Home extensions 2017 - Christmas is coming

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And I'd wake up on Saturday with the bottom of my mouth like a birdcage, empties littering my new kitchen, and several louche yoofs sprawled over my navy Island...

I am quite tempted by disco lights now. My kids would love them.

I am having worries about staining our floor now. I fear it could ruin it. I mentioned this and the builder said we would definitely want to stain it, they would do some test patches to check colour. But what if it just looks awful?

I am going to make them test a bit and then if I hate it I can tell them to stop. The idea was to have continuity between hallway and kitchen diner but I can live without that.

My backwards build is also confusing everyone I know. With the inside stuff done and the extension following. It makes sense to me because they had to knock walls down internally and add steels all over the place. And we aren’t actually taking all of the back wall off so had the extension gone up first and then the knock through I can see getting steels in would be tricky. But it is definitely backwards!

redjelly - I love your idea of a Friday night!

dust - yes, I can't get my head around your reverse order at all! I totally understand your dilemma about staining it, because it looks so lovely as it is. See what it looks like! Surely the fact they're both similar woods and patterns brings some continuity if you don't stain?

It is possible my builders are just crazy of course! Maybe they just like doing it backwards for fun. They seem to know what they are doing even if they are backwards crazy. To be fair it was meant to be more running alongside each other than it ended up being because of the pipe issues.

I am going to see what the test stain looks like and decide based on that.

How is the utility looking whisky? Or is the tiler not working his magic to straighten things up yet?

Jigster I LOVE your kitchen.

Whisky a weird request, but can you send me the make and model of your lights? I want white for everyday, but also really want disco lights🤣😂

I think men don't notice symmetry. I'm still furious that my plumber didn't place our bathroom sinks symmetrically but my husband doesn't notice and he's completely bloody useless at hanging things properly positioned 🤦🏽‍♀️

I have had a few gins and enthusiastically talking to dp about kitchen nightclub with disco lights... He's looking worried

Are they like these whisky?

i actually love those disco kitchen lights....but maybe be a bot jarring with my planned mid grey tonge and groove shaker cabinets with copper handles..but then again who cares , its my ktichen/nightclub...

i can see it now...all very naice and tasteful country kitchen during the week and then a den of iniquity come the weekend...

dust - yes, I think they will be very similar!! Only, like Christmas lights, they have different modes - colour-changing like that, epilepsy-inducing fast flashing, slightly less offensive but still pretty bad slower flashiong and fading between colours. I'm having mine under an upstand.

4years - They are the aptly named V-tac SKU2544 LED light strip. But I think there are loads of brands that do the same thing! They are not expensive, and nor do they look it!

Here's a picture of where we are with the kitchen. The black units look glossy, but they're not - they are matt. It's just a sticker that they put on the front to stop damage. The oven is a temporary one that Ikea have lent us until our proper ones are delivered in February (!) - they will be black. Right hand side as you look at the picture will be the hob, left hand side will be the sink. Eventually, the two runs of quartz will be in line with either side of the window.

looks very glam and sleek and really rather fabulous

Thanks Whisky. I'm now very excited about my kitchen-nightclub!

Kitchen is looking fab. Shame Ikea have been such a nightmare x

whisky that's going to look amazing when finished. I would never have guessed that was from ikea.

Our builder seems to be taking an extended Christmas break he did text me earlier in the week to say he'd be with us the next day but didn't come. He has anxiety issues so don't want to push him but we haven't got much left to do and I'm finding it quite fustrating.

We're spending our evening in our snug! It's amazing, even the dog is loving it! Carpet isn't down until Thursday though but still...

Kitchen is gorgeous!!

Yay bax that sounds good.

I have been painting for 7 days straight and we are about a quarter of the way through (though DH will be able to start helping soon which will speed things up). I don't mind painting but I'm sick of the cleaning up.

bax - sounds lovely! Hope you had a wonderful evening.

glorious - You have my utter sympathy, you must ache all over after painting for that long. Doing it by yourself can be disspiriting, too. Hope your DH can muck in soon - you'll be amazed at how much faster you can go together than either of you can individually!

fourmagpies - I really hope you get an answer soon, it's a VERY extended break now!

The tiler is coming tomorrow to do the kitchen and garden room floors. I can't wait to have proper flooring down! It'll be so much easier to clean. Keep your fingers crossed for me - I'm about to ring the worktop people to ask if they can template later this week! It would be amazing to have a useable kitchen.

Yeah I'm quite sore, especially as I've always had some problems with my hands and wrists so they are quite prone to pain. Luckily I am pretty ambidextrous so at least I can swap hands every now and again! On the plus side I have listed to a lot of podcasts

We should have tiling downstairs this week, too. Hope yours goes well whisky

Day off today at least because I had my smear test this morning and then I am volunteering this afternoon. I've just had an hour and a half drinking coffee and studying for a qualification I'm doing at the moment, which was a great break (!)

That is impressive painting glorious. You definitely deserve a break.

Decision time here on the floor. I was shown a stained sample, actually three with different levels of staining. It did match the hallway colour quite well and it was ok.

But I can’t do it. It looked ok. The floor currently looks beautiful. I want to stare at it all day. We are not using the stain.

dust - that sounds like a decision! If you love it as it is, why stain it?

glorious - it says something when you're actually grateful for your smear, doesn't it! Glad you're having a rest, you must be exhausted.

Oh, haven’t been able to catch up with this thread again.

Dust, donyou have photos? I actually like old, dark woods so might vote for that but I guess it depends on the style you’d like. What colour is the furniture that’ll go in the room?

I’ll have a thick wooden worktop that’ll have an aged look (didn’t go as far as ask him to distress it, I think I’ll be pretty good at wearing it in) with (hopefully) darkish eng wood floors. (But I have the feeling the floor won’t be too uniform.)

We have reached a milestone. All the builders hate me now. 😂 After all the frustration over promising to turn up at weekends, between Xmas and NYE etc (for me to wait in vain) I’m now constantly watching if they’re actually doing stuff and follow up with their boss who then checks.

Also got over the school worries. Not because my mind is at rest (it’s more performance and cultural related) bit because I’ve been on Rightmove for about a week and realised that the places I’d like to live in don’t have the houses I could love. The last push was going into a newbuild showhome yesterday. Oh my... so many dead corners and impossible to furnish tiny bedrooms. I just realised I couldn’t do it. However nicer some areas are.

I forgot to say: bifold doors are getting installed next week. That’s the first thing to arrive that’s not ‘building material’ but something nice. I think I’ll ask them to board is straigh up in case something damages it. 😀

tika - Hooray for bifolds! We had the same thing wrt areas. There are lots of 'nicer' postcodes we could have moved to, but few of them have nicer houses (not anywhere near our price bracket, anyway). We would have been doubling our mortgage, but keeping most of the same spatial problems, and it just seemed nonsensical to do that. I live in a city where people do not invest in houses, and many of the expensive ones are just painfully old-fashioned by the standards of the south east.

Excellent bifold news Tika.

I’m happy with the decision not to stain the floor. I like it a lot now and it will mean the room will be lighter. But I’ll add a pic again just because.

Ooh, updated photo. I think this is just with the pre-lacquer coating and the actual lacquer is still to go. But I am even more sure I made the right decision. Excuse the weird angle. There is a massive tower of flooring in the doorway so I have to stand on a stool and lean over. And hope I don’t drop the phone.