Hello & welcome! It's Fi here 🙌🏻 I'm an Interior Designer based in the UK and this channel was set up by myself and my partner Neil to support new renovators to get the home of your dreams 💛🏡
Back in 2016, we TRANSFORMED our 1930s semi into our dream home and documented every inch on our website fifimcgee.co.uk/our-renovation
Along the way, I became an interior designer and now work with clients on renovation projects anywhere between £100,000 to £500,000.
I'm a huge advocate of home being the most important place to invest your time, energy and money. It has the power to enhance your life. That's why I want to show you how to make it 'YOU' and get it right.
Party wall surveyors are only necessary if your neighbour does not agree to you carrying out the wall. It is a widespread misconception that one needs a surveyor to issue a party wall Notice to sign off the agreement with your neighbour. There is no need! The Notice is just a form that you can download from the internet for free. A party wall Award is what you refer to... that is when your neighbour and you cannot find an agreement....
@@jodeelee7896 Hi Jodie! Any projects that involve work that effects structure, fire, or access to a building needs building regs approval. The contractors you hire should be aware and clarify with you based on your specific job. Hope this helps!
Also its location like London, its good to budget 3X survey cost as many times you will pay and do survey but seller might accept a cash offer/better offer especially if its listed with multiple agents. 1. If the property on flat ground, anything on slope could cause challenge with planning and also higher cost for extension 2. Access to the property is major factor as well 3. End of street most if the time has better potential
TBH, the finish on our IKEA kitchen cabinets held up MUCH better than "upgraded" custom cabinets in our new house. After 5 years I had 1 ding & 1 coffeee stain. I could replace a drawer front easily
Thanks Kate :) I believe they will. They're an extremely versatile colour choice for a modern interior and help to create contrast in more neutral spaces like this one (or blend in with moodier colour schemes). They were great to work around in this interior scheme 😊
Few things I noticed Pros: 1. Their drawers are very good quality for the cost 2. Deep cabinets and drawers as there is no service voids 3. In house design team with no pressure to buy 4. Overall much easier to make most of the available space 5. Fast delivery Cons: 1. Side panels are not very tick 2. Take time to to put together 3. Need some planning in the building stage to get all walls square and fulsh etc 4. Doors are not the best quality especially glossy ones 5. You will need more clearance to open drawers as these are deep
I had my kitchen planned by several of the big name kitchen companies and found Ikea quality to be comparable, or superior, particularly when taking into consideration I’d wager that the displays in Ikea have a harder life than in other showrooms. Time will tell, ultimately I went with Ikea for my kitchen project. I was able to avoid some of the cons because I used their own installation service, and luckily didn’t have to do any changes with pipework because there was appropriate pipework in place in the kitchen I inherited when I bought my renovation project. Would I have chosen Ikea if I’d had to make changes to plumbing? I think I could be swayed by the potential for future personalisation and customisation, but I don’t think everybody would be. I actually found the colour range pretty limited, a lack of bright colours unless in a gloss finish was really frustrating and almost a deal breaker, but I eventually managed to find a palette that worked for me - this is something I agonised over and whilst it took longer than I would’ve liked for me to make these choices I’d definitely say it’s worth investing thorough thought into use of colour, finish and materials if you’re taking a more bespoke approach to an Ikea kitchen, it paid off for me in that I achieved what I wanted to achieve but without having to buy any fronts from elsewhere (I would have loved to, but my budget couldn’t quite justify it for now). Still, I’m really happy with the finished result and feel I’ve managed to achieve the aim of a kitchen which looks more expensive and bespoke than it really is. I’m completely satisfied with the quality so far too (6 months later) - whether that’s due to it being installed by Ikea contractors rather than my own, I’m not sure. A friend of mine had contractors refuse to take on installing an Ikea kitchen, so that could be something to take into consideration before getting overly committed to an Ikea kitchen before knowing who will be doing the installation. One last thing to mention about the flatpack mountain that arrives at your home about a week before your installation begins… if your ground floor is small (mine is) it is likely to consume a lot of space so be prepared for the delivery and the inconvenience of having so many boxes everywhere. Sorry for such a long comment, I found this video really interesting as somebody who went with Ikea and wanted to share my own experience!
Thank you thank you thank you so much for saving me a crying migraine and wasting my money and time you have no idea you have saved me thank you for being truthful
I was literally stuck dreaming about a rear extention we can't really afford. Thanks for the shift in thinking! I am wondering when you "get rid" of all internal walls thinking of new potential layouts, what do you do about the structural walls? My downstairs is semi open plan so most walls left are probably supporting walls...
I would love to know if anyone who has white IKEA cabinets have had any issues with staining? I was canning a bunch of tomato sauce this year in my new home and some of my sauce went everywhere and made a huge mess. The cheap counter top in my home was stained in a couple of areas. It made me wonder what if this was my IKEA kitchen I am thinking about purchasing? Would this sauce have stained the white cabinets?
To be honest having a looking at all the kitchen manufacturer in the UK they all use chipboard for the cupboards. My friend's dad in Greece makes them out of solid for a fraction of the price what the UK companies change...
Thanks for the videos! An idea on future ones: Maybe advice on how to tie in stylistically two rooms like dining and living room which are open plan but still keep them slightly zoned and not looking identical?
Hi Fifi, I’ve thought about joining your course so many times but haven’t gone for it just yet. I’ve noticed that most of your clients have a really similar style and vision to your own home - kind of elegant, classic, traditional country house. My style is really different from that and I’d like to use a lot more colour. Are your courses still right for me?
Hey Laura! I'm so glad you asked because our students have such a mix of styles and the course content isn't style specific - it's more directed towards interior design that speaks to you, and how to achieve cohesion no matter what style you love. Enrolments will open again soon, I hope you can join us! Thanks for watching 🥰
Thank you! We loved those curtains too but they were just too thick and heavy and were literally pulling the old curtain rail off! And of course curtains means the use of nets which we aren't fond of the look of. We have a possible plan to repurpose them in our guest bedroom, but if not, they'll find a good home as they're such good quality curtains and completely timeless. Thanks for watching 🙏
By the time an architect has spent 7 years at university to qualify, an architectural technologist has 7 years of practical real life architecture work experience in practice, I know who I would choose to design my house. In fact I have been doing this for 23 years and in my experience the architects I have met can talk the talk but rarely can walk the walk. But it all comes down to the individual, in the UK anyone can design a house, you do not need a qualification, but of course you need experience, and experience always wins. Unfortunately architecture is usually a team sport, so people often pass work off as their own, but most of the time the construction drawings that really get the house built are done by very experienced architectural technologists, but often the architect (boss or manager) takes the credit.
my question to you would be, of the best homes built in this country in the last 5 years. How many were designed by Architects and how many were designed by layman, or technicians. The answer is 0.
Loved the content, Please Please let's have more, I'd love to see your progress on the project, it was also very touching that you shared your personal struggles with us it will help so many people and makes you so personable to us too.
(My word....how does this video not have hundreds of comments already😯? Regardless, here we go....) I owned my first storey and a half 'wartime' house here in Canada for 17 years. Good bones (room layout; window sizes and locations; bath on each floor; cute loft and second bedroom upstairs...etcetera) but in need of both updating and, paradoxically for a ~50 year old house, 'character-i-fying'. The adding character was because I both like old fashioned design and because the age of the house could support that kind of design direction. What transpired were 17 years of almost continuous, on and off redecorating and renovation, both minor and major. This was accomplished by 'professional' tradespeople, by myself and my father, and by an incredibly talented friend. What I learned skills-wise and what I learned about *the real stresses* of the process were eye-opening. One would think the stresses would have come from what Fifi mentioned in this video. But *99% of the stress came* not from the length of time it took, nor from budget constraints (which were severe in my case), but rather *from the few times I had 'professional' tradespeople and contractors on the jobs.* *These 'professionals' drove me mad,* as I think the British say. -- *Not sticking to **_very specific_** design specifications of a job,* thereby necessitating apprehensive phone calls and /or personal meetings with the person to ask, for example, why the new concrete sidewalk framing was a completely different shape than what had been marked out with paint and approved by me the night before; -- *Not showing up when they promised they would,* necessitating all kinds of bother and inconvenience; -- *Completely mucking up the job* ---using the wrong paint colour; installing carpet that was damaged at the warehouse; damaging new, existing redecoration; leaving rooms a mess or damaged that were not even a part of the project; incompetent drywall mudding and taping (I could have done better, and I'm quite bad at it); a brand new roof that leaked like a sieve....etcetera....etcetera; -- *Having a bad, unnecessarily confrontational attitude* from the get go (they seemed fine during pre-hiring interviews); --Essentially displaying *an attitude of reluctance even to do the job* for which they were hired, etcetera....etcetera.... I recall many times as the years went on, and I went on to two other houses which needed their own redecoration / renovations, that despite my father's and my non-professional qualifications, and our sometimes excellent and sometimes not quite perfect results, that *_at least we only had ourselves to blame_* for any imperfections, and had at least had a peaceful, good attitude progression and hadn't had to deal with any nasty, dishonest, incompetent contractors and tradespeople. My current living space is an apartment condominium (a flat) that has 28 year old, faded, scuffed pink(!) paint and similar colour wall to wall carpet and counters in the kitchen. I had actually already had several flooring firms in and had picked out new lovely, light engineered wood and a cool new vinyl for the various rooms, and had the perfect, neutral (not boring! lol) paint colour selected. Five years later, and I still live with the old, faded materials that seem to suck the life out of my really nice furniture. (Who knew certain background colours could make a $6000. chair look like a thrift store castoff? And yes, with a limited budget that had been a _huge_ splurge back in the day.) *Contractors and tradespeople are randomly nasty.* I hate dealing with those types, and the 50/50 possibility of being stuck with that type throughout even a flooring install makes me run from taking action on my home. And it's a problem echoed by thousands of others who've had bad experiences in the past. Thanks for the helpful, well presented video, by the way🙂.
Your terrible green and orange swirl carpet was the carpet of my childhood, we had that in our living room in 1970s 😂 So funny seeing on your advert on Pinterest, I suddenly got all sentimental about that hideous carpet 😂
@@FifiMcGee It must have been the hipster carpet at one point! 😎 I hadn’t thought of it since about 1985 when I left home, so your ad was like a Time Travel surprise. We also had the framed ‘Tina’ print by JH Lynch, which is now very retro and sought after by vintage lovers - you’ll have to look that up! - but I doubt it will be appearing in your interior designs
Only seen this today. We've done a lot of work on the last few years to our house, bought two years ago. But I still have the reno bug! That was brave of you to talk about your health and your personal world. Keep learning about yourself and looking after yourself ❤
Could you share with me your old kitchen and dining room dimensions please ? Yours looks great, just trying to figure out if mine would look anywhere near as good. Thanks
I find your videos so helpful! I would love to see a video on choosing paint colours for rooms. We are renovating our whole house, focusing on the ground floor first. We have an east facing kitchen which has a lot of morning light and west facing living room with warm evening light. We've chosen a Howdens pebble kitchen so would like colours to compliment this drawing on natural/neutrals and greens. Thank you 😊
Hi Amberley! I'm so happy you're enjoying our videos and that they're helping you with your ground floor reno plans! Gorgeous choice on the Pebble units. I know that colour well and love how versatile it is. A colour that works beautifully in East facing rooms is Bone by Farrow and Ball, have you spotted it on their colour cards yet? It actually looks more green than on their website and colour card so grab a tester and see how you like it. A complementary neutral next to Pebble and Bone is Slipper Satin. That's another calm, restful colour that brings a sense of warmth. You'll have to keep me posted on how it all goes! Fi x
Sure would love to hear if you went with Ikea and whether you are happy with it so far. I am in Canada and am considering it at the moment. Would love your input
Hey. I found your channel as my wife and I are in the process of buying our first ever renovation project, a 1930’s semi. We are excited to get going with it and will definitely be looking up your course :)
Great question! I've not used IKEA worktops on a kitchen project yet as these are usually purchased from local quartz suppliers (or places like Gemini, Worktop Express or RT Stone online). But I have seen their ranges in store on plenty of occasions and definitely rate them in terms of design and affordability. I've proposed them for bespoke joinery in the past though, (bathroom vanity counter top, built in office desks) and been pleased with their offerings! Hope this helps x
I'd be interested in seeing how this project progresses. I would say, though, that knowing the budget versus the actual spend on the different elements is a vital part of the story.
Hi Fi, I've recently signed up to your renovation course and am really enjoying making my way through it. Some really useful guides on how to tackle that "scary renovation!". Loved your video above and looking forward to seeing how this project unfurls ...
Thank you so much!! I couldn't see your name in your profile? So that I can keep an eye out for you in the Reno Club 😃 So pleased you're getting on well with the course and your renovation planning 🙌🏻 xx
So interesting! Loved this video. I have followed you on Insta for awhile and we're thinking about putting an offer in on a house that needs work - exciting! But I thought this morning I wonder if you vlog your renovations and voila this video popped up - what great timing! The project looks amazing and would love regular updates on it. Thanks again :)
Wow the synchronicity! 🙌🏻😍 I'm so glad you enjoyed this video, thank you so much for watching and commenting. It means the world 🤗 Rooting for you big time with your project. Fingers crossed your offer gets accepted 😃 xx
Thank you so much to create this such a valuable content, that's definitely what first time renovators need to know. As a home owner of a very old 1930 house, we need to do quite a big project, you covered all the ideas in your video, including extensions etc, so it is quite daunting for us and we don't know where to start, architect, construction team, renovation insurance, planning permission... will definitely dig in your channel and blog, hopefully I will find more answers😊
