Spending and considering

This is just a couple of pointers in hopes of helping someone out there.  There are two things I have come to realise the last couple of days.....


When to spend a bit more
Firstly I spend a lot of my time saying don't spend/splurge on this or that - not necessary BUT when it comes to paint....   usually when we are buying paint for our projects we buy tester pots so they aren't more than a couple of pounds.  This is where you should buy the best quality paint you can and spend that little bit more.

On this build for the first time I have paint from the Little Greene Paint Company (on-line purchase) and from Craig and Rose (via B & Q).  They are finished in one coat and go on with little or no brush strokes.  The white B & Q paint is just awful in comparison.  It still isn't giving a good cover after three coats and leaves brush strokes like ski tracks.  Fortunately I can put up with it as it is used on the kitchen walls as distemper which never looked great but it was a quick way to freshen up an area that got grubby.  Yes (!) my mother painted to 'coal hole' with it.  The Philips sisters like a clean looking kitchen and have abandoned the blue keep-flies-away walls in favour of a frequent refresh whenever they are away from the house.

I know the quality is hugely different between these paints.  I painted the housekeeper's room with Regency Cream from Craig and Rose and decided to mix it 50:50 with the B&Q white for a lighter shade in the servants' hall.  I can not see a scrap of difference.  The pigment in the Craig and Rose was so good it could be loaded with equal amounts of the poorly pigmented B&Q white and not change a jot.


Considering
This is pretty much the first build where I have changed a lot of the interior spaces by adding in different walls.  If you want to go down this route you really do need to consider the impact it will have on the order of the build.

Right now I am being frustrated at every turn by not being able to do this or that because of these changes.  There is a major issue if you want to have any kind of light that stands on a piece of furniture.

For example, I have an oil lamp to go in the housekeeper's room, probably on a small desk.  This would be her only light, therefore my only way of lighting her room.  Right now I don't have a desk and am not certain where it will go in her room.  I may not find a suitable piece and the lamp could go in all sorts of places.  Wherever it ends up the wire will have to travel down through the furniture, across the floor and exit at the back of the room.  The back of this room is in effect a wall to wall cupboard which then blocks the access to the back wall of the building.  This means i have no way of taking wires out through the back wall after the cupboard goes in.  If i can't put the cupboard in I can't locate the inner walls as they need to be a tight fit against the cupboard (in situ).  So the whole ground floor is on hold until one oil lamp is sited! 

I am sure people do work this way and well done them, but not for me.  I have eleven rooms to go at and can't bear the thought of every one of them being stymied whilst waiting for a particular light or a stick of furniture to 'turn up' first.  I very much want the bones of the house finished and then I can settle to installing lights and fires, decorating, flooring and then furnishing and dressing the rooms.

I hope I have struck on a solution: in this build I will add exterior chimney breasts and all the various wires that can't get to the back because of added walls will have to exit via the chimneys.  I think I am going to need exterior chimneys any way to accommodate the fires. 

In a terrace the rooms on one side of the house had internal chimney breasts and the rooms on the other side had external with the fires flat on the wall.  The chimney stacks were shared between the houses so that's how they worked.  This works for my house just fine because I don't want chimney breasts in my right hand rooms as they are already small.  This means the fires need to be shoved 'outside'.  That should be fun!