My home

Hi everyone. I hope you're all well and not feeling too queasy after eating all those Easter eggs!!

I don't know about you but I've been loving the long break from work. It's been great to just potter about and get one or two little jobs done. On Saturday I hired a table at a local table sale and sold one or two pieces of my work and met some really lovely people too, which was a nice way to kill 2 hours.

I've also been doing the last little DIY jobs around the house.

I thought that it was high time that I properly showed you around my little house because at long last it's finished doing it up...ta da!!  

The story of my home began back in 2002 I had just split up with my then boyfriend and was living with Mum and Dad who had kindly taken me in. As a result of feeling totally miserable I threw myself into work and did lots and lots of over time. My savings grew and so I decided to take the plunge and buy my first home. I had a list of things I wanted in my home...

1. A space to use as a studio/work room.

2. A garden to grow vegetables

3. A decent size landing (I know this is an odd one but all the houses I'd viewed had tiny spaces in between 

the bedrooms and seemed cramped)

4. A bit of character

5. And I wasn't bothered about doing work to a property (how naive was I?!!)

So to cut a long story short I spotted my house to be in the news paper and booked a viewing. The previous owners had electrical stuff everywhere with floor to ceiling racks of CD's and DVD's in every room but I could see beyond it all and thought it could be a cute little house.

After putting in a cheeky offer I got it at a good price and the fun began...

Over the past 10 years I've changed the windows, the external and internal doors, pulled down dodgy artex ceilings, installed wooden flooring, replaced the boiler, the bathroom and the kitchen, sanded floorboards, filled loads of skips with rubbish from the garden, opened up two fire places and had wood burning stoves fitted, had work done on the roof tiles and chimney, knocked the kitchen about to create a different layout and had to furnish the house from scratch...phew!

   

Over the next couple of posts I'll show you around the house and try and dig out some before and after photos for you to see. This is the front room during the time when the stove was being installed. I've been living in a mess like this for 10 years and it feels great to be at the end at last. 

This is me grafting away at opening one of the fire places. I woke up one morning and decided to get the sledge hammer out and see what was behind the chimney breasts...there's no going back once you've made a hole in the wall!

And this is what the front room now looks like. I'm so pleased with how it's turned out, at night it looks really cosy with the lamp on or the candles lit.

My brother in law Colin has painted the walls and the woodwork cream and I've added the painted detail on the fire place. It all feels clean and fresh for the first time and I can't stop dusting and hooveing (that won't last!). 

I was looking around the house earlier and I reckon that I only have about 6 items that were bought new. Everything else has been found at auctions, car boot sales or has been given to me by kind folk.

This red chair was bought at a local auction (you can see what it used to look like in the photo below). I had it recovered and it's as good as new.

I've loved getting all my books and china bits and bobs out on display.

Well that's quite enough for now. Sorry it's such a long post.

Enjoy the rest of the bank holiday if you're in the UK.

Oh and hello to my new followers, welcome aboard xx