Day 5 - Living Room Destruction

Another day off work. Job 1 was to take the remaining piece of skirting board off in the hallway that was previously obscured by the heater:

This was dead quick, but very satisfying. I'm thinking about storing some records in this spot when it's all finished. A nice piece of wall out of the sunlight seems like the perfect spot to me.

Next job was to attack the living room. After the carpet got taken yesterday, I could then get on with doing in this room what I did in the others. here's the starting point:

Step 1 - pull up the underlay:

Step 2 - pull up the goddamn carpet tacks:

The only problem was that these ones were nailed into the concrete floor (!) rather than glued on. So they left a series of messy holes.

Step 3 - skirting board removal.

Job done.

And just as I finished the hard work, the blind man came.

No, not the kind with a dog and a white cane. The kind with a folder of blind samples so I could order something to cover my french doors, because curtains look whack.

He told me a story about some gay Brazilian dude he had visited earlier, and how "gay people always have nice houses". Made me laugh. Then I ordered a white vertical blind from the 'blackout' range. Delivery will be 7-10 days. Stoked.

Day 4 - Bye Bye Carpet!

Not much happened today due to me being at work. But the important thing is that there has been progress. This was the view of the front room when I got home from work, with the carpets from the bedrooms and the hallway rolled up and dumped in the middle of the floor:

With these carpets being here, I couldn't actually pull up the front room carpet. And I admit that until this point I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to get rid of the carpets anyway. I had an idea, but I hadn't tried it, and I had no back-up plan. Fortunately though, my plan worked, so no plan b is required.

All I did was advertise my carpets on Freecycle. It's a website where people post up stuff they don't want, and other persons just ask for it. No money changes hands (hence the "free" part of the name). The whole point is to stop stuff that somebody might want from being thrown away. And because all the stuff being given away is free, the onus is on the recipient to collect the item. The beauty of this site is that, if you have some stuff you don't want then there's no need to go to the post office or go out of your way to get rid of it. You just sit in your house & chances are that some fool will come and take it away. So yesterday I advertised that I had some carpet, and today the email floodgates opened and I nearly drowned! I ended up giving the carpets to the first people who got in touch. And this evening they came round with a dodgy old van & took it all away. Very quick and hassle free. Once the dude had loaded the rolled-up carpets from the living room into his van, he then took the living room carpet away too:

Please note that despite the photos suggesting otherwise, the dude was definitely NOT James May. But he did provide me with a good service and took my junk taken away in a very convenient manner.

So now the front room carpet is gone I can look forward to more carpet tack removal tomorrow. Great.

Day 3 - Skirting Board & Heater Destruction

A Monday off work, and after spending the morning closing bank accounts and generally wasting time, it was time to get to work. The job of the day was to take the skirting boards off. I'd never done this before, but seeing as I now own a chisel, it was set to be relatively easy. The idea is to just use the chisel to prise the skirting board away from the wall whilst wearing some dope sneakers:

And then once you get it going, just repeat further down the wall until it starts to come away:

And eventually you get to the end & it comes right off:

The main problem is that in some places big bits of plaster came away, which will no doubt cause a problem for later on next week.

The other problem is when you rip the skin from the palm of your hand but don't even realise:

Anyway, once the skirting boards were off I had plaster all over the floor, combined with dust & dirt from yesterday's carpet antics. So I decided to clean it up a bit, which was a thoroughly disgusting job and required a change of footwear and a mask:

I'd had to go out and buy a dustpan & brush this morning to enable me to do this. I'm glad I did. I filled it several times:

And eventually half-filled a Saino's bag with crap:

I then had a break and a well-deserved shower. Then, in the evening, Mr. Gas from next door came round to take my storage heaters to bits. First up, the giant one in the front room:

Talk about whack technology - it turns out that storage heaters are just packed with bricks. I kid you not:

Next, the smaller and more pointless heater in the hallway:

Outside is now starting to look like some kind of heater graveyard. I still can't get over how many bricks came out. Insanity.

So at the end of day 3, the place is looking much more like a building site than a new property:

But at least now it's really starting to feel like things are moving. I'm happy. Just a shame I have to go back to work tomorrow, 'cause I'm starting to get into this manual labour lark.

Day 2 - The Work Starts

The day started with a trip to pick up some paint samples. I know I want to paint the walls but I have no idea what colour. So I picked three white variants and some other colour to see what they would look like on the wall:

I also bought a new Stanley knife, and the most useful thing in life that I have never previously owned - a chisel.

My assistant then applied the paint to the wall so I could then make a decision:

I was then given a presentation on the merits of each of the four colours:

In the end I decided that I liked the one which was the most white since the others all looked a bit dirty.

Once the fannying about was over, I decided to get on with some real work. Mission number 1 is to get the carpets up. I've ordered a wooden floor and you can't put those on top of carpets. So the carpets have to go. The problem at first was just finding a starting point where I could start pulling it up. But once I got going, it wasn't too bad.

Under the carpet was a disgusting underlay:

Pulling this carpet has put me off carpet for life. The carpet and the underlay produced thick clouds of dust when they were pulled up. And the floor under the underlay was also filthy too. It really shows how much dirt falls floorward in a house that you never see. And bear in mind, these carpets had been cleaned before I got the property. Disgusting.

the next problem was taking up the carpet tacks. These things lined the skirting boards in every room, and had to be chiseled up:

And worse, even once the little bits of wood were taken up, they left behind a layer of glue that looked like dried mozzarella cheese... which then also had to be chiseled up... which took a long-ass time:

Once this was done for the two bedrooms and the hallway I had a bag of junk:

... and a pile of carpet in the front room:

Then it was back to the shop to waste more money on some tins of Milk White:

Man, I hate spending money on this crap. I'd rather be buying records or burgers.

Day 1 - Getting the Keys

On Friday night I got the keys. I got them pretty late though. After kicking Adam Smith's ass at Badminton and then cycling to Richmond, I found that all trains were cancelled. So I sat on my own and had dinner at Carluccio whilst waiting for a lift home. So I only got home & got the keys to the flat at about 22:00, and it was a bit dark to take photos. So here's what the place looked like the next morning...

The view just inside the front door:

And this is the view from the other end of the corridor looking back towards the front door:

Just next to the front door is another door that contains the boiler:

... that contains the boiler. A pretty useful storage space!

The next door along is the bathroom. A few weeks ago there was some kind of leak, so the floor got taken up and the side of the bath taken off. It looked pretty shabby:

Next up, the living room or front room or whatever you want to call it:

The french doors to the garden are the reason I chose this apartment. I like the idea of throwing open the door and having a cup of tea in the sun.

There are two bedrooms. A bigger one...

...with a wardrobe craftily hidden behind the door:

And a smaller one:

There's also a kitchen, which is a bit boring:

And as the Arctic Monkeys might say, here's the view from the afternoon:

Spot my car if you can: