All posts tagged: building

The Loft Extension – Wk 8/9

Published by Karen Knox

As you can see, i’ve been keeping really upbeat since my last loft post. Full of the joy of life I am. Honestly, i’m a pleasure to be around right now. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Karen Knox – Making Spaces (@makingspacesnet) We’ve just finished week nine and if i’m honest, I thought we’d be done by now. Not 100% done, but I thought the actual build would have been winding down. Alas, that is not the case. Things here are continuing to move slowly, but we’re certainly moving now. And there is a teeny tiny sliver of light shining at the end of a long, dark (and snowy) tunnel. That’s me sounding positive btw. The plastering has finally commenced (hooray!) and our plasterer has been busy working his way around the bedroom and all the way down our new gable wall. Still no staircase. STILL. It’s quite bizarre, but as soon as the plaster goes on the whole place goes from looking like a building site to an actual room. Of all …

A mixed bag. The Loft Extension – Wk 3

Published by Karen Knox

So what’s happened since last week? Well as the title suggests, it’s been a melange of loft extension based events. There’s been a lot of banging. MY WORD. So much banging. But banging means progress, and progress is good. Dormer tiled, old loft boards and joists ripped out, new joists fitted and another steel hoisted up for something or other. Something structural. Whatever. When can I get in? At this point i’m feeling pretty redundant, I just want to get up there and start waving my arms around showing everyone where things are going. So, to prevent me asking “is it done yet?” every 90 minutes, i’ve been keeping myself busy by placing orders for some of the key pieces making their way into our soon-to-be new rooms. Bedroom mood-board recap And my very first piece for the bedroom has arrived. Well apart from the brick wall, that’s already there. See the two ceiling lights either side of the bed? They’re going to be the bedside lights. These actually: Maria 180 lights from Urban Cottage Industries …

And we’re in! The Loft Extension – Wk 2

Published by Karen Knox

So where were we? (catch up on Wk 1 here) That’s it, the dormer was up and the new roof-line was ready to tile. Blimey, so much has happened since then. Come see. Phone pic Ta-da! A newly tiled roof with gable end. Going to take some getting used to the new house shape. The aluminium windows for the dormer have been measured and priced up. Our first quote of over £4.5k made me cry a little inside. Then punch a cushion. I know aluminium is expensive. I do know this. But £4.5k? That’s a car right there. Which reminds me, the quote for the windows came in the day before my car failed its MOT which cost me £700. **sigh** What do they say? When it rains it pours… something like that. The windows, however were something I wasn’t prepared to compromise on (along with everything else). They needed to be big. The bigger the better. And these are going to be just that. Luckily, we got another couple of quotes that came in as …

The Loft Extension – Wk 1

Published by Karen Knox

Operation Loft Extension is now officially GO. Levels of excitement are at an all time high here at Making Spaces HQ. I’m super busy working behind the scenes on this one and i’ll be showing you the whole process from start to finish over the next few months. Here was the space 10 days ago, just before we flew out to New York. The loft just about emptied and ready to rock. You can see it’s got a good head height. 2.9m to be precise with a floor area of around 5.5 x 8m. Spot the rather sexy exposed brick wall in there? Well obviously that’s staying. One week later: Day 1. Scaffold up, kettle on and materials everywhere. Day 2. The framework for the rear dormer starts to go up. Day 3. The new roof steel gets lugged up to the top and positioned to give us the new roofline. We’re switching from a hipped roof to gable end, negating the need for two dormers. Day 4. The roof goes up over the dormer. …

Don't Move – Improve!

Published by Karen Knox

So you might have heard me mention recently, we’re converting our loft. It’s kind of a big deal for us. We’ve played around with several extension ideas since we moved here, discounting a loft extension at one point because we needed it so much for storage. (rubbish phone pics) We definitely, didn’t want to move. We already knew when we bought this place four years ago, it was a little on the small side. We were seriously lacking on the guest bedroom front and resorted to lugging a mattress downstairs for friends and family to sleep on our living room floor. And you know what. It sucked. Well no more. With the help of our amazing parents and the savings we’ve been squirrelling away, we finally decided a hip to gable loft extension is the best solution to all of our space problems. And it seems we’re not the only ones. More and more people are extending their homes and improving their living spaces to avoid the alternative of moving. In fact, since we got …

#stairporn

Published by Karen Knox

We’ve made a decision about our house. Finally. And it’s actually happening. It’s taken us nearly four years and three different extension ideas to get to this point….. we’re converting our loft. Builder found, architect on the case. It’s the exciting bit where we are all full of ideas, requesting samples and spending all of our imaginary money. Always the easiest money to spend isn’t it? We’ve got a traditional three bed semi. Two large double bedrooms, one family bathroom with separate loo and a teeny tiny box room which is now my small but perfectly formed home office. You can have a nosey parker snoop around our house here. It’s a great size for our family of three. But when it comes to having overnight guests, we’re screwed. We’ve been dragging a mattress down to the living room to make a guest bed for the night. I can attest that it is a) highly inconvenient, b) uncomfortable. Our loft room will become the much needed third double bedroom, give us a second bathroom AND a separate …

Goodbye Ugly Wall

Published by Karen Knox

So recently I wrote a post about our recent garden sprucing, which included new furniture, splashes of colour and a home made planter. But I failed to draw attention to this ere eyesore above. The mingin’ concrete wall boundary wall. Luckily our neighbours agree it’s bloody horrible so they were happy for me to attempt to make it look a little better from our side of the garden. The driveway and patio are also completely knackered, but we are planning an extension down the entire side of the house in the next few years, so no point in paying to get the wall, patio and driveway re-done. So that’s why it looks so rubbish. All in all. This bit of the garden sucks. I was stuck with how best to improve this area as I wasn’t allowed to eat up any driveway space. It’s already tight to get the car down the drive, so there was literally no floor space to use. So I played around with some ideas: Ivy – Nowhere to plant it and takes …

Free Photography Printables #loveyourwalls

Published by Karen Knox

I’m so excited for today’s post. Not only did I get nominated for an IBA… my blog finally gets its own proper address AND a sexy new look to boot. You like? I’ve had to have a nice sit down and a scone to get over the excitement! But that’s not all. I’ve got something for you that I think you are going to love nearly as much as me. Some amazing FREE PRINTABLES. Get ready to want a gallery wall immediately. Mine is already under construction. My good friend and amazing “SHOULD BE!” photographer, Martyn Day took these on his recent trip to NY. I cheekily asked him if I could a) have all the files and b) post them for you to print, frame and hang. For FREE! I gave him my best smiley emoticon and BOOM. Done deal. If you love brutalist style architecture, concrete, warehouse spaces, industrial buildings, raw materials and monochrome… these bad boys are for you. Part I. I gasped at this one. Did you hear me? Stunning. Ok, a little “information …