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nightwolf

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Given so many of us are making changes to our homes, here's a thread to showcase. 

From painting, small DIYs and beyond, show me all your homely changes! :hug:

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One change I need to make is paint over the chipped wall from overly aggressively using a massage ball 😅

As a renter that is about as far as it goes. 

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There’s not going to be much to do for us given we’re buying a new build. Probably the main thing will be sorting out a few stupid design points in the main room. For a start, there is a radiator in the only place you can realistically mount a TV so we’ll have to get that moved. Secondly, they’ve put all of the TV points at what we think is the wrong side of the room where we’d rather have our dining area, so we’ll need to have those re-routed to the other side of the room.

Other than that I don’t think we’ll do much other than getting furniture in there, I’ll be sure to post updates as we go about it though!

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On Tuesday, Ikea delivers a new kitchen to me. Ten days later, my father and father-in-law will tear down the old kitchen, rip off the wooden floors (that we lay down just before moving in) to remove some tiles that made the wooden floor unstable. Then the new kitchen will be implemented. I'm looking forward to that as I've never done anything like that before. I'm a mathematician, I don't use tools! But I wanted to save money and since I'm on paternity leave, I have the time to actually do it. I'm just happy that my fathers are there to help me.

Other than that, I don't need to do much but there is still lots of knowledge about keeping a house healthy that I need to obtain.

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21 hours ago, Will said:

There’s not going to be much to do for us given we’re buying a new build. Probably the main thing will be sorting out a few stupid design points in the main room. For a start, there is a radiator in the only place you can realistically mount a TV so we’ll have to get that moved. Secondly, they’ve put all of the TV points at what we think is the wrong side of the room where we’d rather have our dining area, so we’ll need to have those re-routed to the other side of the room.

Other than that I don’t think we’ll do much other than getting furniture in there, I’ll be sure to post updates as we go about it though!

Speaking of stupid design - in my current place the plug sockets are all double (as in side-by-side) but too close together that unless you have a ridiculously narrow plug you can only use one. It's so bloody stupid.

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The missus needed some space to hang a wok and a pan, we don't really have anything available. So I bought some thick screws, had them come out either side of a cupboard, pow, handles for pans.

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So, here's each room of my house, what I've done so far and future plans.

Spoiler

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There's a bookcase off-picture that needs securing to the wall before I fill it up. There's a patch of pain missing where they put the stair gate, but tins of all the pain used in the house was left in the garage so we don't need to figure out the correct colour.

 

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Need to put the mirror up behind the sofa, as well as get a rug. We're pretty happy with the design of it. Need to figure out a picture for above the TV.

 

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We didn't need to do much with the kitchen at all, we just put stuff on already exiting nails. Would like to get an extending table at some point, but we do have two of the same table so can put them together if need be.

 

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Again, just stuck things on already existing nails. The curtain rail needed repairing (one end had fallen off the wall - incidentally, all blinds on all the windows were part of the house). The wall behind the bed is something we're not fond off, so may repaint at some point. Also, kitties (who are enjoying the new house)

 

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A decent size bedroom with a built-in wardrobe. Not much to do with this room until our child gets too big for the nursery. Might get a rug for it.

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Needs furniture as well as decorations to get it ready for when the baby arrives.

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We need some grass seeds for the grass, and I think the decking could do with a stain. Then we need to decide on decorations/plants. Possibly some solar lights. Then there's the outbuilding

 

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An office with its own toilet. The trunking, cables, soundpoofing and desk were all left behind (we were asked first). Even the chair was left (much better than our previous one). There was also a network cable, connecting to the lounge where the main router is, so I've used a second router to set up wifi for the garden.

 

Spoiler

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The other half of the outbuilding. Planning on getting a small fridge and it'll be a good room to use for hanging out in the garden and BBQs.

 

Spoiler

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The side gate needs adjusting/repairing so it can stay shut, a small amount of wind will open it. The front garden, we're going to see what grows.

 

We did have a few issues yesterday. The house alarm went off, possibly due to low battery, but the screen is dead so we have no idea. While attempting to disconnected, I cut power to the CCTV system by mistake and the hard drive died. Managed to disconnect the alarm panel so it won't keep going off and the person who installed it 10 years ago is giving it a look for us. Got a new drive (2TB so bigger) so the CCTV is back up and running.

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All great photos Cube. Can we get a close up of the CCTV system and a postcode please.

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I love that green in your bedroom Cube! 

I think at this point 75% of the house has been painted as the colours they previously had were awful. I wish I had taken a lot more photos of before..

Spoiler

Probably the biggest change thus far besides the stairs, originally this "bookcase" was hiding the internet, the light at the top left didn't work and it was FULL of screws, we're talking way over 50+ for no reason at all. It was a really horrible job they had done with it and took up so much space for no reason. 
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I've since changed over monitors and a few other bits (including cable management) but need to hide the fuse box. Once my new desk comes in perhaps! 

 

 

Spoiler

From snot green to blue, running theme you can see with the house that they'd really needed to freshen up their colour scheme but left it (and a running theme for us to put stuff on the walls!) 

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We've since painted the grey to a different shade so it looks more clean. 

Spoiler

Our most recent change as of today! We have blue/grey carpets throughout the stairs and upstairs, which is high pile. It looks like it needs the biggest clean of its life, but it also doesn't suit our grey/colourful house so we're ripping it out this week and next to get a low pile light grey instead. Decided to go for a stair runner which meant painting and staining. We think we've done a good job considering its 1. not finished and 2. we've never done it before! 

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(Dark patch was us testing and will be hidden when the carpet is in) 

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Trim :bouncy:

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This room was a really pale blue (with blue carpet, it looks grey in photos but its an awful dark bluey/grey). I painted it almost immediately after we moved in!

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Eventually the wall to the right will be knocked through to the kitchen so it's more open plan. 

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Main bathroom will get more tiles and a proper shower. 

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Eurgh the kitchen, it's not bad, but it's not good either. Eventually we'll have a similar layout but space for a tall fridge. Hopefully later this year! 

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The en-suite bathroom is probably my favourite, but why did it have to be orange? It doesn't look so bad here, but in person on a sunny day that orange is almost neon and it's really harsh. So that's getting painted soon! 

 

Edited by nightwolf
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So we’ve started the huge spend on furniture. First up is the dining room bits, ordered the following from John Lewis:

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Two of these chairs:
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And two with lower sides:
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Then a bench to finish it off:
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All seems really nice and I think will fit in really well with the apartment. Should be delivered the day we move on so fingers crossed on the timings all working out.

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Not as such DIY, but we're having the bathroom done.  I'll share some snaps when it's done, but it's been an adventure so far with a few issues.

To name a few

Electric blew twice when taking the old shower out, even with the switch in the fuse box switched off.

Gas line was cut with a nail going right into it

Water leakage from the newly installed pipes

New shower tray cracked when installing

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@Will you might appreciate my partners and I new desks given your choice of dining table there (beautiful by the way, love it) 

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My new one, it turned up Monday! I've had a 200cm x 60cm desk from ikea, so I upgraded to this 200cm x 70cm from etsy.

My partner went for a slightly different approach: 

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We're really big gamers in this house (go figure) plus with my WFH, we decided it was time. 

Edited by nightwolf

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11 minutes ago, nightwolf said:

@Will you might appreciate my partners and I new desks given your choice of dining table there (beautiful by the way, love it)

Oooh yeah, those are both really nice! I do love a nice big wooden desk, I'm not sure what I'd do with all of that space. Is your plan to have one side of it as a workstation and the other for something else?

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19 minutes ago, Will said:

Oooh yeah, those are both really nice! I do love a nice big wooden desk, I'm not sure what I'd do with all of that space. Is your plan to have one side of it as a workstation and the other for something else?

My desk currently has a tower, two 27inch monitors and a laptop (with stand), due to my work. So it's full already! My partners has his desktop on the main area and his drawing tablet on the bit closer to the door. So he'll be able to use both sides depending what he plans to do. Eventually he wants to get monitors similar to mine in size, so he'll need the space. Both sellers made much much smaller sizes, we're just...extra :laughing:

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Phew. Almost done with my new kitchen now. Started Friday by tearing down the old kitchen. That took a couple of hours with the help from my father in law and my own father (who drove almost 400 km to participate!) and then we started picking up the floor we had laid. My father then started taking off the tiles from the old kitchen floor - we were really worried that it was going to be hellish to take them off but the glue wasn't strong and they came off rather easily. This meant that by Saturday afternoon, the entire wooden floor was laid down again and we could start setting up the new kitchen! We then took our time and put everything in place, assembling the cupboards and such. Really nice.

Unfortunately, we had an accident and drilled into a power cord. This was just for LED spots in the cupboards, though, so we found another way to do it (using Trådfri remotes from IKEA to turn the lights on and off, which is a good solution). 

We also hit a bump when we found out that the cupboard we had bought to put our fridge into was too narrow for our fridge! We should of course have checked that before we bought it but well... stupidity is a strong force. Oh well, we bought a new fridge and we are therefore selling the "old" one (we bought that in september last year...). Hopefully it'll go well.

I'll post some pics when we are done with the kitchen.

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Whoever fitted the kitchen in my house should be talked to.  The panels under the kitchen cabinets, usually they're hooked onto the legs holding the cabinets up from the floor.  Oh no, screwed in and the screw heads stripped and hidden under a glued piece of wood on top.  Spent this past weekend redoing the panels.  Think I have shares in Gorilla Glue now.

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Turned this:

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Into this:

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Not much but it's a start on making our place a nicer home.

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I currently have several of those to change over, on the long list of things. Very nice! 

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Did some test fitting for the TV with all the junk mail we had waiting for us. This was the 65 inch which was way too big so we've gone with the 55 inch instead. The radiator will be removed and the TV put a little lower than it is in this picture.

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Finally got our table tops this week. They were supposed to arrive last week but were postponed for three weeks - but then suddenly turned up a week later. That was a nice surprise. Spent yesterday fastening them and by that, we are done with the kitchen - except some small adjustments, some painting and some silicone here and there. So a before and an after picture are appropriate, I guess:

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There's a world in difference here, I think. Of course, there is a bit of a mess in the first picture and it's completely clean in the second but apart from that the new kitchen looks a lot more lively and inviting and more open. The sink is taking up less space as well, giving more room for preparing food on the left side of it which is nice.

Now we have some outdoor projects. Painting the fence, cleaning the stones outside and such. Woo.

Edited by MindFreak
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We are having an extension this year and the garden landscaped, and a full new kitchen installed - should be done by the end of August - I’ll take some before and after but I’m excited!

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That looks great, @MindFreak!

We had that damn radiator removed today and I have the TV installers coming over tomorrow to quote to sort out the TV for me. They’ll do the work immediately if I’m OK with the quote so, with a bit of luck, this time tomorrow I’ll finally be able to play some video games for the first time in months.

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It’s done! Firstly this nice man removed my radiator:

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Capped off the pipes:

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Left this lovely blank wall:

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Then this nice young man came to fit the TV:

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Woohoo!

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Sooooo thin:

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Passed the Cars test:

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Just need to get something to go under the TV and to clean up the holes/marks from everything. So nice to finally have a decent TV again.

 

 

 

 

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I bought a pressure washer recently. It's satisfying to use but, if anyone else cares, you should wear waterproofs when operating one.

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