On the home straight

My builders are amazing: one stayed behind to sort stuff out and other drove all the way to Ikea and handed over an extensive four page shopping list. All our wardrobes and internal gubbins, kids mattresses and some bathroom lighting came to £1,551. The builder loaded up his van and drove back to us, and as he lit his cigarette he remembered he'd left various items on a trolley somewhere. He put out the cigarette and drove back - at least a 90 minute round trip - and thankfully the trolley was where he'd left it.

The wardrobes began to take shape and as the frames were nearing completion, the builder realised that the doors were missing. As well as some of the internal racks that were on the shopping list. It turns out a third of the pile of flatpack boxes had been left behind at Ikea...

So for the 3rd time in 24 hours, he went back to Ikea and again, thankfully the items were still there. (NB we are missing one shelf and 6-8 of the little things that hold the shelves in place but in the scheme of things this is both expected, and accepted).

So - 8 weeks after starting we finally got to sleep in our bed for the first time. The bedroom has no blinds or lighting, and we've swapped places so that Rob can be nearest the window. Despite this, after two months of sleeping on a sofa (with occasional respite by being away), I slept like a baby on our extremely comfortable bed.

The kids are sleeping in a double bed in our spare room, so they're not being too hard done by. This is their bedroom, which is full of parts for their wardrobe...

Going green

Last night I spent the evening in the Edmonton Ikea. The goal was to buy up lots of glasses. We'd had people over for lunch at the weekend and I noticed our glassware was a motley collection of mismatched sizes and styles.

I got white wine glasses, red wine balloons, tall drinking glasses, shorter ones and some champagne flutes. And a duvet cover, a couple of spare sheets, some cookware and what the heck, some toy dogs for the kids.

The bill came to £215.

I thought Ikea was meant to be the budget option? For this kind of money I could've gone to John Lewis or Habitat and saved the torturous trip up the A10 in the pouring rain.

On the upside, the kitchen accessories were a bargain - pictured clockwise at top: peeler 79p, timer £1.99, measuring spoons 79p and bottle opener 79p.

What does it say on the tin?

In September we bought our outdoor furniture set from Ikea. It consisted of an acacia wood table and six matching chairs. I wrote a post about how we found the perfect set, and the driving required to secure it right here.

Within a fortnight of purchasing the table and chairs, I'd covered it with three coats of Ronseal Perfect Finish Garden Furniture Oil (£15 inc delivery). Ronseal's advertising slogan is: "Does exactly what it says on the tin". Upon peering at the packaging on their website it looks like it says "The quickest and easiest way to enhance and protect garden furniture".

As you can see from the photos, it doesn't actually protect or enhance garden furniture. In fact, we probably would've been better off NOT using this product. Within four months of winter weather, the surface started to bubble and lift. The constant rain during February didn't give the wood a chance to dry, so we bought a massive cover for £20 off Amazon. Despite being protected for the last six weeks, the table looks even worse for wear now that the Ronseal has lifted off completely, taking the wood stain with it. The table looks bleached and ancient.

I was expecting to get at least a couple of years before having to treat it again, so having really no more than five or six months is unbelievable. My neighbours (who have the same table and also used Ronseal) have the same problem, though theirs isn't quite as bad as ours. Our chairs are also suffering though not as bad as the table, yet.

We'll be sanding the table down and putting a new finish on it, none of Ronseal's products will be used though. As the table is available in Ikea again for £125 it was tempting to buy another one, but a few hours of elbow grease will sort it out...

Turn it up!

Last week was a landmark week: yes we finally hung our first bit of art on the wall (my sister-in-law's graphic painting, refer earlier post) and I turned 40. People keep asking me how it feels to be 40... and I have to say, pretty much the same as 39, 38 etc. Maybe even better. I haven't thrown a big birthday party for myself since I was 25 so this was a good excuse to throw open the doors and invite some of my nearest and dearest to come and celebrate.

Fortunately, Rob bought me a set of Numark turntables, a mixer with iPod docking station and a very loud amp and speaker combination for my birthday. (I'm ignoring the fact that the speakers are in "beech effect"). I went to Ikea to buy yet another grey metal cabinet (now on sale for £32!) which houses all my vinyl. I am thinking about shipping over another two crates of vinyl I have in storage in New Zealand - there are definitely some gems in there, but I have a habit of buying records for their covers so no doubt there'll be lots of doozies too.

I ended up with three friends who are also professional DJs at my birthday (and a few bedroom ones) and had democratic DJing till way after the sun came up (apologies to my very accommodating neighbours). The soundsystem kept feeding back as I'm told the pickups inside the cartridge heads don't like being so near the metal of the cabinets so we had to pad it out with towels - will find a rubber backed mat for next time. The good news is that despite ramming in fullsize Roulette and Blackjack tables upstairs in the TV room and filling the house with people, it never felt too crazy inside, the acoustics were great and there was plenty of room in the fridge for what seemed like unlimited booze.

One of our original goals for the house was to make it a social space for this kind of thing and it sure beats hanging out in a sleazy bar with dubious punters and unpredictable music. Oh dear, I really have gotten old...

Cabinet stop gap

Another Friday night at Ikea. We must be getting pretty good at it now as we don't fight any more. Partly due to knowing all the short cuts around the store, but also learning the tricks - such as eating first, parking near the lifts where you exit from rather than near the entrance and making a list.

On this trip we bought the two metal cabinets mentioned in an earlier post, and two plastic trays. Not bad. The cabinets in their massive flat pack boxes only just made it into the Volvo (had to remove the back seat headrests though), but were remarkably easy to assemble.

I ordered a 37" flatscreen Toshiba Regza from Amazon including all the cables, a temporary indoor antenna and related bits for under £500 (there goes the holiday fund) which arrived the next day. The upside of having a second TV is that Rob can watch sport and the kids can watch Spongebob... and I can read the newspaper supplements in peace.

The room is starting to feel really useful, instead of cold and bland. We'll get a third cabinet actually, since this will be our storage for the next couple of years. Looking forward to getting all our artwork up on the walls this side of Christmas.

Now to find a plumber who actually shows up as we need that boiler replaced, and soon.

Click the photo below to see a supersize panorama taken at the weekend...

Week one is over

Well I guess the first week was going to be the hardest as we adapted to life in our drafty, chaotic and unfamiliar house. Fortunately the plumber came back on Thursday and did something to the central heating to get the radiators on the ground floor working. While they can't exactly heat the space, having them on does mean the glacial draft isn't quite so bad and we don't need the mattresses blocking the stairs any more.

I've just done a mercy dash to Ikea today to get some rubbish bin options as we need something that'll fit into one of our cupboards. Also picked up a new shower curtain. There was something gross about having the last occupants soap scum in such close proximity. (I feel like that about the entire contents of the bathroom but until Rob has a new job we can't put a firm date on continuing the renovation.)

The photo at the top is our bedroom floor the day we moved in - I'd hurriedly mopped it as the plaster dust was everywhere. Even a bucket of soapy water didn't help much, as you can see the floor was still streaky. The removal guys said "Oh, is the top floor the only one that's been finished?" I was mortified and had to explain that the top floor was the only one that hadn't been started!

The photo below is in the living room of our flat. It's of the awful kitset sofa I bought from Nabru. It came in 54 parts, took four hours to assemble, looks hideous and is the most uncomfortable thing to sit on. There's a 14 day return policy but the tenants insisted that it was perfectly fine. I guess they're young and don't need acres of extra padding...

Ikea is beginning to annoy me

(Photo of the space outside our front door where I guess we'd normally park.)

When we move in on Friday (only six more days from now) it will have been 11 months to the day since we exchanged contracts. If I'd known it would take this long I'm not sure I would've gone ahead with the purchase... but hey, all things happen for a reason, etc etc. I look forward to the day when I write to say it's all finished.

I'm having a tough time with Ikea - I ordered a mountain of stuff on their website for delivery to the flat next week (our tenants want it semi furnished). I ended up going to their store last night sans Rob, but with the kids in tow, to buy the stuff you can't buy on their website. Today they rang to say their truck is full next weekend and they can't come for two weeks. When you buy in store, they deliver within 48 hours, otherwise they charge you a not insignificant storage fee (eg £200 for a sofa for one week). I am so livid that we will have to trek back out to Ikea this week and waste time traipsing around their mammoth warehouse finding all the stuff required for the tenants, when we need every spare minute to get the two properties cleaned up and ship shape. I've started packing but have only managed to fill 10 out of the 60 boxes we're meant to have ready by Thursday evening... arrghh...

NB Rob is watching the All Blacks in Ireland this weekend (why he needed four days away to watch a two hour game is a mystery...) so I'm doing the packing on my own, with kids underfoot.

Update - I've found a local furniture shop who has everything in stock and will deliver in the coming week. It's costing £88 more than Ikea but heck, worth it to save hours of our time!

Kitchen comes together

Here's the Ikea cabinetry coming together. The drawers in this photo are upside down, the finger grooves should be aligned to the counter rather than the cupboard underneath. It looks like Ikea has drilled the holes in the wrong place. All reference material shows these drawers up the other way. The actual size of the kitchen is marginally smaller than our current place, which is up for rent in the next 8-10 weeks (mid November, hopefully. If anyone would like more details please leave your contact details in a comment.)

We'd been told by numerous experts that Ikea base cabinets are as good as the ones in high spec kitchens, and that to add value you can replace the doors, counter top and appliances with more expensive versions.

I mentioned in an earlier post that we ended up with a nasty cheap laminate counter top from Ikea as it had accidentally been included in our order - which we'd put through at nearly 10pm on a Friday night (just as the store was closing and Rob wasn't being overly conscientious with his checking). Unfortunately we can't get it back to Ikea due to the length, but as it only cost £70 we're going to reuse it, maybe as shelving in the store room or something.

Knocking out walls

Viola! One and a half days after the builders started work and look how much they've achieved: the entire ground floor has had all the internal walls demolished, the stairs have had a layer lifted off and the middle floor has had the old kitchen and flooring ripped out. The progress seems extraordinary as I thought a day and a half of work would mean that perhaps the water and electrics would've been switched off and that's about it. My experience with British builders has taught me not to expect a fast turnaround - in fact on our last renovation the builders would disappear for weeks at a time with no explanation. The crew on our current renovation consists of all New Zealanders. We met Teia with two of them at a local pub late on Saturday afternoon and they'd been in the UK for less than two weeks. I had to ask Teia if he was standing at Heathrow with a 'help wanted' sign, seems incredible that he's managed to find such hard working and competent tradespeople who are possibly still jetlagged. It might have taken six months to get this project underway but now that it's actually up and running I feel full of positivity… let's hope it lasts.

In other news, we went to Ikea on Friday night and bought the base units and doors of our new kitchen. Unfortunately the moulded acrylic counter top (Ikea's answer to Corian) was going to cost nearly £5,000 to manufacture and install. Our counter top budget is more like £1,500. The kitchen sales guy was a really helpful Australian chap but he said there was no such thing as a corner pull-out option so we begrudgingly purchased the wire shelving option. We have this in our current kitchen and it's not very sturdy - if the weight on one side is too much the whole thing sheers off the pole holding it upright. When we got home and inspected the brand new Ikea catalogue (which I'd gotten from work a few days before it hit the public) we noticed that a brand new kitchen feature is the... pull-out shelving option for corner units. So in what will be the first of many visits to Ikea we'll have to return the wire shelves and order up the replacements…

Furniture shopping?

Ilva, the Danish answer to Ikea, is in receivership in the UK. They'll be closing down when the stock runs out in about six to eight weeks. I'm a bit sad as actually I quite liked some of the stuff in Ilva. It's more expensive than Ikea but the shopping experience was less fraught - there were never that many people in the store (maybe that's why they're in receivership). In my opinion their marketing let them down - Rob and I are frequent visitors to Ikea in Thurrock (in Essex) but until about a year ago we had no idea that there was a massive retail park just down the road. Of course this is where Ilva is based, but we didn't know that. Listing your address as "Thurrock" isn't really useful to the sat nav.

Once we'd found Ilva we were pleased that it stocked essentially cheaper "homages" to the stuff we actually like, but can't afford just yet. We're fans of mid-century designers (isn't everybody?) and obviously would like to own the originals rather than knock-offs, or reproductions… but that's not going to happen any time soon.

Pictured is the table we'll probably buy, it's on sale for £60. Our current dining table is a cherry wood extendable thing from Habitat which we'll leave in the flat when we rent it out. It cost nine times the Ilva table but we just can't be bothered moving it cos it'll be massively heavy (and the movers would have to negotiate tricky concrete stairs, recipe for disaster).

Architects plan - side view

The meeting with the architect last week was useful, if a little long (am I the most impatient person on the planet? Maybe.) This is the side view of the property, for what it's worth.

The best news was that the architect had actually been to California and seen two of the Case Study Houses in real life, which is a bit of an amazing fluke as we had no idea he was into the same style of architecture as us when we chose him. Actually, he chose us: because he lives 4 mins from our current flat and his work premises are close to the new house he agreed to do the job. Despite the fact our budget's about half what he'd usually deal with on a residential build. Yay.

The trip to Ikea to look at kitchens last week was actually really useful. Hubby and I agreed in 3 minutes flat on a kitchen (high gloss white, either with tiny handles or preferably no handles) and counter top (either moulded acrylic ie: budget Corian, in off white) or a black high gloss stone (depending on availability and practicalities). We managed to get out of there after spending only £43 on stuff we didn't really need.

After perusing the latest Ikea brochure over the weekend we decided that actually we liked their retro beige kitchen, and it fits quite nicely with our Case Study House aesthetic. We have a design meeting with the architect on Friday to sort out these kinds of details so we'll see what he thinks before making a decision.

Flooring is going to be an issue as I really didn't want wood again (sick of the scratches and maintenance) but it really is one of the more affordable options, and it does look great. We looked at Amtico which is an almost impenetrable surface that mimics wood, but we both decided that it's kinda naff. I suggested bamboo - it's hard wearing, comparitively cheap and it's eco-friendly - so hubby's sorting some samples.

Proposed middle & top floors

And here's how the top two floors will work spatially - note the reconfiguration of the bathroom and the new wardrobe.

We're meeting with Anthony the architect tomorrow morning so I'm sure to have more updates over the weekend. The plan is to go to Ikea tomorrow night and check out potential kitchen options - Friday night is actually the quietest time to go. Not sure if I feel motivated enough to face it yet but maybe after talking to Anthony I will be.

Middle floor looking east

The house has three levels - ground: which consists of a cloakroom, some under-stairs storage, the garage (which is so narrow very few cars could actually fit in it), a tiny bedroom and a utility room. The middle floor (pictured below and to the right) is currently open plan and has a kitchen and living room. And the top floor has two bedrooms, one with a shower en suite, and an internal bathroom.

I'm sure this middle floor set up breaks all kinds of fire codes, if the kitchen was billowing smoke there's no way for people on the top floor to get out, but I digress. As someone who loves to cook this kitchen is ridiculous to me - the bench space (counter top to my American friends) is fragmented and there isn't much of it. The storage isn't particularly generous either.

Our current kitchen is massive by comparison and cost a paltry £1,000 from Ikea (appliances on top, natch). It's difficult to plan the perfect kitchen with so many variables (I'm short and hubby hates it that I have a step ladder to reach high shelves), we both want a massive fridge this time round as under-the-counter options look fabulous in an integrated kitchen but are just too small for a family of four. I'm insisting on a wall oven as it's safer when there are kids underfoot - hubby thinks this is entirely unecessary. Mind you, he seldom cooks so it's not like he'd get any benefit hauling a roast chicken out at waist height.

Ikea has a fabulous online 3D kitchen planner so hubby is going to try out a few combos and we'll probably head there this weekend to see if we can agree on a cupboard style and a bench top. Fortunately we have the same taste so it'll be easy to at least narrow it down...