Whilst everyone else gorged on Easter eggs and roast dinners, we spent Easter Weekend cleaning. Armed with Zolflora, sugar soap, Fairy liquid and my personal favourite de-greaser, Vanish Oxy Action, we cleaned everything. We went through about 3 pairs of rubber gloves each and countless black bags. The house smelled horrible, all full of smoke and like nobody cared about it. Walls,skirting boards,ceilings were scrubbed to within an inch of their lives. We hand picked muck off the carpets,then hoovered like mad. In the end,we ripped all the carpet up and taking it to the dump was the most satisfying thing in the world.
Front room:
You can see the paint still drying in that one!
Dining room:
Staircase:
Master bedroom:
Hallway from master bedroom to bathroom:
And back the other way:
Second bedroom, bye bye Pink Palace!
Lovely child's graffiti in the cupboard. Amongst the scribblings in there it says 'GIRS RULE'. Of course they do.
As I said before,we realised that cleaning wasn't enough. We needed to paint the walls. We had made a pact not to decorate yet because we didn't know what colour schemes we wanted in the house yet. So,we went for magnolia. I've always lived in rented properties, my Mum had accommodation as part of her job and I grew up in two different 'job accommodation' places, I rented at university, we've rented a flat and then a house over the last 6 years. All of which were covered in magnolia walls. I told myself that I would decorate my house with real colours and it would look magnificent and here I was, frantically plastering magnolia all over my new house just so I could feel at home. Irony!
By the time we moved out of our rented house on the 12 of April we'd made some progress inside. Besides the bathroom (which was being renovated anyway) and the kitchen (the job was simply too epic!),everything was clean and the majority of the upstairs walls and ceilings were painted. We couldn't fit everything in storage so some furniture and bits and bobs came to the house. Dare I say, we started to feel quite positive!
I wasn't big on taking photos at the beginning, because I genuinely found the process traumatic. I never wanted to remember. But I took the odd snap here and there and I am glad I did because it does give a timeline and a measure of progress. Here's how it started looking after our clean up:
Front room:
You can see the paint still drying in that one!
Dining room:
Staircase:
Master bedroom:
Hallway from master bedroom to bathroom:
And back the other way:
Second bedroom, bye bye Pink Palace!
Lovely child's graffiti in the cupboard. Amongst the scribblings in there it says 'GIRS RULE'. Of course they do.
What's interesting now is I cannot stand the smell of Zoflora, something I previously liked and we used in vast quantities to make the house smell better. I used some the other weekend when cleaning some furniture before upcycling and it made me very unhappy! Funny how the brain works. I also feel irate when I see masking tape,we must have gone through 20 rolls of the stuff,easily.
We had a plan at this point. In order to get a shower fitted in the bathroom we needed to change the central heating system from a system boiler to a combi boiler, this would allow us to take out the massive water tank in the bathroom to get a shower in, or move the bathroom around to fit a shower over the bath - either way we'd put in a whole new bathroom. And we'd put in a new back door and bathroom window. Then we'd get new carpets fitted, try to patch up the kitchen as best as possible and move in. If only it had been that simple...
We had a plan at this point. In order to get a shower fitted in the bathroom we needed to change the central heating system from a system boiler to a combi boiler, this would allow us to take out the massive water tank in the bathroom to get a shower in, or move the bathroom around to fit a shower over the bath - either way we'd put in a whole new bathroom. And we'd put in a new back door and bathroom window. Then we'd get new carpets fitted, try to patch up the kitchen as best as possible and move in. If only it had been that simple...
