I’m trying to keep a bit of a diary of things we’re doing to the house. I know that home renovations and such aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but you’re here now; you might as well have a scroll.
We’ve been here over a month now, but the time we’ve actually got to do things is quite limited and I’m fairly lazy so there isn’t that much to see… so it won’t take long.
Over the weekend we had a house full with both sets of kids here for three days. Absolute chaos, and noisy, but lots of fun. We set up a tent in right at the end of the garden where we wouldn’t be able to hear the kids from the house, even if they were screaming, which they probably were but I wouldn’t know because I couldn’t hear them. They seemed to enjoy themselves. They wanted to sleep in it of course, but I’m not a masochist.
As per every bank holiday week, I’m somehow shocked and unprepared that it’s Friday already. As soon as the kids left on Monday evening I came down with the lurgi and then spent most of Tuesday languishing in bed balancing my laptop on my knees, but fortunately it only lasted a couple of days. Despite skiving off of the gym today, I’m actually fine and looking forward to another, slightly quieter, long weekend. I’m no Royalist but I do enjoy a bank holiday. +1 if the weather is decent.
What we’ve done to the house this week
We hacked back a lot of dead plants and then set fire to them.
There’s this massive breeze-block raised-bed thing slap bang the middle of the lawn, which is quit frankly ugly and annoying and we want to get rid of it.
It contained, among other things, a very large, largely dead hebe. After cutting it back we realised the best thing to do would be to set fire to it. So we did. There are definitely pros to not having neighbours to annoy.
It was all very contained and sensible and apart from burning a hole in my skirt with a very hot stick, rather uneventful.
NB Only I could put my own washing on the line, forget about it and then light a bonfire. Dingus.
We changed the gas fire
Thrilling, no? Just in time for spring, we decided to change the fire in the front room, obviously.
It’s the only room which we’re planning to re-do entirely, complete with walls, ceiling and floors, which I’m not looking forward to in any capacity but we’ve ripped off a bit of the lining paper already so we’re committed now.
We really didn’t like the gas fireplace or mantelpiece when we moved in. It looked bloody massive, and the chrome surround was far too too modern and shiny for the room.
Lots of clutter (objet d’art, darling) later, we realised we actually quite liked the mantelpiece. It could stay,
We looked at replacing it completely with a Victorian style fireplace, but these things are very expensive. There’s a lack of genuine Victorian gas fires knocking about for some reason.
Upon Googling, we realised that the one we had inherited was actually a decent and fairly recent model. Then looking into it further, for a fraction of the cost of a new one we could get a new cast iron fascia from a local supplier.
A little tiling on the slate surround and I think it’ll really work well. It’s a huge improvement. It’s so much better for the space and although it wasn’t cheap, it was a fraction of what it would have cost to replace it entirely.
As an aside, the walls are probably going to be one of these colours, probably one of the blues, but we haven’t decided yet.
We built a bike store
(‘We’ meaning my partner).
Now that we have a decent, semi-flat area to ride bikes nearby, the kids have really got into it. It’s been less than a week now since my parents bought the kids their bikes up from storage.
My smallest, who was still on stabilisers before lockdown and hasn’t ridden much since, is now tearing about the place with the confidence only a seven year old boy with no sense of of his own mortality could have.
Apart from a harrowing incident where they both came hurtling down the hill and forgot what brakes were for, they’re getting really into it.
To get the bikes out from the garage and encourage them to use them more, my clever other half has built a bike store from some timber, a fence panel and some corrugated plastic roofing. And a drill and stuff. I dunno, I mainly offered moral support.
And yes, we need to pressure wash the horror of a patio – but that’s going to be an insane job. I wish I was one of those people who found such things satisfying (and I do, to a point, but I’d much rather waste time watching someone else do it on Instagram than do it myself).
…And that’s it, more or less.
Fixed a fence, put up some security cameras, trimmed some bushes. Mowed a lot of lawn.
I’ve also spent a very long and boring amount of time cleaning up my old rented house, which I’m entirely sick of now. I’m literally on my way to drop the keys off to the letting agents as I type and I hope never to ever have to deal with them again.
Anyway, whether you’re celebrating the Chamatazz (yep, I said that) with aplomb and decorating your house with weird bunting with his face on, or doing the normal thing and politely ignoring the whole palava, I hope it’s a fucking ace long weekend.
See all house updates here.