My First Home!

[drewC]

Hi, been looking at the forums for a while, so i though i would post a link to my new project.

The whole house needs re-wiring, re-plumbing, central heating, new kitchen/bathroom, drylining and plastering!

http://www.mws.ltd.uk/house

Today was spent drylining the lounge with a skim coming tomorrow! Joy!

 

[AdamW]

You appear to have bought a house with nothing inside it

Seriously, it looks like you have almost entirely stripped out the whole of the interior! I like the industrial vacuum cleaner, reckon I will buy one next time I do a major remodelling!

I did my first skim today. And it went very well. That'll teach my plasterer for not showing up yesterday, I waited in all day and the s*d wouldn't answer his phone... His loss, I have saved money and learned a skill!

One tip is to have a bucket of clean water next to you, wash your trowel off every few minutes... The clean trowel doesn't muck up the surface of the plaster, and the water lubricates the trowel and improves the finish.

So, are you living in this house whilst you do this?

 

[Dragonrider]

One thing about plastering, well a couple actually.

I was taught (very briefly) that you get the stuff up on the boards, get it into the places you need to, and as smooth as you can, then walk away for a while.

Once it's on, and as you try to smooth it out, if it starts to ruck or anything, it's time to stop for a little while.

Then, I find a small hand sprayer is idea, once the plaster has gone off a little, you can go over it again, spraying a little area, then "polishing" it off with the edge of your float to get the "babies' bottom" effect! It takes some doing at first, but once you masterit, it's a GREAT feeling!

 

[drewC]

Lucky for me i am living at home while all this work is going on.

The whole house has been stripped right back, it was the best way for me as i wanted it my own way!

The vacumn cleaner is awesome it has 2 x powerful motors that suck anything up!

I have been helping a builder freind of my dad who has taught me to dot and dab not not skimming. I have too much to do and so does he!

More pics tomorrow so keep your eyes peeled.

 

[AdamW]

Stripping right back and living at home is the best way to do it, you will get it done a lot quicker than if you are working around all your possessions (as I have found!) and also there is no worry about sheeting up to protect furniture etc.

Only problem is, the expense: sure, in the long run it is cheaper but it costs a lot of money to finish the inside of a house from a bare box... thousands of pounds, even with DIY!

May I urge you to consider your home cinema equipment and computers when you plan your cabling? If you can run conduits for speaker cables and install a network now, it will make life a lot easier in a year when you think "Hmmmm, how can I hide these speaker cables?". I severely underestimated the amount of cabling I would have when I planned everything and had to cut into my new walls to run cables and conduits later on.

 

[drewC]

One step ahead Adam!

I have bought a Netgear wireless route for the loft, which will feed 1 server, a small pc in the lounge for movies and a work PC in the psare room.

The house is ready for piping satellite to the bedrooms and kitchen using a suitable splitter.

I prefer to see my speaker cables after spending all that money on them! However i can see your point. I will be putting the majority of it behind the skirting boards thou.

I have a had 10k budget for a 2 bed semi built in 1935. So far im on target with my last big expense being the central heating. We are installing the plumbing (rads) up to the bolier and another friend of a friend (corgi) is installing a combi.

Luckily my dad has been superb, he loves DIY. He will pack in work for the day early just to sneak a few hours in before heading home! (we work together, family firm)

We have started to put back together now after a couple of demoralising months demolishing everything. Will be pukka when its done!

Pics will be up tomorrow morning. Night folks!

 

[AdamW]

a small pc in the lounge for movies

Have you considered the alternatives? I own a Kiss DP-500 and it is brilliant. You set up your server PC with a big hard-drive, containing all of the media (movies, audio, photos) you want on your TV, then the DVD player connects to your network via ethernet (I think some other Kiss models may be wireless compatible).

You get much better picture quality, I used to have a "home theatre PC", but whilst the quality of a TV-out on a PC can be OK, the RGB-scart on the DP-500 gives you an amazingly sharp picture. Plus it doesn't have to boot up, and it also has access to all of the Shoutcast webradio streams (great fun to scan through, amazing what people listen to!)

Only downside is it can't handle QPEL, and you can't surf the web on it or play games. But web surfing on a TV is overrated, I used to do it with my HTPC and you could barely read the text unless you made it so big that the webpage looked odd.

Here is what I have

I believe there are a few other devices on the market now, with similar capabilities.

 

[drewC]

Thansk Adam, i will definitely look at that Kiss machine! Having never had a multimedia PC i wouldnt know, so i will save my money for my new PC and get one of those Kiss machines. The fans are loud too which puts me off a PC unit.

I will see if i can use a client bridge, i know the Xbox can use it very easily.

There are more pics uploaded now, i have seperated them into months to make it easier. When i get round to it i will install a php gallery to make it easier to view.

 

[drewC]

Holy Cow! Which one do i buy! Thy look awesome, just what i want!

 

[AdamW]

I will see if i can use a client bridge, i know the Xbox can use it very easily.

I don't know much about consoles, but I am pretty sure you can get media player software on an XBox, that will let you play all of the movies you have on your PC. If you already have the XBox, might be worth trying that out before spending dosh on a Kiss DVD player!

Yes, the fans are annoying on PCs. You can get some pretty clever products now including fanless PSUs and even an entirely fanless case (costs £700, made be Zalmann). I built a new PC and carefully chose components... unfortunately I skimped on the case so my silent HD, fanless graphics card, fanless motherboard and Zalmann flower heatsink are a bit redundant as the cheap power supply sounds like a Harrier jumpjet! Could buy a new one, but haven't got round to it yet.

 

[lauren_haney]

wooo hooo
im not the only one mad enough to strip my house of everything!
im a 21 year old lass and was starting to think id took a bit too much on!!!
i bought a 2 bed semi which was built in 1891 got it at a good price but nothing had been changed since the 60s. so me been me i have took everything out. and i was getting a bit down about it all till i had a look at your pictures. the last pictures i saw were from may time so maybe youve got some more done!! good luck with it!

 

[gavinda]

great start and definitely the right way to go. we stripped ours back, it took 1 year excactly to do, but we lived in it. big mistake.

just keep a good schedule and plan of what you're doing and itll be fininshed in no time.


dont worry lauren, its the easier way, it just looks scary.

 

[dave.m]

just keep a good schedule and plan of what you're doing and itll be fininshed in no time.
dont worry lauren, its the easier way, it just looks scary.

It was four years ago so it is hoped that it is finished by now.

 

[breezer]

It was four years ago so it is hoped that it is finished by now.

I agree with you dave m

and the fact the website is unavailable is a clue, not to mention the OP only made 6 posts

gavinda, i suggest you check the post date next time

 

[noseall]

why do old posts bother you so, breezer?