House video tour: December 2014

11 months today since we moved in...

Number 5 in 2014

One of my favourite interior design blogs, Chris Loves Julia, recently posted a roundup of all the projects they'd tackled in 2014, and I thought it might be nice for me to do the same.  Particularly as things around here have stalled on the DIY/renovation front since finishing the living room in September, so I'm feeling a bit underachieving lately.  I need to do a new house tour video since these photos all look very out of date now!

Since we moved in January, the entire year has been a whirlwind of improvements and plans and spending money :D

We started the year by stripping lots of wallpaper:

In February we bought light fittings and curtains, and had various bits of electrical work done:

In early March we had new windows and doors:

 ...and continued the month with lots of gardening:

At the end of March Graham started work on the heating system:

...Which carried on into April:

April also featured lots of hard work from my in-laws:

We spent much of May doing more gardening and preparing for plastering work:

In June we had the first load of plastering done - lots of ceilings skimmed etc - and started on Bedroom 4 (the study), the downstairs loo, and Bedroom 3 (the spare bedroom):

In July we finished the study (which is looking a lot more lived in now!):

...and the guest bedroom, just in time for our first overnight guest:

....and the downstairs loo!

In August we had a tree cut down and that appears to be all we did, probably as we were exhausted after the three rooms of the previous month!

In September we finished the living room, bought a piano...

...and bought new sofas and made cushions!

In October we caught the last of the warmth and sun and dismantled the sunroom with the help of the wonderful Sophie and Patrick:

In November I got restless with the lack of decorating and DIY, and painted the inside of a cupboard:

And finally, December has been full of making plans for 2015 and getting ready for our first Christmas season in our lovely home :D

In 2015 we plan to:

Get a new kitchen
Finish the master bedroom
Get a new bathroom
Have the garden re-designed and overhauled
Bedroom 2 - everything needs doing in here!
New flooring in hallway

....I think that should be enough to be getting on with!

Garden 9 November 2014

The garden looked beautiful this morning:

Painting the Harry Potter cupboard

We have a cupboard under our stairs, which is a pretty normal thing to have in a house, but ours is huge!  It runs alongside the staircase then turns back round on itself and underneath the staircase itself, and many of my friends have commented on it being a Harry Potter cupboard :)

Anyway, we keep coats, vacuum cleaner etc in there but lately it's been bothering me because it smells really musty and every time I get a coat out to put on I can smell it :( the whole house smelt the same when we moved in but over time with new carpets, new paint, and general day to day life and fresh air, most of the mustiness has faded.  Obviously as we always have the cupboard door shut, air can't circulate and that's why it's retained the smell.

We didn't want to take the carpet up (yet - will do when we have new flooring in the hallway, and will get the new flooring in the cupboard as well) so I decided to paint the walls and ceiling as I believe wallpaper holds smells quite a lot.

(Also it's been a while since I painted anything and to be honest I was getting painting withdrawal symptoms!)

New white coat on the right, with the two existing shades of paint:

It's not quite that patchy really, it's just still wet in this photo and this was only after the first coat!  Scuse the fuzzy blob in the middle of the pic, my camera has some dust INSIDE the lens :(

And then I gave this stuff a go... the hallway does now smell of orange sherbert, but it's an improvement... the real test will come when we hang everything back up in there and shut the door...

Autumn Garden clearance

Well, it's now over halfway through October and there is no longer any denying that summer has been and gone.  My veg patch was looking a bit sad as things died off and the jasmine had gone a bit bonkers so we took a few hours this afternoon to tidy up a bit...  Ian kindly took some photos as I'm always behind the camera so it looks like I don't do anything!!

Last courgette of the season:

Couple of beetroot left...

Planted my kale seedlings out for winter

The PSB has been a total disaster this year, really...

Last few carrots

The promise of a tiny bit of PSB if it holds out that long, it's meant to be a summer variety not an over-winter one!

Ian hacking back the jasmine:

The Japanese maple is nearly over, but is looking glorious in the meantime:

Berries:

Berries and ivy:

No idea why my roses are still blooming...

Last few tomatoes and my one and only pepper which has never ripened!