So the weekend I had been dreading was finally upon us. Time to repaint the marshmallow room. First order of the day to remove the radiator.

The carpet will be replaced, but for some unknown reason, I felt compelled to do all that was possible to prevent any damage to it whilst removing the radiator. I’d had previous unfortunate experience of undoing radiator nuts in the past, so with the valve securely held in a spanner, I undid the right hand end and began the draining process. Thankfully the first side was uneventful.

Time to address the second. My previous radiator mishaps with valves had all centered around bending the feed pipe whilst trying to undo a stubborn radiator nut, hence I hoped holding the valve securely whilst undoing the radiator connection would prevent a recurrence. But there was a problem. The radiator connection wouldn’t budge. Copious amounts of WD40 later, I resorted to the Jeremy Clarkson approach of using something bigger. ‘Crack’, but sadly not the satisfying crack of the nut finally giving in and rotating, but somehow I had managed to pull the radiator off the wall. Now the entire weight was being carried by the central heating pipe feeding the stubborn valve. I had not foreseen this possibility.

To cut a long story only slightly shorter, I had the radiator propped up on wood, the stubborn valve finally undone and countless buckets of water filled from draining it. This was when I discovered one of the valves wouldn’t close fully. Despite having a reasonable arsenal of emergency supplies in my tool kit, this needed a trip to B&Q to get a blanking nut so I could actually stop the flow of water.

By the time I had returned, the radiator had, of course, completely refilled it’s self and I was back to square one. More buckets later, the rad was empty and the blanking nuts in place.

Time to get the radiator off the wall. It was far too heavy to lift on my own so I brought Lu in for some assistance. Sadly Lu hadn’t removed a radiator before and my instructions were probably vague, so suffice to say, we ended up with a molehill of thick black goo on the carpet. Oh well, at least the radiator was finally off!

And so the room was formerly green it would seem. Green with the panels painted, but the borders not. For a fleeting moment we considered maybe returning the room to green would be a good idea, but the day was fast running away and we’d already bought the paint.

Our original plan was somewhat optimistically to have the whole room painted in a weekend. 2 coats of undercoat on the Saturday, and 2 topcoats on Sunday with the woodwork somehow fitted in around was the plan. Oh how wrong could I have been.

The problem with painting the room was it was just too big to use a brush, yet the detailing meant it was impossible to roller. Also, the previous people had used a very shiny emulsion (looked like gloss to me) for the walls and gloss on the panneling.

Painting just seemed to drag and drag on. Coat after coat, the pink still grinned through. 9 Hours later we had finally finished the first undercoat and the pink was just a fading memory.

Whilst we were sorting out the marshmallow room, the bathroom guy was busy skimming the walls of the bathroom. What paint are you going to use? he asked. Farrow and Ball we replied which launched him into an unending diatribe about the virtues of using cheap leyland paint instead with their colour match service. He reminded me, unfortunately, how watery and thin F&B paint can be which brought back nightmare memories of the last time I’d used the paint at a previous house. Painting water on the walls I seem to recall would have been easier. Still, for the undercoat, and the ceiling, I just needed a standard matt white emulsion and set off to by my usual reliable Dulux affair. It so transpired that Screwfix happened to have a 15% off weekend on Leyland paint, so at just £14 to a 10 litre tub of contract matt white, I thought, what the heck, I’d give it a go.

I have to say, in the end, I’d thoroughly recommend the Leyland paint. A lovely consistency covered the shiny paint with relative ease leaving a super matt flat finish. I’ll definitely be using Leyland again I think for white..

In the end, with the light fading, we’d managed 1 full white coat on all the walls and 2 on the ceiling. Another 1 maybe 2 would be required for the ceiling and at least another base coat for the walls. Finishing by Sunday night was never going to be achievable..

So, the bathroom fitter came round today and started removing the last of the tiles and suite I’d given up on. By the end of day 1 most, but not all of the tiles were off and the suite was out. I took some solace at least that even a professional with power tools had been defeated after a day’s hard labour. Looks like someone welded the tiles in the shower to some form of waterproof board as they were just not coming off. Rather him than I!

Since our planning application was rejected, we’ve started questioning other aspects of the plans which were, at least in planning terms, acceptable. A weekend spent with my parents has called into question our thoughts for a new garage.

We had originally proposed to build a new detached single garage between us and next door to match the style of one of the sister houses further down the road.

One controversial alternative, is to bring the new garage forward slightly and to extend the current porch right the way across..

I’m not sure how this would actually look in practice, either from the front or on the side. Also, I’m in 2 minds as to whether having a ‘porch’ in front of a garage is odd..

The third option is to attach the garage to the side of the house, slightly further back and to mirror the porch roof. The thinking being that if ever future planning restrictions were relaxed, we may have the opportunity to build on top.

Think I’ll drop the builders a line to see if we can at least rule any out on cost grounds.

So today was D day on the planning application and sadly, we’ve been advised to withdraw by the council.

We had been hoping to build a modest 2 storey extension to the rear and side, however our proposals are evidently unneighbourly.

“Unneighbourly”

Evidently any form of 2 storey extension on the left hand side is going to be a non-starter which puts us back to the drawing board. The architects we spoke to and the local planner indicated it’s unlikely that we would be allowed to do any form of 2 storey extension on the right hand side, so we’re left with the option of single storey extensions to the sides or a double storey to the rear.

Of course the bigger question of whether to extend at all still remains open. We were hoping to enlarge the kitchen slightly and to get an en-suite in to any upstairs bedroom. These are our current floor plans:

Any suggestions? 🙂