The roaring twenties

This won’t come as a surprise to you if you follow my Instagram, but if you don’t, hang onto your hat, for we are on the move again. I know our current house had all the hallmarks of being our Forever Home (capital F, capital H), but we have a (laminated) pros and cons list that led us to this decision. We had to actually write them down after every conversation started with a counterargument to the previous one and we stopped talking about anything but.

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August update

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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Running the Showroom Gauntlet

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

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

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