Renovations | Chris Granger

The first improvement I had to do urgently was to board half the loft, so we had somewhere to store the mass of stuff that wouldn’t fit in the house:

Then we got the windows and front door replaced, then the plasterer, painter, builders etc., arrived, one after the other over the next year, with the conservatory being added at Easter and I renovated the kitchen during the summer 2022.

“Before and after” pictures

Living room:

Estate agent photo before we moved in. We had to buy on the basis of photos alone, as we couldn’t view in person during lockdown.

With new ceiling, wall colour, carpet, lights, and our furniture…

Jannat’s Office:

Technically the second bedroom, but Jannat needed an office with masses of storage

It’s a bit tight, but there’s a place for everything and it’s very pretty

Bedroom:

Estate agent pic – the treadmill wasn’t staying. We removed the built-in wardrobe and its mirror doors

The white walls and ceiling look deceptively easy – it took masses of work to get them flat and smooth.

Chris’s study:

There was no picture of this room in the sale listing – it was in a terrible state, with lots of water damage on the wall on the right (bathroom side) and really rough wall surface, which needed re-plastering, in addition to the ceiling

Bathroom:

The old suite, the shower and the boxed-in internal soil vent pipe had to go!

I fired the builders halfway through so had to finish this myself

Back garden:

Essentially a conifer forest, everything was ripped out before the excavation and retaining wall build. The optimistically-described “conservatory” was a leaky, 6′ x 8′ lean-to greenhouse.

We wanted a 5 metre conservatory, so first we had half the garden dug out and a new 4 foot high retaining wall built:

February 2022. Notice the “open plan” lack of fence between us and next door –

The story of the fence

Originally, there was a rickety low fence between us and the Yorkshire lady with two yappy sausage dogs, next door. To get the mini-digger in to excavate the back garden, we had to remove the fence, with the promise that we would replace it later…

In April 2023 (over a year later), the lady approached me to say her dogs had got out and when was I going to replace the fence? I ordered the materials that day (Friday) and built the fence the following Monday

She was so pleased, she bought a big bucket of paint, painted her side and let me use her paint to paint our side. So we’re all happy again 🙂 It does give us and the neighbour a nice feeling of privacy, when we’re sitting in our respective conservatories, or in our gardens.

The sideways were really scruffy, so one of the last jobs was to clean them up, lay membrane and gravel them

Conservatory:

Space ready for the conservatory

Nearly finished – just needs trims, gutters, etc.

Kitchen:

Estate agent photo again. This room was done last.

Before we could do the kitchen, we needed to remove the boiler on the wall. So we hired a boiler engineer to remove it and fit a new one in the garage (while I hurriedly re-plumbed the kitchen sink). Later, I partitioned off the back half of the garage

to enclose the boiler, two freezers, washing machine and overflow food pantry.

We actually planned the kitchen online the same day we had our offer on the house accepted. The units were made in Yorkshire and delivered fully assembled. After upgrading the plumbing and electrics, I fitted the units and decorated.