Printing press drawer

My mum has a printing press drawer hung on the wall at home. She uses it as a place to display little momento's and keepsakes. 

I decided that I'd like to find one to put on the wall somewhere in our finished hall/stairs/landing. A quick look on eBay showed that they generally sell for £30-40 plus postage. Over the course of a few weeks I kept popping back to look at what was available for sale. One day I found one for sale for £24 + £8 postage. It was a little different to others that I'd seen in that the drawer front was painted and still had the pull handle attached.

It arrived a few days later and now lives on the wall at the top of the stairs opposite the bathroom. I've started to add things to it that fit into the little cubby holes and will add more as time goes on...

May 2012: In the beginning.....

Back in May 2012 Amy and I purchased our first house together. It was a bit of a roller coaster as many purchases are with several failed bids on other properties and a lot of haggling and some differences of opinion! An end of a terrace of three houses. An unassuming (apart from yellow guttering...) 3 bed Victorian property circa 1890, with a beautiful secret garden......

We knew we'd embarked on a project, and with little Ella being 2 years old life was going to be very busy! I wanted to keep a record of the project so we'd remember the journey, the highs and lows, the good the bad and of course the ugly! We have taken many ideas from others' blogs, and some great inspiration can be easily accessed on the internet. Although the primary reason for writing this blog is to provide a record for our family I also hope others can glean some knowledge, learn from our mistakes and enjoy our highs as well!

The brief was simple, restore the house to its former glory, including as much of the original features as possible, whilst spending no money, buying as many power tools as possible and getting as dirty as possible!

Feel free to throw in advice when possible, or 'I told you so's!!

We got the keys on the 18th of May, and the obvious first thing to do was take a hammer to the kitchen wall.... I was dying to see what was behind it, a big wasted wall in the kitchen that would provide much needed additional space for our growing family. I hedged my bets that the arch would still be in place, or resigned myself to having to put a lintel in if not, I'll admit, there was a little trepidation in smacking big holes in the plaster in our brand new home.....certainly not for the faint hearted!

Thankfully my manly instinct was correct and my hard work paid off to reveal:

  A bit of re-pointing later and some more smackdown with ol' Betsy and we had:

but more importantly:

We had a two week overlap with our old property and time was running out so we moved some of the masses of stuff we have into the living room.....

Obviously this was the start of something epic....!

May 2012: Opening Gambit

I had two weeks of annual leave booked to coincide with completion. Thankfully there were no delays and so I could crack on as soon as we had the keys! There was a lot to do as I was very conscious that soon we would have a two year old living in the property as well as she-that-must-be-obeyed so I wanted to get as much of the really dirty work done whilst they weren't around.

Our plan was to get the house rewired and a new central heating system installed in those two weeks as both these jobs involve disruption to every room in the house and both are pretty fundamental to everyday living. It is also much easier to have floorboards etc up when there was no one else in the house (although not foolproof...)

oops...

My uncle was having his house totally redone and we chatted much about the things his trades were doing what worked and what didn't. I decided that one good thing they'd done as to run the radiator pipes down behind the radiators above the skirting. This keeps the floor area clear and much easier to keep clean. 

Hiding these pipes is all very well in plasterboard stud walls but is a different story in old brick and plaster solid walls....

I'd never worked on a central heating system before, but was assured the plastic push-fit systems were fool proof and with a little research beforehand I formulated a parts list and pleased as punch placed my order with screwfix. 

What a waste of time that was. As anyone who has ever renovated a house knows things never go to plan and ordering a specific list of parts designed to make a carefully designed system is doomed to failure! Thankfully we are well equipped with many merchants, B and Q and screwfix all within 5 mins!

So as the electricians got on with the rewire, armed with a bucket-full of the commonest connections and parts, I slowly started to make my way around the house ripping out copper and replacing with plastic.

I quickly found out that Red and Blue tape are obligatory. The need to keep neat and tidy and identify flow and return arms means you have to be meticulous. Luckily being an Anaesthetist I have had 4 years of training on how to be anally retentive.