Project Build-up
For starters, the situation with the neighbours is not better. The city council (which they rent from) came by and boarded up their front windows; now we really look like we live next door to squatters. Apparently neighbour-lady is out of the hospital now, because I saw her sitting on her front stoop, looking like shit, yesterday. Her darling son is home too - already there is screaming and yelling coming through the wall.I've been in contact with the council, informally. They want us to start logging formal complaints. Basically, as I mentioned before, we're hesitant to formally complain because these complaints are kept on permanent record; future potential buyers would have access to this information. In my opinion, the council is notorious for not producing results; so why make resale potential worse for ourselves when nothing will be done about it? What do you think? We're waiting and seeing.
The renovation is slow going. The living room is back to normal, with the lovely new fireplace installed! We have a few small touch-ups to complete (like re-gluing a few sections of ceiling paper that came loose when we painted and fitting a couple tiny bits of baseboard. I also have to find curtains. But we're pretty much done!
The entranceway/stairway/landing job is a different story. I wanted a very light, hint-of-green colour, but not pastel, not too bright and definitely nowhere near MINT. I chose something called 'Almost Sage' that seemed to cover these requirements. Unfortunately it should probably be renamed 'Florescent Sage' because it's super bright and all wrong for this small space. Plus, with all the punchy colours already present in our house (bright yellow kitchen and office; blue spare room; brown toned living room) I think adding another is not a good idea. So this weekend the plan is to repaint in 'Magnolia' which is the same creamy tone we used on the upper half of our living/dining room. I forsee many more weekends of work ahead.
Plus, now we're adding to the list of projects and we haven't even finished round 1! This is because we ran into some trouble with our boiler/insulation company. They quoted us a fixed price for the whole meal-deal, then when their insulation contractors came by for their survey we were informed that scaffolding would be necessary, which would add 300 quid to our fixed price. Um, no. I promptly informed our company that we would be shopping around for other offers - at this point he seemed a lot more flexible with negotiating the price, but I'm shopping around nonetheless.
I've had another surveyor in today. In fact, this company apparently wouldn't need scaffolding at all - which would be a 300 pound savings. What's more, their base prices for insulation are cheaper to begin with. Riccardo is also intrigued because apparently we can have our loft hatch enlarged and fitted with a folding ladder as well as a partial loft floor (for storage) and lighting installed for just 350 quid. Riccardo's been wanting that for a while, particularly because the current loft hatch is about 1.5x1 foot - I think I wouldn't even fit up there; haven't tried to save myself the embarrassment. But as if this is not enough... this gets Riccardo thinking it might be good to convert the loft into a full-on room (with skylights and plastered walls and, and, and...) while we're at it! Ahhhh!
Well, we did buy this house because it was full of possibilities.
Anyway, I'm not stressing. In fact, I'm off for a Girls' Night with friends from work and Uni tonight. YAY!
Sounds like you guys have your work cut out for you! Can't wait to see pictures of the finished product:) Hope you have a fun girl's night out!
Love ya