Updating my to do list almost a year on

So it’s been a bit quiet around here for a little while. Sorry to those of you who were desperate for more thrilling updates on boilers and ceilings (and who isn’t desperate for those?!)

I’ve been a bit busy working, being too tired, watching tv, being too tired, sitting around and being too tired which is not a good combo for DIY-ing or blogging about DIY-ing.

I’ll try and do some round-ups of the bits I have been working on but for today I thought I’d revisit a post I wrote almost a year ago and do a general progress report as it is coming up to a year of owning The Penthouse.

A year ago I was still waiting for the paperwork to go through to buy the flat so I wrote a big long list of all the things that would need doing. Let’s see how far I’ve got…

Sealant, (a lack of) safety goggles and a feline assistant

Well check me out, I only went and did some actual DIY. High fives over here for making something look (marginally) better rather than just demolishing stuff.

As my mega exciting project was replacing the sealant around the bath maybe my house renovation book deal (new life goal) isn’t gonna happen just yet but hey, it’s some progress.

The bathroom is likely to be the last room I do anything cosmetic with so the embossed vinyl wallpaper in shades of peach and 80s grey and pink tiles are going to be sticking around for a while. One thing that did need doing though was replacing the sealant around the bath.

Ever over-confident in my own abilities I figured this was something I could do and one minor eye injury later it was indeed done.

Keyrings and ceilings

One of my earliest purchases for the flat was in fact a brand new keyring. Yes, this is a post about a keyring.

When I bought the penthouse I decided it was time to treat myself to a new keyring (because that is the wild fun stuff I like to do). I really wanted one that said ‘The Penthouse’ on it but couldn’t find one online. Also, if you search ‘penthouse’ online you will get products relating to the magazine of the same name…

I then looked into personalised keyrings and found a few ‘meh’ options online until I stumbled on Keytags by Various Projects. They have some very funny options available to order but they also do custom keyrings.

More almost-kitchen…

When I ordered my kitchen from IKEA I watched their calm videos about how easy it is to install and proudly told everyone about how I was going to do it myself. Me, who owns about three DIY tools and, whilst being averagely good at assembling flat-pack furniture, had never done anything more than that.

To their credit, everyone I casually mentioned this plan to smiled very sweetly and nodded at me without laughing in my face. Bless them and their inner giggles at my ridiculous plan.

IN MY DEFENCE if my walls and floor had been level I still maintain that I could have done it myself a la the oddly soothing IKEA videos.

Starting on the kitchen

Just to warn you, this is basically a whole post about painting a wall white. I promise more exciting things are coming to the blog soon… I was desperate to do something that made things look better rather than worse after ripping out so many bits. I decided to make a start on the two walls that wouldn’t have units on them.

Dismantling the kitchen

Apologies for the mini blogging break. I’ve either been asleep (too much) or DIY-ing (not enough) sorry. This weekend most of the new kitchen units were installed which is mega exciting. For now though, I’m still bringing you up to where we are now so here is the tale of tearing apart the kitchen…

The kitchen: before

The kitchen is currently the room that looks most like a building site (everywhere else looks like cardboard boxes have been breeding). With the new units due to be installed in a couple of weeks and my long bank holiday weekend spent tearing it apart I thought I’d show you what it looked like before I started smashing things!