Installing Indoor Cat Tree

[Chicken Licken]

Hello all, Just thought I would share with you my DIY day before I head for bed. I stupidly thought that stripping the wallpaper from my kitchen would be a half day job - leaving time to paint the coving and ceiling and have a day off tomorrow - how wrong I was!! After 7 hours of wallpaper stripping I still have a wall to go - and not that big a kitchen! Lots of loose plaster too on the very elderly walls of my house - oh dear. Still the kitchen fitter finally arrives a week tomorrow so it does need doing. Still - I can think of better ways to spend my long week end!

[Karen & co.]

the preparation always takes longer than you think doesn't it

 

If it's any help we spent Saturday stripping wall paper, and need to go back tomorrow to do the rest as the plasterers are coming on a Bank Holiday

 

Just keep saying it will be worth it

 

karen x

[bronze]

If it makes you feel better Dh promised to finish our room over Christmas. I'm still waiting with a half bare room

[BeckyBoo]

my other half extended our house from 2 bedrooms to four, with an extra shower room, utility room, large kitchen, sounds lovely doesn't it? The bedrooms are finished but the upstairs bathroom has a hole in it from re routed plumbing and every romo downstairs needs finishing.

 

3 YEARS LATER

 

 

the delights of being married to a builder!!

[AnnieP]

Similar to here Mrs Bertie. We decided to do all second fix stuff ourselves on our extension. The builders left a year ago. We still have no kitchen! (that's an exaggeration, I have a sink, cooker and fridge) Now summer is here (she says as the rain hammers down), we have moved to the outside projects and nothing will get done inside until the autumn.

I loathe wallpaper stripping though! What a heinous job! It will be lovely in the end though!

[Egluntyne]

At least the weather forecast is poor so you may as well be indoors.

[chocchick]

I sympathise. I remember our rubbery bathroom wallpaper that came off in the world's tiniest strips, even with a steam wallpaper remover. We painted over the lounge wallpaper after seeing the plaster in the bedroom/bathroom

[Lesley]

- I'm a firm believer in painting over wallpaper as well - after all the plaster fell off in our last house whilst removing woodchip

[Egluntyne]

We once tentatively removed one of those horrible polystyrene ceiling tiles when we first moved into this house.....and the whole ceiling fell down.

 

It was one of those old fashioned lath and plaster arrangements and the tiles (which had been painted with red gloss paint! - a lethal combination) had been holding it up.

[theherd123]

Oh no - wallpaper stripping!

 

The couple we bought our house off just loved wallpaper - so much so they even did the bathroon ceiling!

 

If i never strip another wall again it will be too soon!

[Louise]

The wallpaper in my house was hideous and badly applied to boot

 

I now have it so there is a slightly embossed paper in the main hallway stairwell and everywhere else is just lining paper which is painted

 

I can't see me ever having patterned paper ever again it was really that bad

[Guest]

 

Only a few short weeks ago, I sold my house complete with a fully tiled bathroom, that took me forever to do, and just about killed me in the process. When the missives were concluded, and I knew I was moving to a new build, I turned to chookiehubbie and I said,

 

"I am never, EVER tiling again - ok?"

 

to which he agreed, and all the tiling stuff was freecycled.

 

Now imagine the scene yesterday in B&Q, as, while picking tiles for our new bathroom, chookiehubbie casually slipped into the conversation that the guy who was meant to be coming to tile our bathroom, so we can shower again, was unable to come until the end of June.........

 

Guess what I've been up to this morning?

[Louise]

 

Do you want to come and stay till June Chookiehen

[red]

We have a lot of orignal tongue and groove panelling in our cottage and I don't think anyone has ever rubbed it down before painting it in years and years. It definately needs a nice fresh coat of white but I refuse to paint over the layers of paint like everyone else has, so there is a BIG paint stripping job to be done .

 

Still, it'll gove the OH something to do whilst he's "working from home"

[ubereglu]

I remember when we stripped the living room! You could literally see the decades go by as all the owners had simply papered over it. The wallpaper in the hall and the landing came off as dust, as it was the thinnest paper you have ever seen and whenever we had spare time we'd have a s"Ooops, word censored!"er in hand trying to get the stuff off.

 

Mum still wants the kitchen done, though it's going to take ages as they don't make the same size tiles anymore, so it will all have to be tiled over.

 

However the kitchen cupboards all look nice, Dad stripped them last summer and re oiled them.

[Cinnamon]

my other half extended our house from 2 bedrooms to four, with an extra shower room, utility room, large kitchen, sounds lovely doesn't it? The bedrooms are finished but the upstairs bathroom has a hole in it from re routed plumbing and every romo downstairs needs finishing.

 

3 YEARS LATER

 

the delights of being married to a builder!!

I am married to a builder too & you are right, everything does take longer...MUCH longer

 

Our cottage was 2 up 2 down with no electricity,water or other amenities when we bought it.

Now, 15 years & 2 extensions later,we have just about finished (just the stairs to carpet!)

 

When we first moved in I used an industiral steamer to remove the many,many layers of wallpeper & it usefully also removed all the plaster too

At one point we could stand in our kitchen & look up to the underneath of the roof slates.

 

Hard work,expensive too, but well worth it in the end as its now been valued at 8 times the price we paid for it

[red]

In our old town house when we repainted the old doors we took the push plates off (rather than paint round them like the last people had obviously done ) and someone had written on the back of them "room painted 1919" and someone else had written "and again 1935" so we put "and again in 2001" before putting them back

 

Well it added a bit of a smile to our faces during an otherwise dull task anyway

[Chicken Licken]

Thanks for the encouragement guys - wallpaper is now all off and the ceiling and coving are freshly painted. I have just remembered I still have paint stripper on the fireplace - I love the layers approach - it had 2 layers of paper, brown gloss, black gloss and grey and then finally a little bit of wood is peeking through - I think it is the original wainscotting around my rayburn. I will get there in the end and it will look great.

[Egluntyne]

Can we see pictures of the finished article?

[Chicken Licken]

One of these days - the rayburn is a work in progress and awaiting my savings!! If only it was easier to save than it is to spend!!

 

I have finally figured how to add pics (I hope). The run on the allotment was my last DIY project (still standing . Finished kitchen....one day

 

http://s186.photobucket.com/albums/x150/abi_edwards/