roman ROAD PROJECT

7th January 2018:

Finished!

4th January 2018:

Happy New Year! As expected the holidays slowed the project right down, but once you are in sight of Christmas the chance of letting become quite slim. The flat now though is all over bar the shouting, final clean up and last bits of furniture to build up.

18th December 2017:

The kitchen is complete, and we’ve used our favourite green glossy tiles for the splashback again, well after all why spoilt a good thing! The leak has been sorted, fortunately and the damage made good again. The internal doors are on too, I’m using the shaer effect doors and for the hall door with glass panels so get some light into the centre of the flat.

13th December 2017:

Work continues, floors are down, kitchen is almost there and most of the painting has been done.

Unfortunately, it is two step forward and one back. The upstairs flat’s washing machine sprang a copious leak and washed away some of our good work. :(

6th December 2017:

Steady progress over in East London, the big change is that the flooring has been laid and the kitchen and bathroom are a little further along.

6th December 2017:

Progress is slow yet steady on the Bethnal Green Project, sadly it is looking doubtful that we’ll be finsihed early enough to get a tenant this side of Christmas which is a shame but equally not wholly unexpected. The main progress being the kitchen which is now almost completed, and the decoration is pretty much done, all the holes have been filled and the flat painted a nice bright white colour. We choose white because when fresh it not only looks great and lovely and clean. While white is probably the hardest colour to keep this way, we avoid colours as even if you can get the same colour in years to come the sun bleaching of the walls however slight will mean that you will never get a match, where as with white paint it is cheap, plentiful and will always blend to old decoration.

29th November 2017:

Although it looks like we’ve not made much progress the flat has been fully re-wired bringing it up to IET 17th edition Amendment 3 regulations. All tested and 100% which means we can start closing up some of the holes in the walls and ceilings.

The kitchen design has gone from my scale sketch to a a full plan and render down the kitchen show, all to be delivered and fitted next week. The tiles for the kitchen wall also chosen and delivered ready to go as soon as the kitchen is finished.

Probably the most obvious progress is in the bathroom, the new walls have gone up, as it is a bathroom we’re using aqua panels. The tiling has been done, it does look less busy in real life and once all the bathroom furniture is in it will look stunning.

The rest of the flat is fairly much untouched, but looking a bit cluttered again as some materials been delivered like the flooring and as much as i tried to avoid it we had to move some furniture into the flat as we didn’t have any other practical storage options.

18th November 2017:

Flat looking a bit barren now that all the old stuff has been stripped out. It is a little one step back so we can make two forward as the flat was ‘ok-ish’ but now we really are starting from the bare bones. The main first job is to get the full re-wire completed.

The planning stage is also underway, we decided to go for an’L’ shaped kitchen rather than replacing like for like with the original ‘U’ shape. I think it uses the space better and lets us put a fridgefreezer in rather than the side by side that was there before. Tiles for the bathroom also chosem, the tiler will be pleased nice big ones that will be quick and easy.

11th November 2017:

Its always a bit of the one step back to take forward at the start of a project. When we started it was a fairly retable flat, albeit a bit tatty around the corners, but now we’ve striped it back to the bare bones and well.. chucked it all out the window! I might point out the waste removal truck was parked under the window!

As you can see, pretty much filled up two trucks, which seems quite amazing for a small one bed flat!

4th November 2017:

Possibly long overdue but the start of a full re-fit in one of our buy to let properties. Its been 15 years since we bought the property and the last tenant stayed five years so everything a ‘bit’ tired. Still can’t believe they didn’t say anything about that sofa though…

Anyway as for the project, a full rip out, taking it back to the bare bones as much as I can and then rebuilding from scratch.