Kitchen Tiling Is Finished!

My parents were back from France for a fleeting visit at the weekend and it was lovely to see them. While Dad stayed with us he very kindly finished the tiling in our kitchen and just left me a little bit of grouting to do which I got finished the other evening; I can now add grouting to my growing list of DIY skills!


I was quite worried that the 'Pistachio green' tiles would be too bold but now they're finished I love them! The contrast with the 'soft stone' coloured walls and the white grout is lovely and is made the kitchen feel jazzy, modern and clean. These are what they call subway tiles and were from Wickes, surprisingly good value too and came in an array of colours (subway-style tiles seem to be rather expensive). I love it!

The house decorating is really starting to make a difference now; it might seem a bit slower than I'd hoped but work and other commitments as well as finances mean you can't do everything all at once! The house is starting to look like we had imagined anyway; cleaner, tidier and full of the things we love. Jack still looks exasperated when I bring out the list of all the other things to do on the house and garden... it's about three A4 pages long! Thankfully there's not a lot left to do in the kitchen; I bought a new roller blind from Dunelm yesterday so that needs putting up, I'm yet to finish sprucing up a plain cork notice board that hangs in the kitchen, then we just need a few accessories like a display shelf and clock, and then it's all finished in there. It already has a nice tiled floor so it's easy to sweep and clean - I love tiled floors!

I'm yet to silicone around the bottom of the tile line (before anyone points it out!)

Onto the next house decorating task!


Em x

Newly Tiled Conservatory Floor!

How can one be so excited by floor tiles?! I am though! Two weeks' ago my parents came and stayed with us and I put my Dad to work tiling our conservatory floor. Don't feel sorry for him - he loves it! My Dad is a 'can't sit still' kind of man and always has to be doing something, be it walking, DIY, gardening or tasting local real ale! Like most men he's also partial to watching a football game or ten..!




Dad has done a fantastic job anyway and I'm so pleased with the conservatory floor; we went with a nice plain taupe-coloured tile from Wickes and black grout which helps them stand out. Dad's done a lovely diamond pattern too which I think looks fab in our square conservatory. As yet we haven't put anything back in the conservatory as I need to wash down all the windows and frames first. Jack was such a help to Dad too :-)

Easter Weekend

Morning all, I hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend with family and friends, ate lots of chocolate and hopefully none were too affected by storm Katie! We had gales and torrential rain all of Saturday daytime and night time and woke up to find the two new fence panels we'd bought had been thrown half way around the garden (they've not been fitted yet and were leaning against the conservatory) Thankfully they are still in one piece and my plants had managed to avoid being squashed.

I did Roast leg of English Lamb on Friday, cooked with rosemary and garlic and some white wine too. It made the tastiest gravy!

Friday however was a beautiful day and we spent most of it outdoors with Jack's parents who had arrived on Thursday evening. Sarah did some gardening for me while I was cooking us a tasty roast Lamb dinner. Jack and Richard managed to lay electrics to the shed and we now have plug sockets and a working light in there which is great. I've also now got a plug socket in the conservatory so we've moved the tortoise's table into there as they will soon be spending the daytime outside and just coming in to sleep at night for the warmer months of the year (before hibernating in the winter). We now have a big space in the dining area of our living/dining room so our small dining table now looks tiny. I hope to get a bigger dining table soon, but it all costs money and we can't do it all at once. We keep an eye out in the local community project centre where you can take old furniture as we've picked up a few bargains from there in the past.

The Torts enjoyed their first proper day outside of this year in their run, lovely sunshine!

Jack's parents headed home on Saturday morning, so Jack and I braved a trip to Wickes in the pouring rain to get a few bits we needed while there was 15% off. They had 15% on top of the deals they already had in place so we then came home and ordered tiles that we'd seen in store that we liked. We've got some big square 'taupe' ceramic floor tiles to do the conservatory floor and we have finally chosen the tiles we want for the splash-back area of the kitchen and have gone with some lovely subway tiles in 'pistachio green'.

Jack had to work on Sunday and Monday so I was on my own and wanted to make the most of the time off of work to get back into the swing of decorating as there's still so much to do in the house. As we now have the kitchen tiles arriving this week and my Dad coming to do the tiling in a few weeks' time, I was conscious that I needed to get on with painting the kitchen in anticipation of the tiling. The kitchen was probably the grubbiest room when we first moved in and the walls were full of huge holes where things had been moved around over the years. We were very lucky that the kitchen was nice and modern though so it's saved us a lot of money in terms of needing to replace it and all the kitchen needed was a thorough clean and spruce up. I spent the last two days scrubbing, filling holes, sanding and then painting! I had to shut Barry in his crate while doing the decorating because he loves his Mummy so much that he wouldn't leave me alone and kept coming into the kitchen to have a scratch and send his hairs flying into the wet paint!! He loves his crate though and by shutting him in he realises he can see me but that he can finally have a snooze.

Clearing, Moving, Cleaning, Filling, Sanding, Painting, Glossing and putting back together again! This is the start...

... And the finished look. We went with 'soft stone' on the walls and then we're being bold and going with a 'pistachio green' tiled splash-back area. I can't wait to get a new oven too - this one is over 12 years old and on its last legs (no working grill, oven can be hit and miss too!), but it's served us well since moving in.

It's back to normal today; a quiet-ish day at work before the next month end arrives and outside of work I've got more decorating jobs to do; I want to make a start on freshening up the two hall cupboards. One sits next to the kitchen and we think we might turn this into a pantry (I do have a lot of kitchen appliances and cookware after all), so it just needs some holes and blemishes filling and sanding, a lick of paint and then shelving putting up. We also then have a much larger cupboard which we hope to turn into a downstairs toilet. We're just waiting to save up a few more pennies before we get builders and plumbers out to work out the feasibility of it all. It could mean digging up floors and a lot of mess so we will see. That cupboard I intend to paint for the meantime so it's tidy. At the moment we just use it to store our bikes, shoes and coats so it really is a very big cupboard and would be perfect to be a WC/Cloakroom.

A quiet week is planned here and then Jack goes on his annual rugby tour with his rugby team. They're off to Edinburgh this year; lots of beer and not as much rugby is involved I think! My brother's girlfriend Jenna is coming to stay for a girly weekend, so that will be nice.

Hope you all have a lovely week!

Em x

I Love Spreadsheets!

Does anyone else share my love for spreadsheets? I don't know what I'd do without them, they're so handy. Jack laughs at me as I have so many different ones, I spend ages on playing with the layout, adding in formulas, pivot tables etc. and I have a spreadsheet for just about everything! Shame I can't make the actual figures stretch any further than they already do, but such is life! :-)

This time of year I always make an extra effort to keep them all up to date and count the pennies. I always shop around too, especially when it comes to household bills. I always tell my mum that she should make more of an effort to do the same! I've saved £70 on our home insurance this year with even more cover than we had last year, I've saved on our electricity too by changing tariffs. Next on the list is Sky TV who I detest with a passion; their customer service is the worst out there! I'd quite happily walk away from them all together but I think Jack would be a very upset man without his sports to watch and that's his way of relaxing after working a very hard week so I won't begrudge him that, though it is the most expensive part of the Sky bill...!

We've got a quiet weekend at home planned this weekend; my jobs are to have a sort out for an EBay selling session, I've got coving to paint in our bedroom (which I keep putting off as it's a horrible job) and then in between that I hope to find some time to bake something, crochet something and read more of my book! I've started reading War and Peace (gulp!) because I'm enjoying the BBC TV adaptation so much. Tolstoy books aren't exactly an easy read but I love reading and I'm enjoying it already - Jack's Dad told me I should add it to my CV as an achievement if I finish reading it!!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend, I hope Storm Gertrude doesn't cause you too many headaches or damage (take care!) and I hope you all get time to relax :-)

Em x

One Year Anniversary In Our Own Home

I can't quite believe that a year has passed since Jack and I got the keys to our very first home. It was a very exciting day, especially after the stress of the weeks leading up to it when there seems to be endless paperwork, keeping fingers crossed that the mortgage is accepted etc. but we did it! Here we are a year down the line and loving having our very own place. We'd rented a flat in Newbury before that and though our little flat was homely and nice we were both super keen to get a place of our own to decorate and also so that our money felt like it was going somewhere - even if our first annual mortgage statement that we received last week was rather depressing!

The view from our bedroom window - at our first viewing

 

The house was rather dirty when we moved in and so I spent the two weeks I'd booked off work cleaning like mad. The previous owner smoked in the living room and so my first mission was so get rid of the musty smell. Sugar soap became my new best friend and the filthiest rooms we painted in magnolia to freshen it up in the interim until we got around to decorating properly. Affording a deposit on a house is NOT easy! Both Jack and I worked extremely hard to save for our deposit and we were very lucky that our parents lent us some money too. What that meant though is that every penny we did save up went straight on the deposit and fees leaving us not a lot of savings when we moved in. That means that we've had to decorate a room at a time as we've managed to save the money up. We don't really mind this though because we've gradually seen the house transform from a neglected and out-dated two bed terraced home to a much-loved, brighter home. However, my tip for anyone who's buying for the first time (we've been trying to give some of our friends advice too) is that whatever you think you need... you need more! I'd like to have been in a position where we had a bit of savings set aside for decorating, tool buying and furnishing but then I suppose if you were buying a new build you wouldn't have the decorating costs quite so much.

 

I loved the bathroom tiles when we moved in but absolutely hated the wall colour...

 

Jazzed it up to a 'periwinkle' blue! The bathroom now has a beach theme

 

I like to be thrifty when possible and so we visited the local community project shop regularly to see what pieces of furniture had arrived. We came home with some lovely dining chairs which now sit downstairs and in the spare room. I also got a bargain old book case which I've already filled on the landing - I now need to source another antique book case because I won't diminish my quantity of books!

 

Lovely dining chairs - they only had 3 but they cost us a total of £15 and just need a little TLC.

 

The garden was probably what I was most excited about when we moved in; I've always loved gardening from a young age when I used to help my mum in the greenhouse at home. To have a garden of my own means so much and I love escaping outside to potter around the plants or just to admire the countryside views over our back fence. The garden was quite the jungle when we moved in so our first job when Spring arrived was to get the choking plants under control and I planted lots of new plants too. All look pretty healthy still, only a few casualties along the way which is par for the course and a learning curve for me.

 

The clematis had completely engulfed the oil tank and the oil company refused to deliver more until they could actually get to it so our first job was to give the clematis a hair cut. The small shed you can just about make out as also gone; it was totally rotten inside and this is where Jack has now built his shed

 

Jack and Dad putting up new fence panels ready for the imminent arrival of a little puppy... You can also see the very harsh hair cut I gave the clematis (near the trellis). It bounced right back last year and was covered in flowers, I look forward to it being in full bloom again this year.

 

When I started to put plants in...

 

 So we are very happy with our home and it's definitely lovely having your own place to do what you want and make changes that you want (as opposed to renting). We've still got lots to do, garden wise; Jack's almost there with the shed, I need to finish building the raised vegetable bed and finish the tortoise's outdoor run, then inside we have the hallway, kitchen, living/dining and conservatory still to decorate. All good fun and all in good time...

 

Em x 

Red Kites

Just a short blog to show you some photos I got of the Red Kites that are often seen soaring above our house/in the nearby fields. There are no end of Red Kites around here, they seem to be thriving in the UK once more. We often see Buzzards from the garden too. These photos were taken from our back garden, looking out onto the wheat field.

 

 

Hopefully I'll get some photos of the Buzzards soon. I'd also like to try and capture some photos of the Red Kites playing; we regularly see three or four playing together and they're quite funny to watch. They really are rather huge too.

We've got a busy weekend ahead of us; Jack's parents are travelling down from Cambridgeshire today to stay with us for the weekend. Jack and his Dad are starting the concrete shed base, while Sarah and I have some skirting board to gloss and the outdoor tortoise run to continue building. I'd also like to go for a snoop along the nearby footpaths and bridleways to see how the blackberries are coming along; I'm keen to pick lots this year for crumbles, pies, jams and just to freeze for smoothies. I took Barry for a walk the other evening and saw quite a few had ripened so I'm going to head out early before the blackbirds and others steal the best ones.

Happy Friday everyone! Have a great weekend :-)

Guest Bedroom Redecoration

I thought I'd share with you a few photos of our guest bedroom that we've finally finished redecorating. I've not shared them with anyone else and it seems a shame to take before and after photos just for my own reference, though it may not be of much interest to others either! :-)

We're lucky that both bedrooms in our mid-terrace are a very decent size. Both bedrooms were in need of some TLC (I'm a dab-hand at poly-filling holes and cracks now) and some updating. We decided to decorate the second bedroom first seeing as we'd been inundated with family and friends wanting to come and visit.

How the guest bedroom started; at this stage we had taken up the laminate flooring, ripped off the polystyrene coving and removed the old skirting board.

We changed the faces on the plug sockets and light switches - cost a few £s from Screwfix to do so but made the room look so much cleaner by doing such a simple thing. Jack's Dad also fitted new light pendants too. The windows at the back of our house (upstairs and downstairs) were original wood-framed, single-glazed windows and it was extremely chilly when we moved in. I didn't mind the chill but it was more the wind whistling through at night that kept me awake. The front had been double-glazed at some point (though they're looking quite old now too), but the back had been neglected (not that I'm blaming previous occupants, new windows are not cheap!). We knew that fitting new windows was a priority and thankfully the deposit we got back on our rented flat covered almost all 3 back windows (both bedroom windows upstairs and the living room window downstairs). The back windows are abnormally large (therefore costly), but I love that as it means we get to make the most of the view over the countryside.

New double-glazed windows fitted

 

Next job was painting the walls now that I'd finished filling the holes/dents/cracks and sanded them. Jack is more than happy for me to choose colours etc. but I always ask for his opinion (he's grateful that I'm not a pink-fanatic). We decided to go with 'Taupe' in the guest bedroom, a nice warm neutral colour, my thinking being that I could accessorise in the room for a fairly low cost and it would fit in with our old bedroom furniture that would be staying in this room.

 

Walls painted with Dulux matt in 'Taupe', new skirting board fitted by Jack (caulked and glossed by me), windowsill sanded back and then glossed, finally the radiator is no longer a horrible greyish colour and I painted it white once more with Ronseal radiator paint.

 

I think the skirting board looks lovely and the main reason for us replacing it was that the rest of the house already has this skirting, but for some reason the two bedrooms had been left. Coving wasn't as easy job (it's so fiddly and more arm-aching above your head), but Jack and I remained on speaking terms despite how annoying it was at times to get someone to hold the coving while the other sands a smidgen more in order to get the corners flush. We're now experts and I'm hoping the master bedroom will be quicker to do coving-wise, though there are a lot more corners in there...

We had decided we wanted carpet upstairs (I like the feel of carpet between my toes in the morning when getting out of bed) and after getting many quotes done we went with Luke Johnson Flooring, based in Newbury. They were fantastic and we're really pleased with the carpets. We had the second bedroom and landing carpet done at the same time in the same colour, this is a Cormar Saxony carpet called 'Primo Delight' in the shade 'Almond', it has a nice deep pile and a slight fleck in the carpet so helps not to show up grubby marks too quickly. We're undecided whether to have the same colour fitted in the master bedroom (I'll update on that soon when we reach that stage).

 

Coving fitted, door and door frame glossed (we are yet to replace the door handles - every room in the house has a different one!), finally the carpet has been fitted.

 

We decided that for the meantime we would move into the guest bedroom now that it was finished, in order to help empty up the master bedroom so we could get started on the decorating in there. We moved the furniture into the guest bedroom (this furniture is staying permanently in there) and here's a photo of the finished room - only thing missing is some wall art which I just haven't got around to yet.

 

 

Glass bottle table lamps - Ikea

Beside tables & chest of drawers (not in photo) - Malm, Ikea

Duvet cover - Dunelm

Curtains - Dunelm

Ceiling Lampshade (larger version of table lampshades) - Ikea

 

Thanks to our old furniture, we managed to save a lot of money on this room. We intend on buying new furniture for our room but I think our family and friends will be more than happy with our old furniture in here. I'm pleased with how the room looks, pretty plain but that's what I wanted. I hope to get one of my nice landscape photos I took in nearby Micheldever Woods (Hampshire) blown up and framed for the wall above the bed. We've also installed a small desk (not in the photo) in here for me to do my sewing and crafting. The sewing machine now has its own permanent home! I managed to find some vintage wooden reels of thread in a local antique shop that I plan on displaying in a large mason jar/glass bottle on the chest of drawers to give the room a bit more décor, along with another nice box filled with some of my knitting wool and needles. In total, all décor, paint, DIY materials came to just under £350, well under the £500 decorating budget we set for this room. This doesn't include the cost of the new window or carpet which came to £950 (ouch!). It gives us a bit more spending money for the master bedroom which is good as we need all new bedroom furniture for that room which won't be cheap.

 

So this is the guest bedroom just about fully complete. We always give up the room when we have visitors (Jack and I are more than happy on the air bed for a night in the "building room" aka our master bedroom) and they all compliment the room so that's nice. For our very first house and our very first go at some things like fitting skirting board, sanding doors and windowsills I'm quite pleased with how well we've done. It's all a learning experience after all and I've discovered I have an extra talent for painting and glossing (Jack's least favourite jobs). We wanted a bit of a project house and this house has just the right amount, allowing us to put our own stamp on it while hopefully adding a little bit of value to the property. Here's to more exciting decorating projects! :-)