The end of the beginning

WE'VE FINISHED!


By which I mean - the flat is empty of rubbish, finally!  Rob found some nice Polish men to get rid of all the detritus for us.  I wasn't there, but I understand he was kindly helping them out with the removals by leaving them to it and going into Nunhead for a fry up.  


All those months of scraping, stripping and steaming are over - now it's over to the professionals.

No, not Rob - he's just enjoying walking on a patch of floor we haven't seen in three months.


Here's another room we haven't seen the inside of since we started this project:

That's the manky-carpet storage room.  


Hang on a minute - what's that I see?  MORE WALLPAPER?!


Before you all start hyperventilating on my behalf (not the best idea here as those walls are covered in mould) - this is a type of wallpaper that is actually coming off very easily (helped by that mould).  I am an expert in this now - I can tell from ten paces away exactly what level of difficulty a particular paper patch will present.

The reason this room is so damp is because daylight is coming up through the floorboards:

You can't really see from that photo - you'll have to trust that wind was blowing up my trouser legs whilst taking this.


So.  Our thoughts are now moving on to the fun bit of this project - the interior design.  We've had some ideas:

This is the kitchen, and we are thinking of having a breakfast bar under the window there - it's too low for a worktop, and it looks out onto the garden (which is currently full of dog poo, but that's another story).


The former bathroom will be a library (yes, A LIBRARY!):

I want to get rid of that cornicing (?) at the top of the arch first, and we are going to remove the walls and the doorway:

Our architect is getting builders into tender for the project on Tuesday - hopefully we'll be off and running soon!


We have also recently learnt that the slum is in the Nunhead Conservation Area - oh yes, we were shocked too.  And apparently the area had this status before we decided to move in.  So that's all very lovely, but it means that replacing the windows is going to be an expensive problem, as they have to match what is there already:

Presumably not down to the peeling paint job.


So now, blog fans, I'm off to put the overalls in the washing machine, re-patriate the dust pan and brush to our Peckham flat, and disinfect three months worth of Rob's tea mugs.


Hurrah!