We Have Tiles!

Nathan pulled back some of the laminate flooring in the hallway today to reveal some black and white tiles! We don't want to lift all the laminate up let so it will keep it protected whilst decorating but we have seen two sections that look in quite good condition. There is one tile cracked and some of them have paint on them but this rubbed off. I just need to research the best way of cleaning them up now!

I have been looking online and a major cause of damp in some houses is closing up fireplaces. I think this is definitely the case with the dining room section fireplace. It did have a vent but it was painted over so this has been removed today to let some air through.

We haven't decided whether to open this fireplace up but we think we might open the front fireplace (in the lounge section). It will be too much of a big job at this stage to have a proper fire but at least we can have a nice fireplace.

Nathan is still preparing the wall in the front bedroom and painting it with a base coat, hopefully at the weekend we can move onto some colour. We think we might be able to sort out the floorboards and leave them on show but we have not looked into this much yet.

The Walls!

We spent most of the weekend stripping the woodchip wallpaper in the loung/dining room and the front bedroom. We have decided to decorate the front bedroom as our main priority so we will have somewhere we can chill out whilst the rest of the house is being decorated once we move in. We are finding as the house was previously rented out a lot of the maintenance jobs have been quick-fixes so need to be re-done.
 
We did not know what the walls would be like underneath the paper but as the survey had said the house suffered from damp we were a bit sceptical as to what was underneath. The paper all came off reasonably easily using a steamer and some of it was already loose.
 
Below are some photos of the walls in the front bedroom. We are quite happy with how the walls as they didn't show any signs of damp. They mainly just need the indents filling in. Nathan had a go at doing this on Sunday and we painted the wall a thin layer of white paint mixed with water as this is supposed to help seal it. This also helped to show up how well the holes had been filled in. 

The next lot of photos are of the lounge/diner. The back half of this room was much worse than the front half. The front half was similar to upstaits with the exception of where the fireplace had been filled in as soom of the plaster was very loose here. There was a layer of cardboard over the crumbley plaster before the chipboard but this is all down now and we will have to remove the loose plaster. There was no problem with damp in the front half.

 
The back section of the room is where wer could see more signs of damp. There was a thin layer of polystyrene stuck to the walls underneath the woodchip paper.The walls were not damp underneath the paper. There was some red and yellow paint and all different kinds of plaster. There are some black water marks on red paint which is a wall leading to outside. The polystyrene is still stuck onto the wall a bit which also makes it look worse because it looks like white mould! The fireplace in the back room that is closed up has black marks. It does have a vent in the bottom but this has been painted over at some point.
 

The next jobs on the list are to carry on with decorating the front bedroom along with looking into some of the lose plaster around the fireplace and removing some of the random hooks, hangers and bent curtain rails from around the house!

We also want to look into the fireplaces downstairs a bit more as opening it up a bit could help with the back bit of damp and the font one has crumbling plaster!

Electricity on a Pre-Paid Meter

This might be a bit boring but thought it would be helpfull for anyone in the same situation!

We didn't realise before we bought the house but it is actually on a prepaid meter for gas and electrics. The house had no electricity and there was a debt showing on the machine. We did not know what company provided the gas and electricity previously.

We decided to go with E.ON for gas and electricty and after being on hold with them for 50 minutes they told us the previous supplier was Swalec for electricty but they could not tell us about gas. They signed us up but said it would take around 3 weeks to switch to them. Once we have switched we need to conact them again to ask to move onto a credit account. They just carry out a credit check then can change it over.

As we needed power in the mean time to sort out the house we then called Swalec. We were hoping that the gas was with them as well and luckily it was! They arranged for us to pick up a card for the electricty from a local co op and gave us a code which would wipe the debt off. We then just had to go back to the co op and put money in the card so we could use the electricty. The card/key for the gas will be coming in the post. 

Having electricty has meant we could get started stripping the woodchip wallpaper, photos to follow!

Our New House

Here is a video of our new house to show you all what we have to start with and hopefully to look back on in a few months time when we have done some work on it.

We got the keys on Tuesday so have started planning what we need to do. The first job is getting the electricity connected, once this is done we can start removing the wall paper and see what's underneath! The Home Buyer's Report did say the house had some damp so this is something we need to look into although we're hoping it is just because the house has been empty for a few months.

The house has been rented out by its previous owner and in the past it was also split into upstairs and downstairs separate flats. This means there are a lot more wires everywhere and the third bedroom was previously a kitchen. Luckily it is now back to a bedroom so that's one less job for us.

Try not to get motion sickness from the video!