# While Matt was building his PC I built this



## GreenNeedle (24 Jan 2008)

The first room of my council house is complete - The Kitchen - It was graffitied and painted mustard all over (including the floor) when I got in there.

Everything apart from the real wood floor and expansion gap trim (Â£27 - ebay), Clock (Â£2 - Tesco), Taps (Â£13 - ebay), Nightlights (Â£8 - In-Store) was already mine except

Cupboards - already in the house
Cooker hood - free off DontDumpThat recycling site.
Oven - house warming present from mummy and Daddy (Â£300 off ebay - should be Â£500)
Table and Chairs - Outta Daddy's shed - Old good quality stuff.


What do you think? Not bad for Â£50.  My own Jamie Oliver style kitchen

Looking through the door from the 'lobby'





The cooking section




'Breakfast Area'




The washing area




The Sink - Chain to be added when the wife gets back from Portugal - lol




One of the nightlights plus the hood light




Andy


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## GreenNeedle (24 Jan 2008)

Next Job is the lounge.  This is as it is tonight.  Will start work tomorrow

Front Door Entrance Side




PC Side (My space at the moment)




The Fish Tank Side




A Taste of the Graffiti I have to look at every day.  This is a small one (On the ceiling. lol!!!!)




Hopefully get this room finished by Friday night.  At a cost of Â£0

Andy


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## TDI-line (24 Jan 2008)

Blimey that kitchens 's spotless, you can do mine if you like.

And good luck with the lounge.


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## Dan Crawford (24 Jan 2008)

Nice job on the kitchen mate, you've certainly got your work cut out!


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## Themuleous (24 Jan 2008)

Nice Andy


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## GreenNeedle (24 Jan 2008)

TDI-line said:
			
		

> Blimey that kitchens 's spotless, you can do mine if you like.
> 
> And good luck with the lounge.



Being out of work I would say 'Buy the gear and I'll do it for you. Took me 1 whole week as the kitchen is the hard part with plumbing, hardwiring (and getting poorly laid tiles with a skim of cement under them up)

Â£300 for a weeks work. lol (plus materials needed)

Its spotless because the kids are also in Portugal so theres no mucky mitts about.  2 more weeks to go and I have the lounge, lobby, hall, downstairs WC, stairs, landing, bathroom2 bedrooms and 3 cupboards to do yet.

Phew

Andy


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## Joecoral (8 Feb 2008)

looking good mate! I really like that kitchen. Me and the other half are soon be looking for our first place together, and I'd be perfectly happy with a kitchen like that! Shame about the graffitti, some people have absolutely no respect.
You'll soon get it sorted tho, chin up!
JC


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## Lisa_Perry75 (8 Feb 2008)

Any updates?


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## GreenNeedle (9 Feb 2008)

The lounge, hall, landing and bathroom are complete BUT.....

.....can't really take piccies as I am storing all the furniture from other rooms in the completed areas and also a lot of dirt, dust and paint drips being trailed about all over the place.

The stair walls are also complete but the stairs not.  Need to sort out come runners to go up the centre of them (which I think I have spotted at instore.  These wil be stapled on and this will cover the current artistic talents of this house's previous owners.

I will update in a week or so as the wife (<---ahem..still at the mo) and children are now staying at my Mums while I complete the 2 bedrooms (much to her disappointment / annoyance)

So next post or posts will have many many pics

The whole house's rehash cost has been about Â£600 not including the oven as it was a free gift from Mum & Dad.

freecycle, dontdumpthat and ebay are always awesome sites to keep the cost down. lol

The laminate flooring has been the best buy (55m2 for Â£165 delivered off ebay)  It is commercial shop grade so splashprrof and guaranteed for 5 years in shops or 15 years in the home, although of course I got it for this ridiculously low price as it is seconds and therefore has the odd plank with a chip in the corner (which I sneak under the edging or use around doors etc. lol)

Wish me luck.

Andy


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## Garuf (9 Feb 2008)

Good luck Andy. 
All the best with the building, if I lived nearer id come help I love building projects.
And of course hope everything pans out okay with everything else.
Hope the anubias where fine by the way. Would like to see how you've utilised them.


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## Vase (17 Feb 2008)

Looks awesome. I'm useless with DIY but if you want some proper graffiti gimme a shout


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## GreenNeedle (1 Jul 2008)

Took me a while to get these pics on but I was hoping to get all the finishing touches sorted like pictures, trimmings, doors and proper shelving units.  Money and time as usual have put 'paid' to this.

Anyway here ya go:

*The lounge*.  To see what it looked like before check out page 1.  This room is definately not finished yet.  (Postman Pat lampshade in place at the mo which I haven't taken a picture of.  Please forgive the tennis on the TV.  I am not a fan of tennis at all but I am a fan of Serena Williams so I was watching her bouncy bits...err....bouncing like all good pervs do.

I have repainted, added curtains, added short term shelving, added fire surround, hung the TV(s), laid the Italian walnut laminate floor, added a free suite with some brown covers my mum bought me for a house warming.

1 - This is my fishy area.  New scape as you can see and pride of place next to the TV.  This corner of the room is also complete with children's toys. lol




2 - Our dining area.  Sorry for the plastic table cloth and unstraightened curtains but you see what I see, no special tidy ups for the fishy viewers.  This table and chairs was in a poor state of affairs when I bought it for Â£50 off ebay BUT it is extendable up to 12 people size, old, good quality and I wanted it.  I have stripped it all, french polished it all, hard waxed it all, re-upholstered the chairs and made my mother jealous at the same time. he, he




3 - The media centre.  This is the area which is most behind because I plan to build a full unit to go from floor to the top shelf (out of photo) which will hide and house all this equipment, complete with glass window doors so the remotes work for the TV/Satellite and Hi-Fi stuff.  (Satellite is TV Cabo from portugal as I don't watch TV and it keeps the wife happy........ish)




4 - The Seating area - This is also unfinished but too expensive to complete for a long while yet.  The covers are makeweights really until we can get the money for a decent chocolate leather suite.




*The Hallway*.  Boring place I guess but may as well show you.  Small compact.  Space for a door etc.

I have painted and used the same Oak laminate as the kitchen (its waterproof and if you've read the first page I bought a whole pallet of mixed stuff so I had to work out what to use where and get each room the same colour floors etc. lol)




*The Stairway*.  Boring again but this part was the worst in the house.  the stairs were covered in paint spots and very splintery.  The walls had huge holes in them and were a nightmare to fill due to it being powdery old plaster and often filling a hole made it worse. lol

I have painted, stripped the stairs back and 'made' a stair runner.




*Landing*.  Boring again but it is the 'welcome to the sleepzone' area.  Can you guess which room the kids sleep in?

I have painted and used beech laminate flooring.




*The bathroom*  This was like the lounge.  Cream Paint.  Permament Marker Graffiti.  Horrid old taps.  

I have painted, replaced the taps with a shower/tap combo, tiled part of the wall, added a shower rail and curtain etc.  The floor is made up of 2 different white and bleached Oak laminates which were waterproof and they actually look quite good mixed!!!




Finally for this post is the Garden
When I/we moved in this was like a derelict unused field.  As you can see I have managed to cut the top 3ft of grass down and it has started to go green.  I resseded a patch in the centre (to the left of the clothes post) which was an old bonfire.  grey, ashy and dead.  The far end I have totally dug up as I will be using this as a vegetable patch next year.  This year it is acting as a safety are to keep the kids away from the rubbish.  I have also started to cut borders (On the left and you can't see them lol) I have started chipping the Â¼ish ton of natural limestone that has come out of wherever I have dug into smaller (1cm ish) pieces for a cheap free 'gravel' patio.  You can see how much I have been chipping so far. lol




There you have it.  There are 3 more rooms left to show you.
Master Bedroom - Finished but full of crap that needs to go into cupboards or skips etc.
Kids bedroom - Finished but full of clothes boxes and other things (like a fat lazy sister in law that never gets out of bed.)
Downstairs Lav - Not really started on yet.
There are also 2 cupboards which need sorting and then the bedrooms can be cleared.

As you know the objective here being heavily in debt and losing my job last November (I started a new job in February) was to keep the cost as low as possible hence why the whole house's laminate bought as a mixed pallet for Â£165 delivered.  Here is the breakdown for the rooms:

Lounge
Shelves - Free, made from old broken wardrobes
Large TV Wall bracket - Â£22 off ebay (The smaller one had one with it)
Fire Surround - Free off dontdumpthat
Table and chairs - Â£50 off ebay
Curtains - Â£16 from instore
Suite - Free off dontdumpthat
Suite Covers - Â£49 off ebay but a house warming present from my mum.

Stair Runner was made from 4 runners Â£5 each from instore and stapled to the stairs.

Bathroom
Tiles and Grout - Â£25 from Wickes
Shower Rail - Â£8 from Wilko
Shower Curtain - Â£1 from Poundland
Tap/Shower Mixer and shower - Â£22 off ebay

Garden - Totally free.  I have used wood from broken pallets for the fence and stone from the garden itself for the patio.  I guess you can say the grass seed was the only cost at Â£1 from poundland.  Oh and concret for the fence posts was Â£5 from Focus.

Next up will be finished pics of the bedrooms and maybe an advance on the garden.

Hope you like it.  Not bad for 6 months work in a derelict house whilst working around women and children and with a daytime job too. 

Andy


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## LondonDragon (1 Jul 2008)

Looking good, the hard work paid off, did my place up when I brought it last year too I know how hard that can be.
used to get home at around 22:00 and went painting until about midnight everyday for a few months and off course the weekends, managed to get it all done, only thing I couldn't do myself was the plastering so had to pay someone to do that.
But in the end it came out looking pretty good too, hard work pays off and its always best when you do it yourself 
Congrats and good luck


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