Well, we’ve had grand plans for the house this year and have done very little (ahem, again).  I realise it’s only August, but seeing as we’re wanting to start from the outside in and just spent all of that money on the roof, it doesn’t seem like we’ll be able to start until next year.

We’ve realised we had everything back to front – wanting to start with a kitchen re-fit before the flooring for all of downstairs doesn’t make sense… nor does doing anything major inside before we get rid of all of those annoying bits of gravel that get walked in incessantly.

SO <bangs gavel>. The order right now is…

• Sort a few cosmetic things out. Ye Olde Ikea Expedit unit is the first thing people see when they walk in. We still need somewhere to put all of the kids crap, but I’d rather it was not that. The radiators in the living room could do with changing for some column ones, and there’s a load of painting we need to do – some rooms are still half gloss and half eggshell. Scarlett’s room hasn’t been painted since we moved in, and she’s forced our hand by sticking foam stickers all over her wall that NEVER COME OFF. Literally going to have to sand those bad boys off.
• Do the stairs. Barry reckons this needs doing before downstairs, but we really fancy stripping the carpet and having the world’s shortest runner down the stairs. This shouldn’t (famous last words) be a huge job unless we tear up the carpet and find the steps need replacing. Which could happen.
• Pave the patio at the back. This needs doing up to the side of the house. I mean, the front will still need doing but this is more pressing.
• Flooring downstairs. We’re still looking at finding some parquet flooring in good condition for the living room and kitchen, and tiling the utility room and little toilet.
• Kitchen. This is the holy grail – you already know what we want to do with this. I’m beginning to feel like it will never ever happen.

We’ve had to spend money on annoying things this year, like buying a new dishwasher when ours gave up the ghost. Despite it being a half height one, they cost more than full sized ones for some reason.

Then we were planning to sort the patio out in time for Jude’s birthday. Our window cleaner luckily spotted some of the ridge tiles on the extension were falling apart.

We got a local roofing company to come out and look at them, and they were just crumbling. They’d only been on about nine years, and unfortunately (but not unsurprisingly), the builder that put them on was out of business.

The roofing company replaced them very quickly, but it decimated our patio budget, so we had Jude’s birthday barbecue making everyone look up to appreciate the roof instead of looking at the mossy gravel.

There have been other little annoyances like spending £100 getting rid of wasps (wasps, I tell you!) this month, so we’ve been looking at our budgets again so we can get some more done with it.