The most beautiful bargain EVER

Ok now everyone is a complete sucker for a deal, but some deals are real deals and some are those evil tempt you into spending more than you mean to on stuff you don't really want/like deals. Now this is definitely NOT the second type. I'm in utter completely and total love with this deal of an item and what is it....a light fixture.


I'm already dreaming of it (while awake at work mind you..they have some funny problem with people napping on the job) hanging over my dining room table. Is it too big for the room? Possibly. Will it light up the room like an airport runway? Defninitely. Has my life sunk to a new low now that I'm lusting after a light fixture? Doubt it cause this is pretty lovely and it's only .99p. Yup that's right less than £1. How good is that?! You'd love it to if you found it for that price. Got to love Ebay...now if only Dom would love it as much as me. Now just to convince him it's a goer.

Ps. The kitchen is basically done and more pics soon.

It's almost kind of sort of maybe by next weekend coming together

Well I'm sure you gathered from the subject of the post things are dddddrrrraaaaggggging out a bit. After waiting weeks for the kitchen and starting to install it and the bathroom almost being finished we aren't moving forward very quickly. The old adage of the last 10% of the work taking 90% of the time is very true! Here's a few pics of our progress one Sunday. As you can see several hours of work didn't get us very far, but at least the sink is in.

Despite all hard work the living room is still looking just as crowded as always. We hopefully will soon be able to reclaim our living room. Plus it doesn't help when the weather does this to you with one hour long monster rainstorm (see pic 2 below).

So all in all it's not been moving too fast and despite our best attempts to prevent it the kitchen plumbing still likes to leak on us, but we're slowly, but surely getting there. One or two more posts about this and we should be done I think!! Then I can write about pretty stuff...not a manky flooded road. Honestly I've never been more sick of something in my entire life, but I know I'll love it when it's over!

The beginnings of a kitchen

Well at long last Ikea have finally decided to show up with our kitchen...slight problem they delivered two. Now I'm all for a bit of good karma, and this is definitely good by the amount of stuff we screwed up, but really why does karma have to fill up my living room and hallway? Anyways here is our lovely patch on our dining room ceiling...not sure which looked better before or after.The bathroom is pretty much the same, but during our third round of major trash disposal I couldn't face the remenants of hideous red carpet anymore. Not only was it just plan ugly, but it was also filthy now. Since it was not worth wasting a good clean we just ripped it out and our stairs now look like this (and will probably remain this way for some time).


I would love to say the some part of it is original but I don't think MDF was around in the 1820s....

Now onto the main event: downstairs. As I said earlier IKEA gave us two kitchens and if you wondered what 190 boxes and bits from IKEA looks like here you go:

You can't see my couch, but you can see our nicely finished kitchen floors here. I think they turned out really well despite the fact I think I pinched a nerve during the 9 hours it took to do the first coat of stain. Beauty is painful. And after a days painful labor this is what we got. That's our new microwave (yay hot food) and our espresso maker. Boys must have their toys...

Luckily the kitchen has continued to go in, but god it took a lot of pain, swearing, effort and grumpy moods to get where we are today. Will put more photos up soon so you can see how it looks now.

Ps. Note to IKEA since you don't really seem all that bothered about getting your stuff back I hope you don't mind if EBAY has it. I think you owe me.

Good News and Bad News

Well kiddies we've got some good news and bad news. Good news...my bathroom now looks like this (I know it's only a day later, but I'm a bit behind on the post SORRY!)

I have to say that despite black tiles being very difficult to clean and our builder basically threatening to charge us £6,000 per tile if we ever use make him do another bathroom with them I do think they look the best. Plus look at that amazing shower. The two shelves inside are fab, though I haven't been allowed to put anything on them yet. I just hope Dom used my bottle of Pantene Pro V as a minimum height because as I've told him more than once that shower is all mine (despite the fact that it is big enough to house half of Eastern Europe). I've been allowing him to use it because frankly after a couple of days he gets a bit whiffy and the tub has been used more for storage and less for bathing. We've still go lots of finishing touches to do in here, but I think it's looking pretty snazzy.

More good news we've got some progress downstairs as well!! Here's what it looks like. We've got a real floor down and started to do the painting as well. We decided to go for a wood floor because it stays a lot warmer in the winter than tile and frankly I get cold enough without having to stand on a floor that is basically ice coated pottery. Ick!

Here's another view of the kitchen while my lovely hubby yelling at Ikea for not delivering our kitchen the first time (I've never dealt with a bigger group of idiots). But on a good note I'm very happy by how bright it is in the kitchen.

Now despite the fact that it all looks light and lovely with these floors we are not going for Scandinavian chic so the floors will be stained DARK brown. So guess who because of a past experience with the flat gets to job of doing this. ME! Not that I care because I would be backseat staining if Dom did it. Sad, but true. I'm way too nosy to accept that he can do something he's completely capable of doing. Now ramble aside here is my experiment with getting the floor boards the right dark colour and seeing which stain and method I liked best (the brown one on the bottom won).

Now for the bad news.......my dining room ceiling now looks like this:

Just a little note to self to NEVER EVER EVER use a builder I don't know anything about and who has not been used by anyone you know. His plumbing was horrible and we had a leak and the only thing that saved the ceiling from coming down on our lovely dining room furniture is the horrible wallpaper (I don't think even the 1970s would be willing to have this stuff back) and the twelve layers of badly chosen paint on top.

Anyways I would say the end is in sight, but having survived between this point and the present I know that was a long dark tunnel where I almost thought about killing my builder...more than once.

A bit of tiling and little walls all around...

Things are moving really quickly now that the structure is up. Or maybe it's just because the blank canvas is not so blank anymore that it is starting to look like things are being done. Here's an updated shot of the bathroom with some of our tiling and some of the internal walls up. The big one hides our boiler cupboad and the little one will be what the bath taps are attached to. It looks a lot better now I promise!!

Downstairs is flying ahead as well. We actually have doors on. Aren't they pretty?! Makes it look like a real part of the house now.

Inside we've got our bar wall up. Now unfortunately there won't be beer pulls attached to this it's so we can sit and chat to whoever is cooking. I can't say that we are exactly right aroudn the corner from making a four course Thanksgiving dinner...but I might be in November...

Here's how it looks from the other end of the house. Yes it is still just as big a mess!
More tomorrow......hopefully it'll all start looking like something people could live in instead of a fancy garage.

Finally an update!

I know it's been ages, but my only excuse is that my camera decided to hide under some of the debris from the building works. Now last time you saw my lovely house it was in less than ideal standards. So in an effort to be better I'll put up a few posts over the next couple days and hopefully get all caught up (in much less time than it took the builders to do the job)!

It's all moving pretty quickly, but we still have miles to go.... Here are a few pics.

There is nothing quite as exciting as seeing walls reappear with strange wires sticking out of them....lame I know, but even more exciting is our bathroom update!

(Classy I know)

Now is may not look like much but at least we've got a floor and basic stuff in and yes we have cleared out the bathtub.

More tomorrow!