Category: Country house

How to paint a rainbow over varying angles and curved surfaces

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I’m writing this one as I found no help online to achieve this – I wanted to paint a rainbow in Scarlett’s room that started on one wall, travelled over her door onto the ceiling, came down an eaved part of the ceiling, and then came down the adjacent wall.

I get these ideas in my head sometimes that I can’t get out. Things that aren’t actually that practical or even feasible, but I want to do them anyway because I think they’ll be amazing if they work. SPOILER ALERT: this worked. It’s in the header image right there.

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August update

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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…

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Ain’t no sunshine

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I’m trying really hard to think of a way I can get a yellow sofa into the new kitchen without it being absolutely destroyed by Jude… still thinking on that one!

In an ideal world, I would like a buttery yellow, plump Chesterfield-style sofa in something soft, like velvet. It would be deep but supportive, and have big arms to lean against when I’m reading.

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Running the Showroom Gauntlet

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Because we felt like we were making a bit of progress with the kitchen planning, we decided to go and see some in real life. Armed with our plan, our first stop was Wren. No real reason, they just had a good sale on, had a country style that we thought was alright, good colour options, and it’s not too far.

Well. We made the mistake of going just as it opened, and I have never been inundated with so many helpful people in such a short space of time. It was overwhelming. I swear to God, they were popping out of cupboards as we walked round the showroom. We then made the further mistake of loitering at the kitchen we’d actually come to see and Barry cracked when we were approached for maybe the tenth time. That’s a modest estimate.

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Let’s talk kitchens

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The kitchen’s been a hot topic over the last few days – it’s the first biggie from our list of things we’d like to do in the house this year. Because we’ve done this before, Barry’s confident about fitting it himself again, and we have lists of absolute must-haves, would-likes and get-rids.

Putting flooring aside for now, the first thing we’d do in the living half of the room is to get rid of the corner sofa from the old house and put in a four-seater sofa – I’m eyeing up some yellow beauties like this one from Chesterfields, which Jude will no doubt trash within a day, but… look at it.

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Well hey there, 2018

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Happy new year! We’ve got quite a few ideas cooking for the house – most of them for downstairs – which won’t all be achievable in 2018, but we’re enjoying the planning process anyway.

Extension planning

Back in November, Barry contacted the local planning department about whether we would be able (in theory) to extend the house. The idea is that you pay about £50 and submit a vague plan, and they come and have a look to see if it would be at all viable. Saves you getting an architect involved if it’s a big fat no.

It was an as-it-stands no. We were looking at knocking down the current garage and building another one attached to the house, putting more bedrooms above, which would provide a bigger bedroom for Jude, a spare room and a craft room for yours truly. Continue reading →

Goodbye, sycamore

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We’re having to say get a 300-year-old sycamore tree at the bottom of the garden felled. It’s right on the boundary between our house and the church next door, and we knew nothing (Jon Snow) until someone cutting the church’s grass noticed it was bleeding sap on that side.

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A celebration

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We had Jude’s Christening and birthday celebration last month, and every spare minute we had went into preparing the house and garden for our family and friends to come over. Many hadn’t seen it and we’d taken the leap of organising a garden party and just hoping the weather would hold.

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One year on…

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Right, I’m a day late. But it’s been a year (and a day) since we made the big move back to East Yorkshire. To village life. To family.

I went for a run this morning – no need to drive to the canal like I used to – I can run a perfect 5k route straight from the house. While I was being advised to Work Bitch by Britney, I was looking around and thinking about how much our lives have changed in the last year.

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