Happy things

Previous posts might lead one to believe we're not enjoying ourselves, but please, do not be deceived! We are having a great time. Including:
Nice creamy pasta made on our most beautiful of stoves:

From Briar Crescent

Relaxing with a bit of wine, grapes and cheese in the lounge:

From Briar Crescent

And starting to plan (and discuss heatedly) the decorating plans:

From Briar Crescent

[I love the shade, although we didn't quite realise the material it was made out of, resulting in 'Well, bummer! It's plastic!' when it was unwrapped]

De-dusting

Now that we've officially moved in, two main concerns have presented themselves:

1. Everything's in boxes! And, unfortunately, our packing style is haphazard at best....
2. We're reluctant to unpack boxes considering the sheer amount of dust & dirt still filling the house.

So, in an effort to speed the unpacking, we've tackled the living room floor. Phase 1 was undertaken with a naive optimism and consisted of hand mopping. The result seemed suspiciously as though the dirt had merely been spread around.
Phase 1 results:

From Briar Crescent

For Phase 2, we were better prepared: new mop, multiple mop heads and sparkling wine. L. and I worked out an assembly line--L. mopped a foot-square area, brought the mop to me, I put on new mop head, L. mopped, I cleaned the old mop head. Rinse & repeat. The results on our test area were promising, so Phase 2 was a larger-scale implementation of the processes trialed in Phase 1, with the addition of scraping off by hand the large clumps of plaster and pulling out extraneous staples and nails.
Phase 3 results:

From Briar Crescent

Now, it might not look like much, but we can actually see the floor now. And I'm sure the air is cleaner already....

Big progress and new additions

Thursday's post reflects the despair of being abandoned, but today's post is all good news. The plasterers descended on Friday, and by the end of the day, the living room was bare bricks no more, the ceiling had been fixed in the kitchen and even the living room ceiling had been skimmed! Incredible! These men are machines! Tea-guzzling machines! And their work is beautiful. The walls are so lovely and smooth and flat.

Even better, L. has apprenticed himself out to the plasterers and seems to have really mastered the art of bonding. I am well impressed and hoping he'll get the hang of skimming so we can redo the hallway soon...

The plasterers found time for us today, so we have two guys here madly trying to finish things off. The downstairs looks like it's almost done, so it looks like we'll be painting next weekend! (Now, if only L. and I can agree on the colours....)

But the biggest news of the weekend is that we've officially moved in. Every last bit of our worldly possessions are piled around us in our lovely, very-shabby chic home. Also, we went to the Recycling Centre shop on Saturday and found not one, but two beautiful dressers (one with a ship!), a chest of drawers and a lovely little cabinet. They were all delivered the next morning for a mere £14. Reusing couldn't have been easier.

Lukas's handiwork:

From Briar Crescent

The state of the living room:

From Briar Crescent

Recycling family portrait:

From Briar Crescent

Close-up of the ship:

From Briar Crescent

Charting progress

Yesterday ended on a high--we went to the house, and Sean-the-plasterer had finally done something besides loose our keys. In fact, he had plastered the whole of Bedroom 1. This morning, predictably, took a dive. Sean-the-plasterer is our plasterer no more. So, today was spent madly scrambling to find someone who could come in to plaster ASAP. We seem to have found a team for tomorrow, but from then, they're 'booked up 'til Christmas', apparently. Bare bricks are stylish, no?

The gas central heating chap came by to collect money, connect the last radiator and talk us through our amazing boiler and control box. I do like to be warm, and I think I scared both GCH chap and Lukas with my gleeful excitement. ('WOW! It's warm! That's AMAZING! The radiators are beautiful, don't you think?')

Also, we set up Bedroom 1 so we could move into it on Sunday according to plan. Of course, we were planning on having it painted before we moved in, but at least the bare plaster is about the same colour that Lukas is pushing for on the walls.

Freshly plastered:

From Briar Crescent

From Briar Crescent

Ready to move into, council estate style:

From Briar Crescent

From Briar Crescent

The inevitable crash

As one would expect from the manic past few weeks, the crash has come. Just a momentary one, I'm sure. We got used to things moving so quickly and significantly (electrics--necessary, heat--necessary), but now we seem to have stalled in the superficial (plastering--necessary?). For two whole days we've been waiting for some progress beyond bags of plaster piled in the living room. For two whole days I've shown up at the house, camera in hand, excited to see the progress. Yes, I realise, only two days. Tomorrow, undoubtedly, things will be better.

Thinking ahead

While we're not quite at the stage to be putting up light shades, now is the time to start collecting things, it seems! (Ingenious ideas found on Apartment Therapy, original site, Das rote Paket)

[White plastic flower pots]

[Tennis racket]

[Bits of paper]

All about the fireplace

The fireplace dominated our weekend. Being too cheap to get the professionals in (and mostly convinced that it isn't really asbestos), we stocked up on rubber gloves, masks, duct tape, and google. The major linchpin in our de-asbestos-fying plan was, of course, the disposal of the suspect material. Fortunately, the local recycling centre accepts certain kinds of asbestos by prior arrangement. 'Prior arrangement', it turns out, is a quick and easy call to receive specific instructions about the bags to be used (two plastic bags, heavier than your standard-issue rubbish bags and securely sealed) and to establish which day we'll be coming and what our car's registration number is.

The actual tearing down of the backboard was a bit of a let down. I expected pieces flying around dangerously and fibers dancing in the air. Instead, it was a relatively simple procedure, with the board coming apart in only a few pieces. Board was placed in bag, which was securely duct taped and then placed in another bag, which was duly duct taped as well. The double bagging and hurried taping definitely made the disposal more satisfying. Which is good, because dropping the waste off was also surprisingly easy. They didn't even double check our registration number!

Lukas and I debated all through this process whether we wanted to put the gas fireplace back in or have an open fire. Lukas, it turned out, had his heart set on this roaring open fire. You can imagine his profound disappointment, then, when not one, but two of our builder friends promptly crushed his plans with the definitive, 'Oh no! Open fires are definitely not allowed in current health and safety regulations.' Poor Lukas.

And it was poor Lukas this morning as well when we drove half an hour to pick up a fireplace surround I'd bought off ebay for a killer price. I'll not bore you with the details as the entire incident can be boiled down into three sentences: 'That'll never fit in the back of the car!' 'Of course it will!' It did....eventually....

Asbestos?

From Briar Crescent

From Briar Crescent

Completely cleared

From Briar Crescent

...but sadly not destined to be an open fire

From Briar Crescent