Oh hey! It’s been a little while since we last spoke about the house renovation here on the ol’ blog… Partly because not a huge amount has been happening physically, but also because tbh we both totally underestimated just how long it would take for us to get to this point and for work to begin! But finally, we now can say changes are being made and we’re beyond excited!
It’s been just over two months since we completed on the house and the keys were firmly in our hands… It’s felt like one of those strange moments in life when every day feels incredibly long, but at the same time, time is going past quicker than ever… We’ve spent all the lunch breaks, late nights and v early starts making sure that we were gathering all the information we needed. Initially, we looked at working with a contractor, someone who would oversee the ‘project’ themselves and arrange for each different aspect of the work needed to go ahead, but quickly realised that this wasn’t the route for us. Mostly down to costs, I think we were a littttle ambitious with our plans to begin with, but have now stripped them back to a point in which we’re happy with and at a cost we are happy with!
So, it’s meant instead we’ve chosen to manage all of the work ourselves, which has been one hell of a learning curve (!) and although we’re not nearly “there” yet, I’ve loved every minute of it – even the stressful ones… It’s 100% why it’s taken us a little while to get to the point of work actually starting, but making sure we had considered all options and gathered enough quotes so that we felt confident to go ahead with everything was super important to us… This is definitely something I would recommend doing if you can spare the time, and although it’s meant a longer wait for any work to start, the differences in quotes for the same pieces of work have been mind-blowing.
Right, so let’s get onto our plans! One of our main focus points when we were house hunting was to find a property that needed ~just~ the right amount of work doing to it. Somewhere that we could put our own stamp on, but without needing to make any huge structural changes to and, thankfully, I think we have found the perfect balance!
So! Plans are to give the floorboards downstairs a freshen up, tile the entrance of the hallway, lay new carpets upstairs, switch up the plug sockets, change all door knobs etc and paint throughout! Obviously, our list is a lot more detailed than this ramble but, in a nutshell, we’re hopefully going to give the house a big ol’ freshen up whilst adding some personal touches!
Paint colours have been picked, most finer details have been decided and it’s finally starting to feel like our home. There’s ~so~ much more to talk about, like how we’ve ripped out the whole garden and are planning to DIY it, or how we’ve been to every single tile shop you can imagine…. OH, and how we decided to keep the floorboards in our bedroom the day before the builders started… (lol) but, I think I’ll leave it there for now!
There are going to be lots of renovation style posts coming your way, everything from how we picked our paint colours (who else had colour commitment issues- is this a thing?) to where we found our inspiration for each room… It’s gonna be a big and busy couple of months but good god I cannot wait!
