We hate the house!

Right now I can honestly say that Jon and I hate the house. It's taking so much longer than either of us ever imagined, and losing all our free time to work on it is really taking its toll. Add to that the fact that it's freezing even when we are inside and it doesn't exactly make for happy worker bees!

We had heard a vicious rumour that when renovating a house, the last 20% of the work takes 80% of the time. Unfortunately that appears to be true. So close, but yet so far!

If we are ever to even spend a night there, we first need to finish the attic room, the least finished room in the house. Or at least ensure it's properly insulated. There's no point us putting on the heating, as the warmth just gets lost up through the open eaves in the roof. So for Jon it's back to studding and nogging out (takes even longer than normal as none of the walls are straight) ready for plaster-boarding and doing the electrics. It will be a lovely room once it's done though!

One of the possible reasons why progress is slow, is because of the finishes we have chosen. For example, our bespoke floating, solid oak shelves. We bought these beautiful pieces of wood already cut and planed, but Jon then had to route out lighting strips and use these seriously complicated brackets to hang them from the wall.

Over the Christmas period we spent 2 dark and wet days out in the garden, digging trenches and laying the concrete for the decking footings. It took 20 bags of cement, 85 bags of balaste, 14 wooden posts and alot of physical labour. It also created about 50 bags of soil, which I have steadily (and stealthily) been getting rid of, one tip run at a time.

While we were mixing the last batch of the evening, the heavens opened and the ground became a quagmire. To our horror the concrete mixer, with the drum still revolving, slipped forward on the mud and completely flipped over. Thanks to all our lucky stars, we had left the Bi-fold door open, otherwise it would have smashed through the glass (and smashed our last hopes!).

The most fun thing we have done in the past month has been to order our sofa (we are leading crazy lives right now). As with everything in the house, we had a number of criterial constraints...depth (less than 93cm, otherwise it would take up the entire lounge), colour (neutral, so it can come with us when we move again) and to be able to 'try before you buy'.

After hours of trawling the internet, getting carried away with fashionable velvets and distracted by colours that 'pop', we finally found one we both liked, and which fitted all the criteria, from Sofas and Stuff. They have a Bristol showroom and luckily, before being struck by COVID Tier 3, we were able to go and view it. We knew it was expensive before we arrived at the shop, but what we weren't expecting was to be suckered in and up-sold on the fabric (of course the one we liked and which is the most hard-wearing cost extra), making the new total way above what we had originally budgeted. Our justification (the boring adults that we now are) is that quality will last and seeing as we didn't go anywhere or do anything in 2020 (although actually, neither did the majority of the population!), we had a little to spare which we wanted to put toward it.

Sorry for sounding so gloomy! I'm sure we are not the only ones going though a tough time, so sending lots of positive vibes into the universe to help us all through it.

Luckily we have each other and our shameless cat, Maisie, who has kept us laughing when it all gets too much.