Our move down to Hove has come and gone in a flurry of activity and super-human packing sessions. The week before we were due to move in, there was a large list of things to be done by the building company – finish the floors, hang the radiators, finish painting, install bathroom and much, much more. Even with 2 days to go, it was still hard to picture how the house would look as there were up to 15 people in there rushing around trying to get things done. I decided that the only way to maintain my sanity was to have blind faith – at that point there was little else I could do, except get in the way.

We moved in on a rainy Sunday to a house that still needed a lot of work but had a working kitchen, working plumbing, working electrics and doors that closed. All of the necessities. We sat amongst our boxes in front of the large, curtainless windows and took it all in. The house was transformed in to the light and beachy feeling property we wanted, that was for sure. And even though the windows were splattered in (fresh) paint and covered in (old) mildew, we could still see the English Channel churning down the road.

Another far less charming thing we could see was that the original floorboards (that had been in good shape when we took up the carpets) had been mauled by a sander in inexperienced hands. The natural Treatex hard oil we had used gave a beautiful colour to the wood, but the boards were actually wavy in areas with huge gashes here and there. And they were very coarse and gritty to the touch. We had reviewed the floors after the first round of sanding, and told the manager they were very rough, and had been reassured they would receive a final sand and clean before the varnish went down. This had not happened. And about 30 of the boards had not been nailed back down so there was clonking and creaking with every 3rd step we took.

This floor botch job was a small disaster, because it meant we could not let our son crawl on it – the floor was just too scratchy.   He was not happy about being under house arrest (i.e. carried everywhere) for the two weeks it took to get a carpet down in his room, and a grizzly baby makes for a grizzly mom. So when Paul No. 1 came around the day after we moved in and I pointed out the floors, I expressed my shock that no one had bothered to a) check for the smoothness required before varnishing or b) clean them before varnishing. They had loads of dirt and hair stuck to the finish. I was trying to stay calm and cool, but that lasted about 2 minutes. He immediately offered to re-do them but I was not convinced that they would come out right a second time around unless he brought in a floor specialist company which he didn’t seem keen on. So we agreed to take the price off the bill. We are now weighing up whether to hire a floor restoration company (specialists only is my new rule) or lay sustainable and hard-wearing bamboo. We’ve retained almost all of the houses original features, so we’re not sure which way to go.

Now that we’re in the house, and the major work has been done, we can  take more time with decisions like the floors, the wardrobes, the wooden windows that need to be replaced, the garden, the exterior… and have more control over the work being done.

If you are considering restoring your floorboards, and want to avoid the headaches we had, read the 4Homes guide on Restoring Period Features. I wish our builders had.

And then there is what we found under the floorboards, but I’ll save that for next time.

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I decided to be organised about our paint selection, rather than make one of our typical last minute decisions, so I started collecting samples of paints a few weeks before the painter was due to start on the house.I narrowed the paint companies I wanted to use down to Little Greene, Farrow & Ball and Fired Earth because of their low VOCs (volatile organic compounds) which means the paint is less toxic, mild smelling and… can be licked by my tiny-and-eats-anything son.

The day Lynn (the painter) started, I arrived with my box full of sample paint pots and colour charts and explained the look we were trying to create – breezy, light, airy. We went through the various pots and she painted each one in a chunky patch on a wall she had prepped that morning. She wrote the name of each paint above the patch (in pencil) and we let them dry for about an hour so we could get a sense of the true colour of each one.

As anyone who has painted a room before knows, what a colour looks like on a colour chart and what it looks like on a wall can be two very different things, so I was very curious to see how the test would go.

When the paints dried it looked like a charming mural of whites, greens and greys. The colours I preferred jumped out at me right away and, luckily, my husband had the exact same preferences, so no battle there. We decided to go for Little Greene Linen Wash for the majority of the house and Little Green French Grey in the kitchen. I had not even heard of Little Greene until this project, and had discovered them in a mention they had in Grand Designs magazine where the paints were described as being environmental, chalky and very washable. They are pricy, but so are Farrow & Ball and Fired Earth. (Each sample alone for my short list of brands cost around £3.) And even though Lynn thought I should consider colour matching my Little Greene preference to Crown to save money, I was quite sold on the low VOC and ‘easy to wash’ combination.

Lynn was also worried it would be too watery, as some designer paints are. But after putting on the first coat she called to say it went on beautifully and that there was virtually no smell. And after a few days of painting with it, she let me know she loved it (’it goes on like butter’) and planned on using it in her own house. I have to wait until my trip down next week to see it for myself.

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Our last visit to the building site revealed that the team left our old toilets, sink and other house debris to sit heaped in our back garden – an eye sore for our neighbours. Being one of those people who manically vacuums and dusts before anyone visits my house, I was mortified by this discovery. We have such lovely new neighbours – they’ve been very good about putting up with the disruption of the works – and they certainly shouldn’t be punished with a view of a 1960s turquoise WC.

I can deal with the fact that the interior will probably be a mess for the majority of the project, as one would expect on a full-blown renovation, but the outside mess brought out the Kim/Aggie in me. I showed Paul No. 1 the heap of junk and asked that it be cleared immediately – and be kept cleared. I hope it hasn’t crept back by next week.

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We just completed the 4th week of our renovation works. A local company called Challenger Construction is doing the renovation for us and we’ve had a stream of builders, plumbers, electricians and plasterers in over the past few weeks.

The way the project is run is like this:
•Challenger have a project manager named Paul (out of our long list of Pauls, he is Paul No. 1) who is running the works
•Every Friday my husband goes down to check on progress and meet with various specialists to answer questions & provide specifications for things (like socket locations)
•Now that the worst of the building works are over I will also start going down every Friday to review and discuss progress (we decided to spare our baby the stress and noise of the first few weeks)
•Every Monday I have a phone call with Paul to go over outstanding questions we have, and provide answers to questions he has
•Then we contact each other as things come up

So far it’s worked out fairly well, and as expected the first weeks of a renovation are the most chaotic and grubby. Our carpets, kitchen, bathroom and wallpaper were all stripped out in a flurry of dirt and mayhem. Doorways were cut, a redundant chimney breast was removed, steel lintels went in to support the structural changes, floorboards were pulled up for wiring and to lay pipes, a few walls were knocked down – then the sanding and plastering started.

Our house looks like a wreck. But a promising wreck. Our decision to create a doorway in between the living room and dining room has opened up the ground floor beautifully. And the removal of a cumbersome chimneybreast in the kitchen has done wonders for the symmetry of that room.

It’s hard to tell if we’re actually on schedule since there are so many things happening in tandem. I feel like we should be further ahead on plastering in order to keep things moving and unless we have a large decorating team in I’m not quite sure how the walls will be done in time to allow for the floors to be completed in the last week. But I have to trust that Paul No.1 has it under control and that our Friday visits and Monday calls are enough because making more frequent visits to a building site with a baby strapped to your front is very, very difficult due to the levels of dust, grime, deadly wires, nails and noise.

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With fireplaces out of the way, I had to get on with the radiator sizing and buying, which I found out actually requires a maths degree. You have to figure out optimal radiator sizes per room, based on heat output requirements per room. But of course, each style has different outputs. We had to create a spreadsheet just to keep all of our options straight.

The radiator style we liked most, called Old Skool, was out of our price range. So in order to stay on budget we decided to go with the good old reliable Stelrad Compacts.

After hours of matching size to BTU output, time the radius of Pi divided by the speed of sound, I finally had the info I needed to place an order. And that’s when fate intervened…because no one I called could get the Stelrads delivered to us fast enough to meet our scheduled installation date. (Kevin or Sarah would have told me off if this had been a TV moment.)

I had to think fast with a crying baby in one arm and an annoyed husband on the phone. I decided to call the Radiator Centre, who I had ordered a heated towel rail from earlier that day. And they also happen to carry the Old Skool range. I explained our predicament to a helpful man named Paul (yes, another Paul, who we now call Paul 4) and asked if they carried a Stelrad Compact equivalent. He wisely asked me what sort of styles we liked and I said ‘Old Skool, but we don’t have the cash.’ To which he replied the magical words ‘We are having a clearance sale with a range very similar to Old Skool. Let me see if we have what you need.’

I zapped Paul over our size and BTU requirements, and explained our budget, and a few minutes later he got back to me with news that they could get us a set of cool looking column radiators for our budget. I confirmed everything with my husband, who double checked with Paul in case I was having a radiator hallucination. We ordered them straight away and are now just hoping the lorry unloads them before our plumber arrives.

Looks like we won’t have to huddle around the stove to stay warm this winter after all. And I think our selections may even look better than hoped. We’ll see in a few weeks time.

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Fireplace and radiator selections have been driving us to drink. I never knew that picking out a few mantelpieces and some radiators could be so mentally taxing.

We decided to focus on the fireplaces before the radiators since the builders needed to know our requirements straightaway. And I thought this would be an easy and fun job, a quick trip over to the local fireplace store in London followed by a ‘we’ll take those, thanks.’ Oh no. My visit to the local fireplace store resulted in me finding out that most styles I was curious about were actually not in stock. So I ended up shoving about 20 catalogues in our pram and walking home in the blazing sun thinking ‘who needs heat anyway?’

The catalogues I collected didn’t have prices (annoying) so I then spent ages calling various fireplace stores getting them to rattle off prices, looking for the best deal. I momentarily considered leaving the very dated gas fires in place and hoping that they would one day become retro chic. But we want big open fires in the living room and dining room, with lovely and simple mantelpieces, so I persevered.

Finally, I found a fireplace store down near our new house in Hove, called Grate Fireplaces, who told me they had most styles in their showroom and also had some very good deals on. So we made a trip down, expecting to be disappointed, but instead spent ages in there with our jaws dropping at the sheer size of the showroom which had some of the most incredible reclaimed mantelpieces I have ever seen. I asked my husband if it was wrong to pick a mantelpiece first, and then buy a house to suit it? Because the 18th century blue veined marble French mantle I was looking at was too incredible not to build a house for. Budgets suddenly meant nothing.

That’s when Paul, who works there, snapped me back to reality and said a house like ours needs a much, much, (cough cough) much smaller and simpler look. On our way back down the stairs to the section-for-modest-homes, we saw a striking metal surround, just the right size for our dining room. It had four ominous ravens, which for some reason made me think it would be a bargain (don’t loads of people get creeped out by ravens?) so we rushed to ask the price and were quickly depressed by the answer. It was owned by Roger Daltry and thus commanded a hefty rock-n-roll price tag.

So it was back to the simple surrounds. We eventually decided on a style called Henlow in wood so we could have our painter coordinate it with our walls – a look that will suit our tone for the house much more than limestone or marble. No blue vein or ravens for us. Not this time, anyway.

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Our current kitchen in our rented house is about the size of a 1970s prog rock keyboard. It can only fit one person, there is no extractor fan, the refrigerator is constantly icing up and the hob is in a lethal position. So being able to design our own kitchen in a more human-friendly space (15’x8’) was one of the BIG selling points for our new house.

We started our new kitchen project by buying a stack of magazines and cutting out what we liked. Sort of like being a teenage girl all over again only instead of clipping pics of Adam Ant (Adam Ant? ed) and sticking them to my wall, I was cutting out pictures of wooden work surfaces.

We soon realised that would could not afford any of the designer kitchens we liked, and turned to the IKEA website for similar looking, but cheaper, options. We found some styles that looked pretty good online, which we got so excited about that we decided to use the IKEA ‘design-your-kitchen’ software to model up our new kitchen. This took hours and we were so smug about the 3-D result that we didn’t bother to actually make the trip to IKEA for over a week in order to check out the wares in person. Big mistake.

Because when I actually examined the units we were considering, I quickly dismissed the cardboard-like construction and scrunched my nose saying ‘no way am I buying one of these.’ The problem is, it’s all well and good designing a virtual kitchen and saying ‘that looks nice’ when the actual, tangible kitchen units feel, and look, all wrong.

But my husband, who had done the lion’s share of the online designing, thought I was being too abrupt in my critique. Which resulted in a mini-meltdown in the kitchen section and a huffy exit through the circular IKEA ‘exit path’, a particular kind of consumer torture. By the time we got to the parking lot, we were on the verge of war. The only thing that could save our marriage was to up the kitchen budget and start again. So we did.

In round 2 of our research, we met with one company we particularly liked called Off Spec, but our aggressive timescales didn’t mesh with their order timeframe. Then we came across Hove Kitchens, who had a huge ‘50% Off!’ sign that lured us in to their shop. (Yes, a real shop. No more online browsing for us.)

We had a look around and chatted with the owner, who confirmed that the style we liked could be delivered in our timescales. And my husband remembered the company’s name from the Checkatrade site he had been using, where they had a good rating. So we decided to see what sorts of prices they could offer. We were able to use the diagrams we had drawn up in our IKEA phase as a specification for the Hove Kitchen designer. The manager took what my husband had done, designed it up using professional software, and added some improvements. When he presented it back to us, it completely matched what we had asked for, and was bang on budget. Success at last!

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We have decided to keep on renting in London while our new house is being renovated. There is no was we can move in and do it slowly over time – it just needs too much work. When I say too much work I mean: all new wiring, replace lead pipes and update the plumbing system, sand and finish all floors, prep and paint all rooms, dip and paint all doors, repair and paint woodwork, rip out psychedelic gas fires and create open fireplaces, build wardrobes, replace kitchen, replace bathroom and, while we’re at it, knock down a few walls. And that’s just for starters.

With our London rent bleeding our account every month, we had to work fast and find a recommended and reliable team. We considered using individual trades people to tackle each specialist piece of work, and met with various companies to discuss the job and get quotes. This approach would have required my husband and me to project manage. But with us tied to the city due to work and baby duty, and (ahem) the fact we’ve never taken on a big renovation project before, it seemed crazy to manage ourselves.

So we started looking for one company who could handle everything, including the project management. George Clarke’s Top Ten Renovation Tips really helped focus our search. We researched top rated companies in the area using Checkatrade and asked out friends for referrals. After many phone calls, we put together a short list and arranged for some quotes.

We found a kitchen company we stumbled upon both on Checkatrade, and then on our local high street, that handles full renovations through a partnership with a larger building company. Their ratings and referrals all checked out, and they had a nice rapport with my husband, who handled the bidding process while I stayed behind, amusing sonny boy with jingling blocks back in London.

I wasn’t totally useless. I did help clarify the exact list of works we needed, and hammered out the budget, and reviewed the contract. (Using George Clarke as my virtual assistant. Thanks, George.)

With everything in place, the builders were able to start last week, on time.

We’ve allocated 6 weeks for the work. Aggressive timescales, but doable if there are no surprises. There will be teams of specialists overlapping and one project manager overseeing everything. We’ll travel down every Friday to check progress in person and answer questions, plus keep up to date with phone calls and emails throughout the week. We’ll see how it goes. I’m guessing as the project progresses we’ll need to get down there more frequently.

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Last month my husband and I bought our first house together – a 1930s semi-detached house by the sea, in Hove, that has barely been touched since the 1970s.

Our vision for the house is to create a simple, light and breezy family home for us to raise our young son in. A Not-So-Grand-Design. But surely there is merit in that. After all, when most of us mere mortals take on a renovation project we’re usually focussing more on keeping the cost of radiators under £1000 rather than how to make our fireplace appear as if its floating.

Our journey began at the beginning of the year when we decided to move from our current London rental to Hove after much research. The quick commute into London (one hour), wide streets and surprisingly eclectic architecture (I’ve never been in a seaside town quite like it) make Hove feel beachy, friendly and bohemian all at the same time – a sort of Notting Hill by the sea. And without the congestion of nearby Brighton.

We searched high and low for months, dragging our son on endless journeys to viewings at the weekends, and found some very nice properties at prices a good 25% below their 2007 highs, and even then the agents were saying ‘they’re open to offers.’. But it was the solid, yet dated, semi by the sea that won us over – even though it meant we would have to take on a sizable renovation project, which was most definitely not in our plan.

The house had a massive amount of interest when it came on to the market due to its original features, balanced layout, lovely garden and considerable potential, but our chain-free status and solid mortgage worked to our advantage, making our bid (out of a surprising 15+ offers) the chosen one.

And now we’re on our way – the renovation adventure has begun. We will be keeping a blog diary of our progress for 4Homes, so watch this space.

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