Barry’s become a little addicted to Pinterest. I suddenly started getting alert after alert of pins he’d saved for the house and garden, mostly project-based images, a lot of which were based around reclaimed wood.
Lo and behold – ten huge 3m planks of wood were delivered one day, and Barry had grand plans for them.
I like walking. It’s probably borne from the need, because I learned how to drive a bit later than most, but I’d rather walk to the shop than jump in the car. Unfortunately – and I’ve mentioned this before – that’s one thing we’ve had to sacrifice to live here – there’s no shop.
In fact, other than houses and farms, there are only two other buildings in this village – the village hall and the church next door.
I knew I wanted mismatched chairs for the rustic table and bench that we bought at the end of June. I had a mooch on eBay and a guy only 15 minutes from us had a few listings up for chairs and stools of varying materials and descriptions, so I emailed him to see if he would take one price for all of them.
This has scored me seven chairs and three stools which all needed painting to match our living room. So far, I’ve managed to paint… three. Life with a baby!
Jude has the teeniest bedroom in the house. We’ve moved across the furniture we bought before Scarlett was born, and the three pieces just fit the room.
I started making a quilt the month before Jude was born, in a yellow and grey theme – here it was just before I completed the bias binding round the outside. Before we even moved, I knew that I wanted these two colours for his bedroom.
Scarlett’s new room was pretty much perfect for her before we even moved in. Painted in a very similar pink to her old room, with hot pink roller blind and lampshade, huge mirror for pulling silly faces and watching herself dancing (some of her favourite things to do), and built-in furniture, we’ve been lucky that there’s really not a lot we’ve had to do to it.
There’s a big (sycamore?) tree at the bottom of the garden which overhangs Barry’s office. A blustery night just after we’d moved in sent a huge branch straight down over the fence that separates us from the church and we didn’t want the same to happen with the one directly over Barry’s head.
I’ve already mentioned that we have quite a lot going on in the garden fruit-wise. OK, it’s not really foraging when it’s in your own back garden, but hey. It is when you didn’t plant them.
We have raspberries, redcurrants, gooseberries, and loganberries, all of which seem to be favourites for the birds too, so we’ve had to throw a net over them. We’re also having to stop Scarlett picking and eating every berry she sees before she makes herself ill. Not sure which is the greater threat.
One of my takeaways when we first came to see the house was that the extension had been done very seamlessly from the outside, but has a very modern feel inside compared to the older sections of the house.
Our wardrobe in the old house was procured (IKEA, of course) when we bought our first home back in 2006, and we knew it would probably disintegrate if it had to do another move, so we put it on eBay before we even moved, and the matching drawers and bedside table have just gone too.
We’d have loved to look at some proper, solid bedroom furniture, but it just wouldn’t make it up the turn in our little stairs (plus, we’d rather put that money into the living room which we all use), so we’ve ended up with a couple of furniture sets from Argos, of all places.
We were a bit worried about the colour before it arrived (described as “putty”) – it looks pale grey on some of the promotional photos and has a yellow tinge on others, but we thought we’d risk it because it was on offer. It’s fine, they’re grey. One set was a wardrobe, chest of drawers and bedside table, and the other was a wardrobe, dressing table and bedside table.
To make it a bit more special, I ordered handles from www.theseplease.co.uk, plus some pink ones for a chest of drawers I’ll be working on for Scarlett’s bedroom. I’m very happy with the results – I think they’ve transformed the furniture.
We also got a new bed to replace the IKEA one that had been hacked and painted… the blind on the top of the stairs got wiped out by the lads valiantly trying to get a superking mattress up our cottage-sized stairs. That took some doing!
I told you that I’d settled on a blue paint for the living room… well, Barry’s painted it! Not the whole living room, just the blue bit. In all honesty, we should have started with the antique white (which is supposed to be covering the cream), because I’ve got a feeling that may never get done now.
It’s made a huge difference to the feel of the room, and it looks slightly different depending on the time of day and how the light hits it. I’m really pleased with the whole effect.