A renovation clean up

We were fortunate enough to buy our very first home earlier this year. We bought it at a steal of a price because it needed an entire renovation. Fast forward 5 months of blood, sweat and tears we are finally in our house! The work is still ongoing but the house is livable and we are almost finished now. There are only two big jobs left to do and that's the hallway and dining room. Both rooms need new flooring and need to be decorated but these cosmetics we can deal with. Other than that there are a dozen little jobs here and there that still need to be done.

As you can imagine under going a full house renovation the house can get very dirty. Most of the walls in the house had to be knocked back to the brick and had to be replastered. For months we have been battling endless and relentless dust and dirt. The minute I walked into the house I could feel in on my skin and in my hair. There was rubble everywhere, pulled up floorboards, holes in the walls. We've really seen the bones of our old house. 

But the dust and the dirt, it's been a nightmare. No matter how many times I hoovered, mopped and swept up it seemed to just continue to appear, until we received and started using the a Dyson DC59 Animal which has really helped us out. It has been a godsend with it's digital motor, superior suction and with it being cordless! (It had me at cordless!) I found myself spending a lot less time vacuuming as it's such a powerful machine. 

Here are some of my top tips for cleaning up after a renovation-


Wipe down: It's scandalous how much dust is created when renovating. You see it everywhere but what's worse is that there's even more than you can't see and it always seems to come back. My top tip is to keep on top of the cleaning and wipe down with a damp cloth after every job. After each big job I would begin mission wipe down and start by dusting down the ceiling, moving onto the walls and then begin wiping down everything else in the room. I found doing this more and more frequently helped minimise the dust coverage around the house which you will be thankful for later. 

Sweep: Before you vacuum it's very important to sweep first. There's a whole array of different materials that are distributed throughout the house and sweeping is ideal for picking up the bigger bits of debris that you shouldn't try to vac up. Using a broom is also good for brushing dust off hard to reach places such as door frames, skirting boards and picture rails. 

Vac: After the sweeping comes the vacuuming as it picks up all dust that is not just impossible to sweep but to see too. Dust continues to settle days after each renovation job so you do find yourself vacuuming often. Thankfully the Dyson DC59 is a joy to use and maneuver and has saved me a lot of time and effort as it is just so efficient.

Mop: Now it's time to bring out the mop. The debris that cannot be wiped down, swept up or hoovered has got to be mopped. After the mopping I would sigh a breath of relief until it was time to do it all over again!  

I have found myself doing these 4 steps continuously these past 5 months. Sweep, vac, mop, repeat! Have you been doing any renovations lately? Or do you have any cleaning tips you would like to share? 

Our home - The bathroom so far - part 2

We have gotten a lot further with our bathroom renovation since the last time I updated and I couldn't be happier. Everything seems to have taken shape all of a sudden and it's just how I envisioned our bathroom to look like. We are almost finished in the bathroom and just have the odd couple of jobs to do; grouting, more tiling, paint window frame, shower doors, tile around the bath, more grouting and the toilet and sink need to be installed. It's incredible to see what the bathroom looked like originally to what it looks like now. Here are the photo's of our progress-

Our home - The bathroom so far

We are currently knee deep in house renovations as you will know if you keep upto date with my blog and social media. Our entire house needed to be gutted and started from scratch so to say it's a big job is a slight understatement, it's huge!

We haven't been tackling one room at a time as you would usually do as we simply didn't have the time. We just got stuck in with everything, all at once. Which is a little stressful. 

Today I thought I would share the progress on our bathroom with you all. 

The bathroom was the worst room in the house. It was so dated with it's avacado green tiling and paintwork, it was like stepping back in time when entering that room. It's safe to say I wasn't sad in saying goodbye to any of the original bathrooms features. 

Time to get stuck in! First we ripped up the linoleum and threw that out. It was then time to take off the tiles. There's no polite way in removing tiles so out came the hammer and chisel. I have to say I did take some enjoyment out of smashing up all the tiles and it was rather therapeutic. 

 

The tiles came off pretty easy but I should of known that was too good to be true because underneath there was ANOTHER layer of tiles. They had tiled on tiles and I soon realised why. The bottom tiles were almost impossible to remove. But we got there and I removed the majority myself with very little injury! It's a bit daunting at first swinging a big hammer around and seeing tiles shattering and flying everywhere but after a cut or two it's no worry! 

When I began removing the tiles around the shower it pulled off all the plaster as you can see in the photo. This was a bit of a disaster as it now would need re plastering. Another one of those things! 

We decided to give the tiles a break and take out all of the bathroom fixtures. The bath was cast iron and was so heavy that I was surprised it hadn't fallen through the floorboards. It had to be sawn into pieces so we were able to take it downstairs and dispose of it. When we took the toilet out it absolutely stunk and we were gagging for days. Thankfully the stench soon went! 

We tried to tidy as we went but this renovation malarkey is messy work!

Once the tiles were fully removed we had our new boiler and central heating installed. I think the bathroom looks better at this point than it did to begin with although it was scary to see all the brick and bare floorboards.

This is where we are upto now. The plasterboards are up and the bathroom is finally starting to look like we are getting somewhere. We have also dropped the ceiling, had it re plastered and have had spot lights installed. We have already bought our bathroom suite and it's ready to go in. The next step is to begin tiling! So exciting! 

Our home: The work has begun

If you follow the blog you will know that this year we made an offer on our first house. After a week or two of negotiations they accepted our offer and we were over the moon. Little did we know that it would take a long, drawn out three months until we signed on the dotted line and finally got our hands on the keys! 

We got the keys last Friday and it's been none stop ever since. I started on the master bedroom, stripping the wall paper. Whilst Nick, his Step Dad and Granddad ripped the kitchen out and begun the rewiring of the house. I would be upstairs taking off the wallpaper and pop downstairs to refill my wallpaper steamer nd there would be a hole in the floorboard or something new ripped out. We are so lucky to have so much help with the house as we wouldn't of been able to do it without Nick's family. It's incredible to see how much we have got done in such a short amount of time.

We have a month left in this rented house before we move into our new home. Time isn't on our side so we need to get as much of the work out of the way as we possibly can. This would be pretty straight forward if we only had the odd job to do but we literally have to gut the entire house; central heating, rewiring, new kitchen, new bathroom, new windows, plastering, every room needs redecorated and more. There is so much to do with so little money. It's hard to budget too cause every day a new job or repair seems to pop up and rear it's ugly head! But it's better to spot them now before we fully redecorate and move in, that would be a nightmare. 

So as it stands the house currently looks like a bombs hit and you really have to watch where you are walking with the multiple holes in the ground. Once all these big jobs are out of the way the real fun begins, the decorating! We can't wait to make this house into our home.