www.9thcircle.co.uk

pix plz

it's a front door. Mmm, shiny.


Here's the kitchen, complete with Frigerifico (it's some language for fridge, but I reckon it's only to be used for ace fridges like this) and window fillum. Unfortunately now I'm on this computer to upload pics from phone, and the SLR pics from before are on the Mac. argh. ETA - here is a before pic:


The bathroom saga:
Er. There will be a before shot here with Pilks bumpy white tiles. Like this:


Then this:


Which is what happens whn your boyfriend goes mad with a bolster chisel and a hammer.
It was followed by this:


Which as we know was then followed by the render falling off the wall drama and Deadly wiggling breezeblocks in the wall. Eeeep.
So after the application of more Hardibacker (I kept out of the way and did not take any progress photos - it didn't seem appropriate) we've ended up with something that looks a bit like this:


And it will be finished on my birthday. Squee! Also had the phonecall earlier to arrnage delivery of the sofa, also on my birthday. So lots of squeeing all around, right after we've finished going crazy with rollers and brushes to get the living room finished before the suite turns up!

front door

The door originally looked like this. I love the numbers. Not.

The net curtain left by the previous owners didn't look that filthy when it was hanging up. We knew it was probably coated in filth, but figured it could stay until we'd found something to replace it. When we took it down it was nearly black - should have realised with the amount of filth in the rest of the house - and was chucked out in the garage to go with the binmen when they came for everything else. In the picture it does look quite vile actually.
After a coat of Nitromors it looked like this (reminds me of that bit with Neve Campbell in the hospital in the Craft - because I'm sick.)

After a couple more coats of Nitromors, some sanding and some wire wool (which gave poor Hedgie a very sore face - no she wasn't using it on her face, but it shedded lots of fibres while she was working damn hard) I didn't really know when to stop; every time I did I saw a fresh little bit of paint leftover.



















And now it looks like this:


Yesterday I got round to adding shiny chrome numbers and chrome letterbox, as well as a chrome door handle. Pics to follow.

photo update

Just to give you some ideas of how things are progressing in a pictorial fashion.

This pic was taken by the estate agent. Note the delightful do not use tape - you can't really see the dented tap and draining board from the rock, or all the broken glass everywhere, but trust me, it's there, as is the old smashed into a million pieces window outside.











This shows from the other angle - with the new sink waiting to be put in, over the gap from which the cooker mysteriously vanished. Pretty much the same as before, only minus glass, dead moths and filth.









Today:

It's a shame that this photo doesn't quite show the shiny fridge, and that I've not been able to upload the one that shows the window film. But it's looking gooood! New sink is in, as is the washer dryer, and everything is very clean. Cupboards are starting to fill up. I'm very pleased.

I will post more photos when my computer actually allows me to get them off my phone.

Ode to Nitromors

[to the tune of Oh Danny Boy]

Oh Nitromors, the paint, the paint is calling
From door to door, and along the dado rail.
The fumes are strong, and all the flowers are dying
'Tis you, 'tis you who've made my nostrils quail.
But you have worked to strip the paint of ages
And made the naked woodwork glow,
Although at times, we had to strip in stages.
Oh Nitromors, oh Nitromors we love you so.

Guess where I am...

That's right kids - sitting on the floor in our new living room! (my back is really wishing there was a chair in here)

However... there's always a hitch. The rendering has come off the bathroom wall when Deadly has started to tile. Fuck. So we need to see if the breezeblocks can take having aquapanel screwed to them, or.. I don't want to consider "or" at the moment actually because the alternative thought that the extension wall is knackered is too much for my brain to comprehend.

cooking with gas

Oh gods - where to start?!

Matt and Emma came up at the weekend, which was stupendously cool, and thanks to Emma's handiness with a bottle of Nitromors, it meant that the front door was ready to be painted blue on Wednesday... mmmm shiny. I'm hoping Hedgie will post any day now with her promised and long-awaited musical ode to Nitromors.

On Sunday Chris attacked the bathroom with a bolster chisel, removing all the tiles (and the boiler cupboard wall which turned out to be a badly attached bit of ply :S ) and then worked well into the night making a new cupboard wall out of aquapanel, and rerendering the wall over the bath which had gone back to breezeblock (obviously the bathroom is part of the 80's extension - breezeblocks were not a popular building material in 1858)

On Tuesday the nice men came and fitted the boiler and gas hob, and then on Wednesday their sparky mate came and fitted the cooker and tried to solve the mystery of where in the hell the power to the garage leaves the house - it's part of the kitchen circuit, not just a spur, so it's pretty important we know. He couldn't help us, but suggested a stop gap solution of putting an outdoor socket on the end of the wire to make the thought of having live cables in a leaking garage less of a worry.

So now we have hot water, heating and the power to make food! The gas fire in the living room is shagged, but when funds allow we want to replace it with something pretty.

Tuesday and Wednesday also saw a lot of rendering and plastering happening in the living room where a lot of wall had come down with the paper - back to the brick again in some places. On Wednesday the first sheets of lining paper went up on the intact walls of the living room!

Thursday - I was supposed to be going to work with a friend, who couldn't make it, happen a good job as I woke up feeling like death and slept most of the day. Chris tidied and cleaned the house, and also helped the men from the council empty our garage of fetid rubbish that was starting to smell again after being deposited in there following the marathon yard cleaning session.

While he was there our shiny box of broadband bits turned up - so we have no furniture, but we have internets. Priorities sound about right to me.

Without Chris knowing, me and my parents sneaked into the house later on and rehung all the kitchen doors and got the washing machine nearly plumbed in.. we need some longer hose to finish that job. We also tried the Chinese takeaway across the road; not bad.

This morning Chris has gone to pick up Deadly to tile the bathroom, and during the course of typing this I have been trying to sort out the BT broadband (sodding thing - no I don't want to enter my password 240 million times, no I can't use Internet Explorer - I'm on a Mac - cock off!) which because it is via Yahoo (*shudder*) won't let me be signed into my Yahoo account that I've had for about 4 years at the same time. Helpful.

Also during the course of typing this, Chris has phoned to say there's a parcel - so I got him to open it. It's a piece of rubber tube, about 9 inches in diameter. How weird.

He then realises that despite the delivery bloke saying my name at the front door, he's handed over the wrong parcel. So in the past 20 minutes I have phoned the number on Business Post's website, been told to call another number then cut off. I've phoned the number, been told by a very nice lady that it's not her I need but she'll put me through, and then had the phone picked up and put down on me. Cheers.
I phoned her back, she gave me the Blackburn depot number, I eventually got to speak to someone who I think spoke to the delivery bloke who said he'd come back and swap the parcels, with the air of professionalism you'd expect from someone who doesn't want to be at work at 3pm on a Friday. If you ever have anything really valuable that you'd like to lose, have delivered to someone else or generally neglected, I'd suggest Business Post - they're fucking ace. Some bloody bastard in a van has got our shower!
I phoned Chris to tell him this, but as I was on the phone to him the house phone rang so he had to go.. the saga continues.
I can't stand the suspense, cold or no cold, I'm going to have to drive over to find out what's going on.

Watch this space - my next post should be from the house itself!

Reinforcements arrive!

Well, after battling to avoid traffic (and being thwarted at almost every attempt to avoid said traffic) we finally arrived in sunny rainy Blackburn - laden with presents, Krispy Kreme, and masses of bedding in which to nest.

After having some concerns about parking without a valid permit (dealt with by our lovely host - apparently a Post-It note is enough to deter traffic wardens up here, whereas in London it would merely make them sneer as they issued a £50 fine!), we mooched into the house of our friends oop north.

It's a good sized house for a first home (up north that is, in London a property this size might be considered the pinnacle of your house purchasing life), and although it needs a fair amount of work it's easy to see how good it's going to look once it's all been decorated. The proud homeowners had already made a start, so we rolled up our sleeves and made ourselves useful.

By the end of the evening we'd pretty much finished stripping the wallpaper off in the lounge, and were then able to curl up in big nest of duvets and cushion on the floor with pizza and (thanks to their gorgeously shiny Smeg fridge) cold drinks.

Buying a house: hundreds of thousands of pounds
Relaxing with your friends: priceless

;)

"friiiidge, friiiidge, full of lots of lovely... green things?"

Hurrah! Today is the day the fridge and cooker get redelivered - oooooooh, very excited! Had a phonecall from the delivery people giving me a 12-4 delivery slot, which means I can have a lie in and a bath before I head over to the house. Also have a man coming to give us a quote for a boiler. We had one yesterday as well - nice bloke, so fingers crossed that means we're closer to getting the boiler sorted too.
Fridge turns up at about 3pm, I suggest to the guys that they'll find it easier to get in through the back gate and back door rather than up the steps and through the house. When we get to the gate, we realise it's too narrow for the packaging. At which point the lads strip the packaging off, and then tell me "If we knacker it bringing it in, there's nothing you can do because we're not supposed to unpack it outside." Now they tell me. Cheers fellas. I hold my breath as they bring it in, but it makes it unscathed. Bloody hell it's a big bugger though! They then bring the oven and hob in, I sign, and off they go. Eeee, it's very shiny.

Chris's parents came to visit the fridge and go "oooh!" at the electricity, and then it was off to bed for me - I am shatterificated! Parents came home in the early hours of the morning, so up early to take the bus back tomorrow, and then off to install the washer dryer!

We've got the power!

Waited at the house from just before 8am for someone from the electricity company to come and wipe down the meter - despite being a card meter it's somehow accrued £115 debt.
He turned up just before lunchtime and sorted it out - he was a lovely, lovely man, very kind and friendly and explained to me how card meters work and said if he had it his way, he would have come and put a normal meter in for me today. Letter from npower says it could be six weeks to switch to them and get a new meter.. argh.
I then went out to top the card up, struggled to find a place that did it, got lost in the rain and very very wet. I should also mention that by this time I was starving hungry, but the simple matter of finding something hot to eat proved tricky as well. In the end, with three sausage rolls in my belly, and £10 on the electricity card, I returned home to see the moment of truth.. climbed up the ladder, put the card in, flicked the big switch and a couple of the circuit breakers, and lo; there was light!
I was then witnessed by our next door neighbour to do my special "we've got electricity" dance while trying out light switches, and celebrated by breaking out the wallpaper steamer onto the remains of the hideous yellow, orange and silver wallpaper that the previous occupants had favoured in the dining room. Admittedly there wasn't much left to take down, as Chris and I had discovered that it peeled fairly easily and had had a mad half hour one evening just running round pulling the paper down.
Today also saw the arrival of the very sexy tiles for the bathroom. People aren't going to be able to resist the lure of our shower and bath when we've finished, it's going to look the mutts nutts!

Monday, Monday...

Up bright and early this morning to run my dad to pick up a minibus - him and my mum and some assorted randoms are off to London for three days - which means I get to borrow his car, and also am in charge of the chickens. Scary thought. I also have 3 cats, 4 rabbits, a zebra finch, two terrapins, a hamster, two tanks and a pond full of fish to look after. Which is good, but mans I must remember to bob home from the house between 5 and 6 to do feeding rounds.
After dropping my dad off, I shot up the motorway to Irlam, to pick up Himself who is have new front and rear axle bushes fitted to his car. As the house is still powerless, we decided instead to take advantage of the lull in house things, and the availability of an extra pair of hands to go and sort out my classroom.
When we got there, we found that Ralphy, my incredibly lovely caretaker, had already humped most of the things back into the classroom, so that left us free to back some display boards. Eight boards and a spot of lunch later and I'd trapped something in my neck, so decided enough was enough for one day.
We then went to B&Q (again!!) for more tester pots for the living room walls. Dining room is going to be a pale blue above the dado, and a sandy brown underneath, with white paintwork. Living room is chocolate brown on the chimney breast, we just need to find the right creamy shade for the walls and paintwork, as one current choice looks too clinically white, and strangely, the other looks pink..
We went back to Irlam for the car, and the nice guys at Awesome relieved Chris of a substantial wad of cash, for a car that was driving 1000 times better. So worth it.

Then it was back to the parents' to feed the chickens (and Chris got to get a still warm eggy out of the nest box and feed some greedy biddies by hand) and the cats, before nipping off to the house to paint some more tester patches, which we can have a look at tomorrow.

I've also realised that as I'm struggling to catch up with these posts and write about all that has happened, I have missed out the delight that was the bin, that occurred sometime over the past three days, so I shall share it now.
When the house has been quickly tarted up to be sold (new and badly fitted rush jobs in the kitchen and bathroom, everything that stayed still being walloped with magnolia emulsion paint) the builders oh so helpfully left all their rubbish behind in the yard, along with a bike, the old broken kitchen window (which may be in part related to the missing cooker in the kitchen) meaning that the bin was absolutely loaded and too heavy to be moved. We'd been told by the council that if we wanted rid of the rubbish we could either take it to the tip ourselves, or pay for the privilege of the bin men coming for it. Either way, all the crap needed to be bagged up.
Chris took it upon himself to tackle this particular task, which started fairly painlessly with him smashing up old rotten bits of wood and the old window frame to get them in a sack. Other broken glass and general yard mess was bagged up, and dumped in the Death Trap Garage (TM) to be out of the way, and then he turned on the bin. Upon opening it and tipping it up, Chris found that as well as a tonne of old tiles and concrete, because the bin had been overfilled and the lid left half open it was filled with five months worth of stinking, stagnant water, rotting cardboard and polystyrene that had turned black. I was cleaning the living room, and rushed to the back door when I heard the loud crash of the bin hitting the floor, and Chris retching uncontrollably. I wish I hadn't to be honest, because the bin smelt like Satan's arse crack and a whole heap of dead things. I cannot possibly convey through the medium of text how utterly vile and gut-wrenching the stink was.
We shut the door to try and keep the stench out, but while I was in the front bedroom cleaning the window I could smell it seeping in through the vent. People were walking past on the main road clutching their noses, and a car full of people from up the road stopped at the junction and were looking for an overflowing drain. Eventually Chris managed to get all the fetid filth into rubble sacks, and shut it in the garage before sluicing down the yard. I don't know how he managed it.
The bin men will earn every penny of their fee when they come to get the bags out of our garage - none of that shit is going anywhere near the back of my car!

Something for the weekend

Jobs for the weekend have included:
- buying a new kitchen sink, as the old one has a bent tap and dent in the draining board from a rock through the window incident when the house was on the market. We didn't get time to fit it, but have identified why there was water coming from under the sink when we ran the tap - the feed for the washing machine hasn't been blocked off.
- returning lots and lots and lots of mail to senders. There must have been six different names on the letters on the doormat, and that was before I did a Moist Von Lipwig and opened the cupboard under the stairs to be confronted with sacks of mail, the stuff at the bottom on a damp concrete floor and going mouldy. Erk.
- fitting one light fitting. There would have been more, but the wiring has no junction boxes, rather all the wires go into the ceiling rose, which the fitting was not designed for. The wires to the ceiling rose were either dropped down between two close joists, or had been posted down a hole in a joist, so we couldn't slot a junction bow through the hole in the ceiling. The upstairs floor is tongue and groove floor ply, so nigh on impossible to lift up, so we couldn't put the junction box under there. We got there in the end though. Couldn't test if the thing works, because we're still waiting for power (Tuesday).
- visiting many many B&Qs and Homebases to buy paint testers, doormats, and other things that cost lots of money.

We also moved my papasan chair to the house so I have something to sit in to wait for people to come and sort out meters, deliver bathroom tiles, give quotes for boilers etc.
We're getting there, slowly but surely!

Ding dong

Up bright and early with arms full of cleaning products, ready to go and make a dent in the EU moth mountain in our house.
Mother offered to come with me to help clean up, but we were delayed in leaving because Max the mainecoon wouldn't come in, so mother insisted on calling him and waiting for him.
Gues who'd already been and gone by the time we got to the house? Fuming doesn't describe it. Plus, I also discovered that I'd left my phone at my parents' house - so had to go back and get it. Gnaaaah.

We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. Windows are all sparkly, cupboards and surfaces clean, bathroom 100% better.

I've spoken to many energy companies, and many different departments, and have been on hold for so long I have listened to Jack Johnson's album down the phone in it's entirety. Not looking forward to the mobile bill this month.

"Romy, what the fuck have we done?"

Well, The call came just after lunchtime to go and collect the keys, which sent me into nervous overdrive and for hours afterwards going "Oh my god." This soon turned into "what the fuck have we done?! How much work?!"

The house smells quite stale, but we opened the windows and got some air through, and it started to smell better.

We couldn't start work on the house though, as there's not only no power, hot water, or actually any water to speak of, but also The Fella had got the letter through to inform him of his hospital appointment for his cystoscopy - on the day of completion. Oh, and work phoned to tell me my classroom is ready to be put back together. Never rains, eh? If you are wondering what a cystoscopy is, I will explain in the Fella's words - it's a camera up the knob. Ouchie.
Thankfully the camera revealed nothing to worry about in himself's weeing parts, so all is good on that front. It felt like I was releasing a breath that I didn't realise I'd been holding for a very long time, and there was nothing nicer than having a big enormous cuddle outside my parents' house.

Yes, it was back to the 'rentals for stage two of the operation - Operation IKEA. We both own fairly compact cars, not the sort that one can easily load with flatpacked bookcases and dining room furniture. Also, if you take the 'rents you can tap them up for cash at the checkout ;)

Stopped at the house briefly to drop off a stepladder so I could read the electricity meter (had spent an amusing phonecall trying to sit on Chris's back and read the meter and press the button several times for the nice man on the other end of the phone. After coating Chris in plaster dust and spectacularly failing to reach the right buttons, I decided to phone back when I had a ladder.) My dad had a quick look at the plumbing and decided it was safe to switch the water back on, as the system had been drained when the house was empty. One out of three ain't bad!

Off to IKEA, had a good wander, bought lots of lovely furniture, and then back to the house to drop it off at approaching midnight.. At this point, in the dark, my dad decided he would put the new batteries in the smoke detectors and put them back up (as it's obviously been rented property at some point, they're hardwired detectors, but due to lack of power, have been beeping incessantly since our first visit to the property way back in.. some month or other.

Then it was home to bed, read for an early start tomorrow when lots of shiny kitchen bits are being delivered!