Funky's Living Room Project

[FunkyMunkey]

After much waiting while I gained inspiration from the threads on these forums, I've finally started doing up the lounge-diner in our first house. We moved in in July, and had to do the bathroom first, but I've been raring to start on the lounge 'cos it looked awful when we moved in:



Black carpets and dark blue wallpaper - as you can imagine, it was a little dreary even in July. God knows why you'd want your main living space to be 18' x 12' of darkness.

First, we pulled up the carpet to reveal some pretty good floorboards:



I've been using an application called FloorPlan 3D to work out the decor of the entire house. It's a bugger to use, but I'm a perseverant geek, and this is what I came up with for the lounge:



Accoustically, it's not the ideal setup, but it'll have to do for our first house. We actually realised a grand chaise would have been better than 2 sofas, but hindsight is always 20:20. And after spending £1000 on sofas, I think we'll stick with them!

[FunkyMunkey]

So the alcoves will be soundproofed with a false wall containing Wickes 50mm General Purpose Slab Insulation and two layers of plasterboard. The alcove you can see in the pic above will also have Green Glue between the plasterboard layers because that's where the speakers are going.

So, although some of the wallpaper had been removed by the previous owner, we had to get rid of the rest. There were 5 layers in some places, so it was a difficult job. The previous owner had been a smoker, and because the smoke collects in the corners of the room, the steamer released all the ingrained nicotine which then dripped on our faces as we were working... nice:



Once the wallpaper was off, I ran the cable for the rear speakers under the floorboards and drilled a hole behind the planned position of the false wall:



I'm going to solder the cable to a Nexxia wall plate in the false wall. Next, the false walls and insulation went up:



There's a slab missing because the wires for the TV will be run in conduit behind the plasterboard, so I had to work out where the mounting boxes would go and, er... gouge some of the insulation out. This is the final slab in place:



As we want an open fire, we decided to knockout the fireplace before we attached the bulk of the plasterboard. It went from this:



To this:



It was fun, apart from the dust which got up my nose and gave me a sore throat for a few days.

We're now in the process of finishing the plasterboard, so I'll post some progress pics up soon.

[Rainfall]

Good luck. Super floorboards not to often you find them.

Love the "pink jellies" not good if something heavy should fall on your foot.


cheers Steve

[FunkyMunkey]

Originally Posted by Rainfall

Love the "pink jellies" not good if something heavy should fall on your foot.
cheers Steve

Like a whole chimney breast, for instance?

[dvk]

I'm impressed you can lay wires under the floorboards with your eyes closed.

Good luck with the project

[FunkyMunkey]

Originally Posted by dvk

I'm impressed you can lay wires under the floorboards with your eyes closed.

All the nicotine from the ceiling blinded me.

[FunkyMunkey]

OK, DIY had to take a back seat for a while because of exams and whatnot, but I'm now back on the case.

So after attaching the first layer of plasterboard, I applied some green glue to the second layer:



It dispensed easily and wasn't very messy. This is the final plasterboarded wall:



Here you can see one of the holes that's been cut out and the conduit that's been stuck behind to run the TV cables. It took lots of measuring and remeasuring, but hopefully it's OK now:

[FunkyMunkey]

I completed the speaker wire run under the floor and chased out to lay them in the walls:



I'd had to brick up an old doorway on the righthand side of the pic, which is why the plaster looks different.

Next was the lights. Ideally I would have preferred downlights, but because I'd already done the bathroom, there was no real way to do this without ripping up the bathroom floor. This is one of the, er, lovely lights that were in originally:



And we replaced them with Rian lights from John Lewis (which is absolutely brilliant for lighting, and good value for money, too):

[FunkyMunkey]

We've decided to put in french doors at the back of the room, so that'll be done within the next couple of weeks.

Next, the electrics had to be sorted. There were only 2 plug points in the living room. The one near the TV was on the side of the chimney breast, and far too close to the right front speaker. I extended the ring main and moved the plugpoint to the front wall, added another at the opposite end of that wall, then added a third near where the french doors will be. We have a set of hessien balls that we bought when we went travelling... kinda like these:



and we've been dying to use them. So we'll be stringing them on fairy lights around the french doors.

I've also run some Cat 5e cabling up from the living room and the second bedroom to the third bedroom/study. I've terminated with a faceplate rather than a patch panel because we'll probably only be in the house for 3-4 years. As you can see, I've also added a phone point and moved the plug socket in the third bedroom:



Here's the plug socket and Cat5e cabling in the living room:



I had great difficulty finding a modular Cat 5e/triplexer faceplate that matched the MK White stuff used in the rest of the lounge, but ended up getting them from Gil-Lec:



Chasing out the wall to make all these faceplates flush has been so much hassle and as a result I've had brown snot for the last couple of weeks!

[cheltenham2004]

Lookin good nice underfloor board job with the cables

[FunkyMunkey]

I've become increasingly uneasy about the sofas over the last few weeks. They're really comfy, but the sofa backing onto the front wall would have been completely blocking the left front speaker (See the mock-up at the bottom of my first post). So we're selling them and have already bought a second-hand sofa like this:



It's a bit of a risk, but it was the best option overall. It also means we can easily sit together while watching TV, which currently isn't possible.

The york stone fireplace will look something like this:



We've already picked up the surround and it's sitting up in the 2nd bedroom until we get the room skimmed. The grate has also been delivered:



So our next jobs will be to get the electrics checked and a new consumer unit put in, then we'll be putting in the french door set from Wickes ourselves. After that, the room can be skimmed and decorated (hopefully 4 weeks or so).

My hi-fi has been stored away since July, so I can't wait to set it up again! Wahey!

[wandgrudd]

If your having an open fire don’t forget to get the chimney checked out as it looks as if it was a gas fire before, and it might have a liner in the chimney which might not be suitable for a open fires. Even if it doesn’t have a liner get a chimney sweep in to give it a good clean,

[FunkyMunkey]

Originally Posted by wandgrudd

If your having an open fire don’t forget to get the chimney checked out as it looks as if it was a gas fire before, and it might have a liner in the chimney which might not be suitable for a open fires. Even if it doesn’t have a liner get a chimney sweep in to give it a good clean,

Yup, I've already called a chimney sweep and will get him to come around as soon as I've bricked up the fireplace (we need to make the opening slightly smaller than it is now).

[Syphonic]

Would you mind telling me where you are getting the fire from? The missus has just seen it and I fear it's time to burn the plastic again!

[FunkyMunkey]

I got it from ebay. If you do a search for "KUBIS", it should come up. The grate is
"093 FIRE GRATE BASKET FIREBASKET POLISHED CAST IRON" bought from eBay member Cactusleisure.