Upstairs

Bit of progress made upstairs in the landing/corridor department. Here's the before:

Here's during (with added father-in-law). The things sticking out of the ceiling are drivers for LED lamp units.

And here's how it is now - the cables hanging down are for mains circuit smoke alarms.

Mini-dressing room / Lobby

We decided that it would be nice if our bathroom was actually en-suite, rather than just next door to the master bedroom. So this was it before - looking out of the master bedroom (having stripped the wallpaper and so on):

This is the entrance now - the stud wall's been built, the cables on the floor on the picture above have now been routed into the loft and the plastering's been done. I've also painted the walls orange to prank my wife!

And here it is from the other angle - just need some doors and a floor and a proper colour etc. But it's getting there...

Office & messing in boats

We're getting there on the office - the room is decorated, the floor is in, there's some network cabling to complete and the door to paint and hang, but it's nearly there. Trouble is it's so tiny that you can't really photograph it. So this is from outside, showing mostly the window!

You can see the network cables coming in through the ceiling - that needs smartening up, but basically the house has been wired upstairs and down with CAT5E cable, but mostly where there's TV or kids room and there's some in the loft too.

Sometimes it's nice to have a break and mess about in a boat - as a vaguely house related item, you can see the new jetty in the background.

Bit of gardening

A couple of posts ago I showed the 'corridor' that was made when we bought the first row of trees in the orchard and fenced/hedged that into the garden:

Well that corridor is a bit odd, and while we need some of the trees on the left in the photo to hide the sheds and so on, we don't need them all.

So a few have come out. Bit of sorting/tidying to do!

This shows how the corridor has been reduced, and the garden opened up.

And from the other direction. You can see all the way to the orchard now. Side to side, the garden is about 90 yards.

Rooms with a view

There's so much still to do. But sometimes you have to pause and look out of the window:

.... and remind yourself of how much there is to do! This is the view across the front garden from the master bedroom.

This is the view from the window facing the rear of the master bedroom. You can see the back door receiving attention on a pair of trestles and a digger and dumper ready for action.

This is the view across the front garden from the guest bedroom. A reminder that we still have lots to do outside when we've done inside!

A bit of action downstairs...

We left the downstairs like this in the last post about it:

Since then, the plasterers came, and we decorated the ceiling and were about to fit the light units.

Also cracked on in the downstairs loo, which is also a loo for the two young cats we've adopted.

Again, this is one of those rooms where we're on the cusp of completion. Need a door, some mirrors hung up and a piece of stone for the top of the hidden flushing unit.

Aforementioned cats.

Guest Bedroom

We've had a real go at the guest bedroom. The house has 5 bedrooms, so although we have the eaves room, our main spare bedroom (sounds very grand!) is this one. Here it is:

Clearly the 'before' shots. This is 'as viewed' before we bought.

I haven't got many 'during' - there was a lot of 'during' on this room. Here it is, still in 'during' state, but getting there:

And then with the final clour coat:

This shot taken from the door into the room. It's a kind of deep cream colour. Might sound a bit boring, but there's lots going on the walls of this room.

The new en-suite for the room. We took some of the space from the main bathroom to create this.

View out from the corner of the room. We're waiting for a door for the bathroom, but apart from that, it's carpets, furniture and pics and stuff....

Play Room

We're nearly done in the play room. It's in proper 'use' mode now. It's kind of annoying, but I don't have a 'before' shot. Anyhow, a few pics:

Stripped out

A during shot

A 'now' shot. This is from the entrance to the room, dead in front is the doorway that leads to a small lobby. Left out of the lobby is a back door, straight on is the laundry room.

Another 'now' shot from the doorway that leads to the laundry room.

The picture on the floor on the left blocks the view of our little stove. So here's a pic of that:

It can be seen that this is the same vintage pic as the 'during' shot above. There's no architrave on the window etc. All the 'cosmetic' work is done by my family, with my father-in-law being particularly helpful and long-suffering!

Summer 2016

I think that the main thing that attracted us to the house, or perhaps it was the thing that tipped the balance in terms of "do we buy it, or don't we?" is the garden. So a few shots of that in the summer!

This is Souvi and Caesar pecking away.

Pointlessly pseudo arty blackberry shot.

The view looking back at the house from the top right hand corner of the garden (you can see where we had a bonfire earlier this year). You should just be able to see the house.

Looking over the hedge to the new jetty.

The woody bit - view up the garden. The gate you can see is where the shot 2 up from this was taken from.

Facing back the other way. It's been a dream of mine to have a garden with full size trees in it.

This is where we bought the first row of trees from the neighbouring orchard. We had the grub the trees as a condition of sale. The idea was to square off the house's plot. There's 136 metres of hedging here on the left!

It's like buses....

You wait 8 months for a post, then three turn up at once...

Back in June, we were burgled. The sods cut through the fence, squashed our sapling hedge and broke into the sheds. They took basically everything with an engine. Ride-on, chainsaw, strimmer, jet wash etc. Sickening.

Cut the fence, squashed the hedge.

Where the locks were too good, they cut the bolts.

Made a nice mess. Cut the hasp off this one.

Glove prints. The copper who dusted these said 'the sort of people who do this were born with gloves on...' 

Cut the lock off this one.

The next thing, then, was to spend some money on more locks, more doors and some alarms.

And paint it green, obviously. The alarm box can be seen, as can the warning sign on the front of the building. Bit of a mess up this end of the garden. The stable block is right at the far end.

Again, you can see the warning signs. It's kind of annoying that this is in our garden - it's not supposed to look like some sort of industrial estate.

Again, more security. The lean to was open before. Doors on now, with locks and paint, and warning signs. The alarm covers the shed to the right, the lean to, the workshop and the garage (below).

 Haven't quite painted all the garage. You can see the alarm box on the wall. And the herb garden. Which isn't a herb garden really - that's where the hard standing is going to be. Concrete man comes tomorrow!

It's like buses....

You wait 8 months for a post, then three turn up at once...

Back in June, we were burgled. The sods cut through the fence, squashed our sapling hedge and broke into the sheds. They took basically everything with an engine. Ride-on, chainsaw, strimmer, jet wash etc. Sickening.

Cut the fence, squashed the hedge.

Where the locks were too good, they cut the bolts.

Made a nice mess. Cut the hasp off this one.

Glove prints. The copper who dusted these said 'the sort of people who do this were born with gloves on...' 

Cut the lock off this one.

The next thing, then, was to spend some money on more locks, more doors and some alarms.

And paint it green, obviously. The alarm box can be seen, as can the warning sign on the front of the building. Bit of a mess up this end of the garden. The stable block is right at the far end.

Again, you can see the warning signs. It's kind of annoying that this is in our garden - it's not supposed to look like some sort of industrial estate.

Again, more security. The lean to was open before. Doors on now, with locks and paint, and warning signs. The alarm covers the shed to the right, the lean to, the workshop and the garage (below).

 Haven't quite painted all the garage. You can see the alarm box on the wall. And the herb garden. Which isn't a herb garden really - that's where the hard standing is going to be. Concrete man comes tomorrow!