Spare Room Progress

It's been a dusty weekend at Sprout's House - we decided to demolish the spare room!

We chose to tackle the spare room (the room at the front on the top right) first as in our minds this is the room that needs the least doing to it in terms of electrics and heating!! During this phase of improvement, we're going to add a couple of extra sockets and some spot lights, but we are not going to upgrade the radiator until we get around to overhauling the entire heating and plumbing system.

So here's how the room looked before.....

The best - it stored loads - but ugliest and most inconveniently placed cupboard ever. The contents of which is now strewn across the landing.

Here's how it looks now.... (no laughing!! ;-))

Or watch on YouTube

A Dust Tan!

The reason we're knocking off all the plaster is that our house suffers from a lot of dampness mainly because it has been covered with modern materials. Modern day plaster on the inside and cement render on the outside mean that she literally can't breathe and so if there is a build up of moisture inside the house it can't escape hence our immense damp problems. We're going to use this room to test out some breathable products ~ lime plaster and wood fibre insulation. If successful, we'll then be able to use them throughout the rest of the house.

If anyone has any advice or tips leave a comment below!

Sprout’s House

 xox

House Progress ~ August 2014

Morning Everyone! As it's the beginning of the month, I thought I would spend a little time updating you on the progress we have made at Sprout's House. (If you're new reader, you can visit the Home Tour page to catch up on everything else we have done.)

Exterior

Most of our time over the last couple of months has been focused on the outside of the house. We have knocked down the porch at the front. 

This was one of the easiest tasks that we tackled taking all of about 15 mins. So we have gone from this......

 to this......

The front of the house looks a bit bare now, but we will put something else up instead at some point!

As you can see, we have also demolished the little stone wall that was at front of the house. The heavy snow in January 2013 meant that a lot of the concrete between the stones had blown so a few of the larger ones had started to work their way loose. Every so often we would come outside and find that one had fallen into the road so it had to go. There is still a little bit more to knock down on the right hand side, but we'll tackle that when we dig up the rest of the concrete.

Our biggest achievement so far has been excavating the driveway! 

No mean feat I tell you! We anticipated that we would probably need a couple of skips to take away the concrete and soil, and that we would also fit the porch and front wall in those too. 

In the end, it took 5 skips and three weekends of digger action to reduce the driveway to road level. 

Or watch on YouTube.

Once we had got rid of all the excess soil and concrete, we levelled the remaining earth and then used sleepers to create a wall on three sides. At the moment, the sleepers are performing two jobs - one hopefully it looks a bit nicer(!?) and two they are holding back the earth each side. The driveway is still quite narrow, but once we have got rid of the concrete path we'll be able to expand the driveway on the right side. We have also spread some Type One MOT (crushed stone) over the soil and whacker plated it down so it's nice and compact.

Eventually, we will cover the driveway with gravel, but for now we leaving it as it is as there are still many more skips full of concrete in our future!!

Oh.... and did I mention the asbestos? That was a joyous saga. Check out the outfit!! 

There used to be a garage on the driveway many moons ago and we think that when it was taken down they buried the roof and poured a layer of concrete over it instead of disposing of it.

Did you know that as a householder you can take asbestos to your local tip? Check with your nearest one to find out how it needs to be bagged and tagged!

Interior

There's not a whole lot of action going on inside the house at the moment. Whilst we were away on holiday the mixture of hot weather and storms did not suit our little house and we are battling a lot of damp at the moment. I even found mould all over the front of my lovely dresser!! So Sprout's Daddy ordered a whole load of Kontrol Moisture Traps to place in all the downstairs rooms. 

We have used one before just after we dug out the fireplace and found it really effective at absorbing excess moisture. 

The damp has also played havoc with the food in our kitchen cupboards - soggy oat cakes anyone? I was a bit loath to put anything with chemicals near our food so I have resorted to placing small jars of salt (GU dessert containers are excellent for this!!) in all the kitchen cupboards to try and absorb some of the moisture in the air. I let you know how I get on with this method!!

There are also a couple of new holes in the house. One in the downstairs bathroom ceiling - we want to knock through from the sitting room into the bathroom and small lobby to create a bigger room. 

Sprout's Daddy made a small hole to see which way the joists run and whether it is a load bearing wall. This will also help the structural engineer decide whether we need a 'steel'. 

The second hole is in Sprout's playroom and was definitely unplanned!! 

Once we uncovered the second fireplace, it allowed a lot of trapped moisture out. This appears to have travelled under the stairs and started to become trapped behind the plaster board on this wall. So we removed the plaster board and quite a lot of plaster came away too!! Ah well, this wall will eventually become a doorway anyway.

Apologies for the marathon post - I'll try to write updates more regularly! Anyone else tackling a DIY project or two?

Sprout’s House

  xox

Linking up at ~
Ladybug Blessings, Cornerstone Confessions, Kathe With An E, My Crafty Spot, Denise Designed, Flamingo Toes, Nifty Thrifty Things, The Foley Fam, 

Cupcake Challenge - Part 2

Phew…..well it’s taken over a week to recover from creating Sprout’s birthday cake! Looks wise it was a success, but taste wise it was most definitely not!!! But here’s the low down anyway…..

For the cake, I used a recipe from the Blue Door Bakery and of course the trial run went without a hitch. The cake was a little denser than normal, but perfectly acceptable. So last weekend, I was feeling fairly confident and my chief worry was about whether or not I was capable of piping grass!!....

For whatever reason, my second cake attempt seemed to take much longer to cook than the first resulting in a cake with the consistency of a brick!! Luckily, the top came out a bit better and was at least a little edible!!! At this point, I also took the opportunity to trim the excess off the top so that it would sit flat on the base.

For the icing, I used a recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery which I trebled and then substituted half the butter for Trex so that my icing had half a chance of coming out green.

However, before colouring the icing, I dolloped a good splodge of buttercream on the top and sandwiched it to the bottom. I then used the icing to stick chocolate fingers to the base.

Cue the green food colouring. Again the less said about the amount added the better….. A quick practise piping grass….and I was quietly relieved to find it was much easier than I thought it was going to be!! I can definitely recommend using plastic piping bags over fabric!

Once the icing was done, I used a few Dr Oetker paper flowers (take it from me they taste gross so don’t bother eating them if you ever get the chance!) and a number 3 candle to decorate the grassy hill.

The pièce de résistance, which I had absolutely nothing to do with, was a fabulous icing version of Peppa Pig made by one of my lovely friends. Sprout was so excited to see Peppa and loved playing with her!!

 

One of my other lovely friends has also recommended that I find an oil based cake recipe which might produce a more tasty and less brick like cake!!!! 

Ah well, you live and learn..... and who knows I might make an Easter version…….

Sprout’s House

           xox

Sprout's 'New' House Part 2

Happy New Year everyone!! 
I hope your 2013 has got off to a good start!!

As promised (better late than never!!), here’s the second set of pictures of Sprout’s ‘New’ House. In part 1, I left you at the bottom of the stairs.......................

So at the top of the stairs, if you turn right you head towards Sprout's room.......

But not before you pass Sprout's play area.......

Yup - that's it at the moment. However, we have plans afoot to remedy this over the next few weeks. 

This is her room......and no it's not normally this tidy. I managed to take this photo in a rare moment of calm!

On to our room......

Ta dah! My new built in wardrobes!!! I think this style will definitely take off!!??....

Back out on to the landing and the bathroom is directly opposite Sprout's room. Don't you just love our bathroom suite? Duck Egg or French Grey? I have no idea, but it has to go and soon!!

Our rather disgusting shower - full of mould and lime scale. I've managed to clean it up a bit since this photo was taken. I'll share my mould busting method with you all soon.

Out of the bathroom and into the spare room. 

As you can see we were in the middle of preparing for Sprout's Grandparents arrival from Thailand for the wedding. The more observant of you may have noticed that the wall paper stops half way down the wall. Just plain weird! The other thing we've recently discovered is that the floor we walk on upstairs is not the real floor. The real floor is about 3cm below......... and between the two sets of floor boards someone has laid all the pipework. Oh joy!! I can't wait to tackle that little D.I.Y disaster!!

Well, there you have it folks that's the tour of our new little house. There's lots to do and I think it'll keep us busy for a good few years plus I'm sure we'll uncover some more dodgy D.I.Y!!!

Sprout’s House

           xox