Thank you for all your enthusiasm about this new series! My Instagram especially has BLOWN up ever since I started posting about the house and I don’t think I’ve ever had as many messages as I did when I asked if I should start blogging about the renovation.
Today I thought I’d talk you through our overall plans for the house. Obviously there’s about a billion decor things I want to do (rainbow front door, pink sofa, fabulous wallpaper), but this post is about the more major plans. Build in 1906, it’s pretty damn old, and our survey brought up quite a few things that needed fixing immediately. Namely the joists on the ground floor that all need replacing (most of them are quite rotten) and the sagging lintel above the bay window in the snug which is making it look like it’s about to detach from the house. There are two slightly terrifying cracks next to it, one on either side. FUN!
We’ve already rewired downstairs, and the electrician who came to install the new consumer unit and smoke detectors said our upstairs wiring is actually really good. We’ll still replace it as it is old but its good to know that it’s not urgent.
We’ve also had some drain problems since we moved in. A few weeks ago there was a massive storm and the garage flooded, ARGH! Luckily we didn’t lose anything important, but its just another big job that Gareth now needs to figure out!
The ground floor
Apart from the things I’ve mentioned above our main plans for the ground floor are:
♥ Knock a door (or maybe the entire wall) through from the dining room to the kitchen.
♥ I really want to replace the window in the dining room with patio doors, but Gareth isn’t convinced because…
♥ Eventually we want to get rid of the lean to and extend out the back and create a huge kitchen/ diner. As you can see the kitchen is pretty small for the size of the house which isn’t ideal. We are planning to rip out and redo the current kitchen (on the cheap) as soon as because it’s incredibly ugly and badly laid out. In all honestly, I don’t think we’ll be able to afford any major building work for a good few years but there’s no way I can live with the kitchen as it is for longer then a few months (fingers crossed!)
Seriously, WTF
♥ Get rid of the avocado bathroom under the stairs, replace with just a loo and knock through to the garage so we can access it from the house.
♥ Re-do the driveway, generally tidy up and repaint outside. Get into gardening.
The first floor
The upstairs actually suits us fine right now. Our bedroom is bedroom 2, bedroom 1 is my office and bedroom 3 is Gareth’s office/ the guest room. While nothing immediately needs doing, down the line we will probably…
♥ Rip out the bathroom suite, knock though to the enormous airing/ storage cupboard (which has the boiler in) and replace with something fabulous… Maybe a wet room? His n hers sinks are a must.
♥ The house actually has planning permission already for a huge extension (the downstairs of which I mentioned above) but also to knock down the garage and replace with another reception room and two bedrooms with en-suites above! As we’re not planning to have children we don’t really think we’ll ever need five bedrooms and three bathrooms, plus we really need the garage for storage (those magazines sure do take up a lot of space). We would like to build a new garage (as the current one leaks ha!) and put one big master bedroom and bathroom above it!
So there we have it, not too much work then (LOL!) and I haven’t even mentioned the photo studio I want to be built down the end of the garden one day..! As I’m sure you can imagine I’m desperate to start picking paint colours and order fun things like floor tiles and furniture but I must be patient.
It’s really funny, because people keep saying to us “Oh it’ll be so nice when it’s done” and yes it will, but we honestly think it’s already so nice! Yes, its a bit rough around the edges and could do with some love and TLC but it’s not desperately unlivable.
OK back to stripping wallpaper I go… Happy Sunday everyone!
