London Victorian Reno Update: Kitchen Glow-up, Front Garden Arch, Staircase Progress & Plans

We’re still glowing up our kitchen and the island countertop cover made a massive difference. We also got an arch for our entrance / front garden and James is sanding and fixing the staircase.

Let us know if there’s anything you’d like to see / know?

Follow along as we continue our renovation journey, and feel free to share your advice & tips! We’re not experts, just two full-time working professionals on a budget who are figuring it out as we go and trying to breathe some love back into the Victorian terrace we bought in South West London to make it a home and have our wedding reception here in June. It’s all about making steady progress while balancing busy schedules 🙂

@swlondon_reno

https://www.instagram.com/swlondon_reno

Links:
Kitchen handles:
https://amzn.to/4myW4EP

Bathroom floor tiles:

European Heritage kindly offered us 10% off to share with you, with the code JAMILAHANDJAMES (we bought our tiles full price!)

Checkerboard tiles:
Red porcelain marble effect bathroom tiles:
Classique Marble Rosso Verona
White porcelain marble effect bathroom tiles:
Classique Marble Biancone

#HouseUpdate #BudgetRenovation
#HomeRenovation #LondonReno #londonrenovation #diy #victorianrenovation #londonvictorianterrace #renovationproject #interiordesign #kitchentransformation #beforeandafter

This doesn’t help my case for what I was saying last time about how I look like I’m always observing and James doing all the work, but he is spraying um the arch that we got and see a sneak peek of our path. Look at that beautiful color. And we are going to um paint the gate. So again, we went to Faren Bull. We got some color ideas. We’re going to change the the color of our front door, which is currently the same as the gate. Um, but yeah, they gave us some really great colors. We were going to paint the gate the same color as the front door and the arch this color, which is bringing by Faron Ball. But I think we’re going to do the arch and the gate the same color. And we’re going to do the front door a different color. Lots of different shades of pink and purple really. So, I’m excited. Isn’t he Isn’t he lovely for entertaining entertaining this? He secretly loves it, too. I thought I’d show a bit of a before and after of the front garden. And this is when we bought it. It was causing a lot of damp. And this is now. It’s not done. We want some greenery. We need to paint the door and the gate. But let me tell you, it is a lot nicer and a lot happier to come home to. And I know the heart tiles still won’t be for everyone, but they look so much better like that. And after taking them off the front of the stair. Also, I don’t think I filmed this, but um I woke up this morning for my Pilates class as usual around 6:30. Um got up um James was kind of like half awake. Opened the bedroom door. We’ kept it closed because James actually currently sanding the stairs. Um but um yeah, I heard that noise that we heard when everything was leaking. And I just said like, “Oh my god, what’s that noise?” And I wasn’t sure because there’s so many devices on in this house at the moment like the fan, the air con, the sander. And I was like, “Okay, maybe like there’s some or the extractor fan. Maybe there’s something on.” But then I heard the water. So, you know what that meant? There was a leak. There was another leak. Just woke up at 6:00 a.m. to this Um, luckily we had the water James went down. Luckily, the um ceiling did not come in this time. Um, the plumber came um and essentially uh said he didn’t use a pipe strong enough to hold the water pressure and apologized. And it’s interesting because this happened last time and I could hear the pump in the bathroom. So, we put a pump to help the water pressure in that bathroom. And yeah, last um last time when it was going off, I could hear it really loudly. Um and the same thing happened this time. It’s like it’s quite a loud pump, but um yeah, I think the leak kind of caused it to be pumping away, but the pipe was basically not strong enough to hold the pressure of the pump or something. Yeah, something like that. But anyway, I want to say it’s going to be fixed. or is fixed. But I really don’t want to say that. I said to James, I was like, oh yeah, like it’s all going to be fixed and it’s going to be fine. And I was just like, we can’t say that until our roof hasn’t come in or there’s been no lead for at least 6 months. Um it is now uh one day less than a month till the wedding. So it’s kind of like at what point do you tell your guests to bring umbrellas to to the to an in to indoors? Um or you just like, you know, is the risk just too much? like do do we need that stress? But again, like we’re quite um you know, luckily we’re quite I don’t I don’t want to say chilled people, but like we don’t want to get stressed and angry and anxious and stuff. So, um you know, we’re just taking it in our stride. It is what it is. There’s nothing we can do about it. We can only fix it and we can, you know, move on and just try and get things together. So, that’s what we’re trying to do. I guess the one thing that was kind of frustrating is that they had to rip the bath back out. So, you saw our bathroom last week completely done, but now it’s undone. Um, and you know, there was water leaking in the bathroom, so I hope nothing’s damaged, but yeah, guess we don’t know. Um, but other than that, I’m trying to think what other progress we’ve had. I guess it’s just been James has really been working on the stairs. Um, and they’re looking really good. [Music] I will add some clips of that. Um cuz I’ve been working and James has just been doing that every day which is great. He’s made some real progress. Um but do you know what I’m looking forward to after I guess it’s the wedding that’s driving like a lot of this stuff. But just sitting in a silent room with no builders, no devices, no wind and like five seasons in a day where James opens like every single window and door in the house. Um, I just find that very overstimulating. Um, so I’m very excited for that. Um, and a nice holiday. That’s what I’m excited for if we can afford it after the renov or after like fixing all these problems. Also, James told them that um the some of the grass that they delivered was was already dead. If you remember that big brown bag, sorry, you can see my stripey jumper in the window. The reflection, it’s quite annoying. Um, but wait, let me open the window. Yeah. So, James told them that the grass they delivered was dead. And yeah, they actually just replaced it, which was really nice. They actually he said he only needed seven rolls and they turned up with like the 446, which we made the initial order, but we only Yeah, we only needed seven, so we only took seven. No point taking taking it all, but um yeah. So, so that’s where he replaced the GL grass. It’s pretty obvious. So, hopefully that kind of takes and um grows to fruition. And the garden is looking so cute and lovely. Although actually um I didn’t tell you guys this, but can you see at the back? So there’s a car park behind our house and that’s where kind of like there were lots of trees before and the wisteria was growing over that wall. Um and they just came the other day and they completely massacred it and um they only kind of chopped it all down behind our house. Um, and it’s all like really really sad. Really horrible. Um, yeah, they cut down all the greenery. I mean, not only is that so sad because it was so beautiful. Um, there’s a few bits left, but yeah, not only was that so sad because um, it was so beautiful, but also it gave us a lot of privacy. Um, and they’ve just kind of reduced our there’s a big metal gate up there still. But I think James is going to write to the housing company, the housing association that kind of dealt with that. I mean, I imagine they’ll come back and be like, well, like they just won’t come back. They probably don’t care. But yeah, that was really upsetting actually. So the wister I mean I don’t know if it’ll bloom next year now. Apparently this is the worst time to trim it or cut it. And I don’t know why they just I mean to give you some perspective, the house two doors down has an insane amount of ivy growing all over it. And when we first bought this house, it was growing into our house. We had to have it all removed and trimmed back. And now it’s creeping over again. We’ve kind of um yeah, we don’t really know what to do about that. But um you know, it’s a bit scary because it can structurally um affect the house. So, you know, if anything should be trimmed back, I think it probably probably should be that. But yeah, maybe we will buy um some more wisteria or maybe some mature wisteria um to replant there. I was actually thinking of what we plant at the front of the house. I think we need to go to the garden center and kind of like um figure out. I really like olive trees, but apparently they look a bit sad in the winter, so maybe maybe I don’t know. I need to go to the garden center, kind of talk about what um kind of what direction our house faces, etc. And um maybe potentially grow something on the arch as well. I just I know I’m not going to do well with something quite high maintenance. Um so, you know, I just know I don’t want to put something in that’s that I’m not going to get the time um to look after. I would love to have the time to be able to look after it, but realistically it’s yeah, it’s going to be challenging. So, I want something low maintenance. If anyone has any lowmaintenance ideas for the front of the house, I was thinking maybe Wasa for kind of on the house. Um, maybe not necessarily on the archway. Um, but any ideas? Would love to hear. I don’t think is the most low maintenance, but I do think that maybe one thing that I I would be able to make myself maintain given it’s so beautiful. As you can see, there has been no progress made in the my temporary office walk-in wardrobe. This is my office setup. It’s quite depressing, actually. Um, and the yeah, that’s all the kind of IKEA packs that we ordered a while ago. Um, so yeah, no progress here yet, but we’ve got a lot done elsewhere in the house. James said I’m not allowed to show this until we’ve tidied. We’ve tidied. Um, but look at our new stainless steel countertop. It’s looking good. I had to sell James on it a bit, but it looks so good. So, as mentioned, we have been glowing up the kitchen a little bit. Um, painting the cabinets and changing the hardware, which I think I showed in the last one. I just attached some of the handles. James made some lovely pasta over there. And today we had the countertop um the counter top cover put in cuz um as we’ve mentioned a few times these countertops aren’t our favorite. Um we found kind of a solution for the center bit to to put a stainless steel cover on. Um I I don’t know if they do that in any other materials. I don’t think so. But we went with um the stainless steel and honestly I think it exceeded our expectations. Seems like it looks so much better. I’ll put in some footage of what it looked like before. I mean, even painting the cabinets and cleaning the hardware, there was a big difference. Um, like you just didn’t I feel like you just didn’t your eyes didn’t immediately go to the countertops, which it did initially because everything was kind of like the same color. Yes, the the the metals are different tones, but we like that actually. I think it looks really nice because it kind of ties in with the cooker. Um, and we’re going to change the sink as well. But I mean, pretty like we were going to like redo the kitchen completely, maybe in a year or so. But you know what? Like I actually think this has done big things for the kitchen. And as mentioned, we’re going to do like a coffee bar over there. That’s kind of like the cleaning corner at the moment. Um, but yeah, I’m like pretty pretty Yeah, there’s always some some mess hiding. I need to put up the panel over there, too. But pretty impressed at how this is turned out. James refitted all the lighting under there. The panel needs to cover that. He also bought me some flowers. Very nice. Um, but yeah, just just very impressed at how they turned out. Um, and also I think the big thing that made a difference, which isn’t being finished yet, but we painted like one coat of white paint um at the moment on the um skylights. That one’s not being done. And that one has one coat. That one I think has Oh, I got some paint on the window. Don’t Well, James already noticed that. Um that might need another coat actually. But that actually if you can see the difference between the wooden frame. We’re going to paint the back door frame as well. Um but it just it makes a big impact cuz your eyes just you’re not distracted. I think as James put it, you’re not distracted by like all these random random different things happening. It looks much smarter. So I think we’re excited about that. It’s made a big difference. And we finally have somewhere to sit and eat our lunch and dinner. And look over over at the back garden the back of the garden. and it’s really beautiful, but um still work in progress. And I think there’ll be some footage in from James working on the stairs, which he’s now like sanded them all down. He removed all the paint with the heat gun from the sides, which is pretty incredible. Like that is very much more patient than I am. And then so we did have this all painted drop cloth, but we’ve made the decision. So we’re painting the stairs uh studio green. Let me zoom out. And we’ve made the decision that I think we’re going to where that brake is there. We are going to paint Well, we’re going to paint all of that studio green. Basically, the the spindles that side we were going to leave that drop cloth, but I think we’re going to paint all of that uh studio green as well. And then I think we’re going to lead it into the door frames cuz the door frames are currently they have one coat of drop cloth on. Um, but yeah. Oh, there he is. He’s busy at work laying a new floor. Uh, but I think we’re going to do that studio green cuz it’s just a bit more of like a a statement and a bit more of a pop. Um, I think I mentioned our bath has been taken out because Yeah, our bath has been undone. Oh, look at you. Look at you with your little setup with uh What are you doing? So, we have just taken the skirting board off here. Oh, wow. Oh my god. I didn’t even know. not going to be smashing this up a little bit. What I realized is that the joist is actually behind here. So, you can’t actually put when I put the new one down. So, what I’m going to do is make a new joist, screw that into here. So, we have a new joist here. You can see this little thing here. What the plumbers usually do, electrician, is they do little uh drill marks like this and then saw down. Ah, so don’t you have to do that rather than just I want to replace it all. Oh wow. Okay, this looks stressful. So, I’ll leave you to it. I’m sure everyone’s on the edge of their seat on how this will turn out. I’m going to go back down to relaxing. The only thing I’m not sure is all of this is drop cloth. So, I guess I don’t know. I think we’ll just keep that all as droploth at the moment. I would love to paint that. So, also our plan was to paint all this floor studio green as well. Um, I don’t know if it would look We might I don’t know. We haven’t decided. We might leave it wood. That’s why we didn’t kind of protect the floor. We might leave it wood and try and get the paint off the floor or paint it all studio green and either leave leave the skirting or paint the skirting cuz I really think that the door frames will look amazing if they are if they are slightly more kind of statement and darker. So, let’s see what we decide. Huh? That’s what I said. That’s what you said. Yeah. But it has to feed into the um the skirting board, right? Yeah. So, let’s see. But yeah, pretty happy with this semi-glowed up kitchen. Work in progress, but honestly, this and a lot more reasonable than completely replacing countertops. Also, I know I often complain about James leaving things everywhere, which um is still very valid, but he made a hilarious video. Apparently, my vice is that I leave all the kitchen doors and drawers open. So, I have closed them especially for this video, but James made a hilarious video um pointing out that I leave them all open um which is quite funny. Yeah. Other than that, I’ve been making a DIY um welcome sign for our wedding. And um I don’t know if you know, but like I’m going to make a like flower curtain um invisible like with fishing wire and like looks like the flowers are floating to go all along that wall. I mean, you probably don’t know, probably don’t care, but my weekend is going to be it’s a DIY. Just come upstairs to see how James is getting on and he’s literally just built a new floor. I’m actually like amazed honestly. He just never ceases to amaze me. Like I’m actually amazed at how seamless it it looks and he’s going to do No, like it’s just incredible. Like you just your little corporate man and then you just build the wooden floor. Yeah, it’s pretty incredible. And also like Yeah. So he’s going to do all of those as well. Um and are we going to paint these or we we were meant to paint them studio green but we were double guessing, weren’t we? So I think Yeah. What we’re thinking of doing is having this step studio green. All the steps studio green. Yeah. And then the wood uh this wood color, but they’ll all be a bit more seamless. They’ll all be the same color. Exactly. From their back. And maybe it’ll be more like the downstairs where the wood is a nice like you’ll oil it. Right. Exactly. Oh, cool. James. And then that skirting. We’re going to do that studio green too, right? I think. Yeah, exactly. Studio green and then Yeah. bow a bit that need to know how to fix it. Oh yeah. I mean that’s not that seamless. I’m not going to lie. That’s okay. That bit needs to be fixed. That one the wood is burning. That’s good job, James. 10 out of 10. He’s really bowing. How did that happen? It’s just the wood. So, what I’ll do, I think this What’s happening? Just trying to pull it out. Okay, he’s turned it round. Is that the solution to turn it? I think so. I think if I turn it around and then Is this the technical solution or the James solution? James solution. Of course. Everyone’s going to be like, “What are you doing?” Someone told us our heart towels didn’t go. That person’s heartless. That is true. They make us happy. So, I’ll screw that one down and that will hold it in place. So, that should work. Yay. Nice. That’ll work. Yeah, I do like that. Okay. That was a tough day. Well done. A little hack. These are my wedding shoes, by the way, but they are not tight enough around the ankle. Uh, so they need an extra hole. So, I’m going to drill them. Drill an extra hole with the really thin drill bit. I’ve already done it on these. So, yeah. Here goes. Told you it would be a weekend of DIY. Uh, I guess this counts as DIY.