

Weird layout!

 

I rather like quirky and weird houses.  And the bungalow I'm really really interested in has a very weird layout.  One bedroom is off the lounge and the other is off the dining room.  It has the original 1970s pink bathroom (!) and someone has built on a porch/new entry with a full shower room.  Neither bathroom is anywhere near a bedroom.

I've got a viewing appointment next week (there are no viewings until then) so the timing is good for me to get this house ready.  I've read the home report very carefully and it needs a lot of work.  New windows, new kitchen, new bathroom, loft insulation, new boundary fence etc etc  It's been owned by the same person since 1972.  That's why it's in my price range.  It would be a huge project.  But I won't know if it's worth it until I see it.

Just for fun, how would you reconfigure the layout on a budget? My first thoughts are knock through the kitchen into the dining room creating a larger dining kitchen and build a new wall to create a new entry into the second bedroom.  Then knock through into the pink bathroom to create a master bedroom with en suite.

Or knock through the kitchen into bedroom 1 to make it the dining kitchen.  And turn the dining room into a bedroom.  Ooo, the possibilities!! 

Huge thanks for all the positive vibes!  I really appreciate it. Keep them coming 😊

Some DIY at last!

Luna was at puppy day care today so I finally made a start on the wallpaper in my craft room.  I decided not to do the feature wall using the flowery wallpaper I bought last year and will save it for my next house.

It's by Arthouse and it's called Summer Garden.  It's rather bold and maybe not to everyone's taste!  It comes in different coloured backgrounds (white, charcoal and grey.)  Mine is the grey colourway above.  

So I'm doing the whole thing in the boring wallpaper and leaving it unpainted.  It's quite thick so I hoped it would cover all the imperfections.  It's looking ok so far. 

I had only bought 2 rolls and used them up more quickly than I thought.  So I had to get more from B&Q HERE.  By the time I got them I was burst for the day, mostly from moving the furniture around like Tetris!!  It's already looking clean, fresh and rather bright which is what you want for potential buyers.

I've ordered some packing boxes, tape and bubble wrap.  They'll arrive tomorrow (Saturday) and I'll start packing up some 'stuff.'   It feels like I'm finally on the last stretch before the last big clean and tidy up for the marketing photos👍

December Dark

I'm finding the dark mornings of December hard.  The dogs still need fed and toileted at 7am but it feels like the middle of the night.  Because it's still dark I can persuade Luna to come back to bed after feeding her and I spend another hour or 2 in bed until it's light.  The dark evenings don't bother me, just the mornings where I struggle to get going.

I was woken up at 9am by the builders who had come to finish off the wee fiddly bits.  They were supposed to come yesterday 🙄 But the cladding and new guttering is now officially complete 🎉  The electricians came yesterday and did all the wee fiddly bits of electrical work I've been needing done.  The above light switch is on the wonk by about 1cm 🙈  It doesn't look too bad in the photo but it's obvious in real life.  I'm at the stage where I'm not going to sweat stuff like this any more.  I'll fill in the wee gap, paint it and leave it alone.

I got a Sainsbury's delivery this morning, a big one or so I thought.  Hopefully it will do me the rest of December with just a few bits 'n' bobs from M&S to buy.  As I was putting it away it really didn't seem like much food at all for just under £130.  And there were a few substitutions I returned.

Before and nearly after

 

It's nearly finished 🙄 The weather hasn't been kind to the guys working outside and they can't use sealant etc as the temps are too low for it it to cure.  But it's nearly finished (wee fiddly bits to add) and what a difference it makes.  Shame I'm not going to get to enjoy the benefit of it.  It had to be done as it would have been a 3 on the Home Report and a 3 for anything can lower any offers I get.

Other than that, not much else has been happening here.  Wrist is still sore so I'll need to go back for a second x-ray.  Luna is still being Luna so I'm looking at working with a behaviourist.  She still won't do the toilet outside, is a nightmare in the car and when out a walk, and the other day tried to hump poor Emma.  Time for some expert help especially as the puppy day care doesn't seem to be doing the promised training.  All she does is run wild with the pack so I don't think I'll be using them long term.

And I still haven't put up any Christmas decorations.  I'm just not in the mood yet 🎄🎅

Slow progress but progress!

Three years after the first bit of roughcast fell off, I'm finally getting the side extension repaired.  It's taken that long to get a reliable company to actually turn up and start the job.  3 different companies came, quoted, gave me a start date and disappeared into the void!  I know they had to have certain weather conditions but it dragged on for ages.  Luckily I didn't pay anything up front! In the end I gave up on getting it roughcast again and it's being clad instead.  Lots of houses round here have been clad recently so it won't look out of place.

Of course they've found more issues like a rotten windowsill and a cracked corner.  But all fixable.  They were supposed to start on Monday and be finished by today.  This is how it looks this morning. *sighs*  Good tradesmen are hard to find and we're really at their mercy as they're in short supply.  I am assured it will be finished 'within a couple of weeks' 🙄🙄

Luna was at puppy day care yesterday.  I think she was tired out!!  I managed to paint some doors and woodwork in her absence so progress is being made 😊

Finally some DIY!

 

I'm finally getting some DIY jobs done.  When I painted the kitchen I left out the splashback behind the gas hob, planning to tile it with some black mosaic tiles I've had for years.  I even bought black grout as black-on-black is rather trendy.  But it's too time consuming in my current circumstances so I'm just painting it and putting the heatproof glass splashback back up.  I'll keep the black tiles and grout for my next house.

The plaster was still bare so I did 2 coats of white this morning and then will probably do 2 or 3 coats of my Heart Wood colour.  I love this colour but it's a real pain to do decent cutting in around the cream units.  It's all a bit messy and I'll need to spend a lot of time neatening it all up.

Edited to add finished photo:

It's not great as the wall isn't flat making the screws stick out but it's done.  Just don't look too closely! 

Meanwhile Luna is becoming less clingy and will happily play or sleep in another room by herself for short periods.  I'll do as many wee jobs as I can while she does that and wait until her next puppy day care day to tackle some wallpapering!!  💪

Say aye tae a pie!

 

I made a pie using some of the turkey meat and some home grown veggies.  I think it might have been the best pie I've ever made!!  The pastry was made with half lard and half home made butter!  It was flipping delicious!!! 😋 It made 4 hearty and cheap portions.

I served it with some home grown sweetcorn.  The cobs weren't fully formed so I guess they weren't properly pollenated.  But they did taste lovely and sweet!

I had a few small potatoes lurking in the veg basket (my Maris Peer from the plot) so I grated them and mixed them with finely chopped onion (also from the plot) and made a large rosti style potato cake.  I've made smaller ones before and they were much crispier but this one was good too.

Today's been a day of 'getting things done'  in my countdown to putting the house on the market.  I've got someone coming to look at the external walls on the extension part of my house.  This is the side door into my utility room (we use this door all the time) and the window is my shower room.  The roughcasting was so badly done it literally started falling off in chunks!!  I've been let down by 3 different roughcasters who were supposed to come and repair the damaged walls.  One even removed all the loose stuff and left the grey bricks exposed.  It's been like this for 2 years.  I don't mind if trades folk can't/don't want to do a job, just tell me.  One even left a load of equipment (including a cement mixer!!) in my front garden for 6 months then it disappeared over night after several calls to ask when he was going to start!!

I've also been painting the window in my craft room and have got all my wallpapering stuff ready to get started.  I just need puppy sitters to let me get on with it now!!