Bedroom Makeover – Part 1

Of course we’ve done lots of stuff to the bedroom before now and looking back at pictures of the room in its original state we have come a long way even if it doesn’t seem like it. So here is a quick recap to get you up to speed and up to date:

We removed the blue carpet as soon as we moved in. Then we stripped all walls, including some weird black, foil backed lining paper around the chimney breast, which took forever as the wallpaper stripper machine thingy wouldn’t penetrate the foil.

Here is a snapshot of some of the action:

Oh, and of course we stripped the ceiling as well. Luckily the plaster both on the ceiling and on the walls stayed up, even if the ceiling was covered in some sort of green flaky paint and had cracks all over.  We were able to fill all of the dints and small cracks on the walls ourselves, but the ceiling definitely needed plastering.

To save on the cost, we prepared it ourselves with a plaster bonding agent (which seemed to be like a mixture of pink glue and sand). The stuff apparently allows the plaster to adhere better.

It’s surprising  what a difference the newly plastered ceiling makes to the whole room.

Having taken off the plastic covers around the window that you can see in the before pictures, we realised, that the inside wall was considerably smaller that the window/ exterior wall and also that the window had been very poorly fitted. The extremely large gaps between the window and the walls actually meant that, in places, we could look through to the outside! No wonder it was so draughty, after all there was just fresh air between the plastic covering and the outside brickwork!

We bricked up the missing area around the window with aerated bricks and filled any remaining gaps with expanded foam filler.

Then we plastered around the bay window. When I say we, I mean my Dad, so thanks again Dad! And here he is plastering around the new brickwork:

I also stripped the dodgy yellow fireplace. (Yes, I know, it’s still slightly dodgy yellow). I will write more about that soon.

Oh, and we took up all floorboards, too. We kind of had to take most of them up anyway, because we had a new radiator fitted under the window (and the existing one on the internal wall removed). The main reason however was because there were quite large gaps between each floorboard and we wanted to have an exposed wooden floor. So we pushed them all back closer together again and then had to just fill the one larger gap with an extra piece of floorboard. We were running a bit a lot behind in our schedule and ended up nailing down the floorboards till quite late at night, and then again early Saturday morning before the floor sanding guy came. Sorry neighbours!

We also stripped, sanded and painted the skirting boards, had the electrics sorted.

As we had ripped out the plastic coving and plastic curtain rail around the window we ordered a new bespoke curtain rail for the bay window. After all of the building work there was no cash left, so we provisionally hung some curtains (left by our predecessors) from two of the other room onto our new curtain rail and then moved into our “new” bedroom.

In the future we will have to replace the bay windows. They aren’t in the best state and we would like to replace the original stained glass that would have been there. Yes, we know it’s still a bit of a mess, but at least it is all save and sound and the main actual building work is completed. Lucky for you we have been busy, so come back tomorrow to see our progress!