The Money Pit

Two Years On

It's two years now since we moved in (as of Yesterday). Whereas Karen thinks it's flown by I think it feel like two years. Maybe because I'm the one who slogs my guts out working on the house all the time.

The year gone hasn't been anywhere as near as hectic or productive as the first. Work commitment mean I've not really had the time to devote to DIY. We ran out of funding at one point too. That said, we've still been busy. While we've not given any rooms the complete makeover we've done a lot of things that needed doing. The potting shed has new doors (the old ones were rotting away).

The back room has new hard-wood French doors (the old ones too were rotting away):

We also have a new garden gate. Yep, the old one was rotting away and about to fall off, which would allow the dog to escape.

Hopefully this gate will last a good couple of years. Notice also in the above photo I've dug a channel to lay the SWA electrical cable to the garage. Next Monday this is due to be connected and I'll finally have power in my man-room/garage.

It's nice to have all these jobs (and others) out of the way so I can now focus on bigger things. It's amazing how much work is involved merely in the upkeep of an old house, never mind the renovation side of things.

There's a baby on the way and so I need to get Quinn in to a new room and convert her old one in to a nursery. This is now underway and the plasterer's due late August.

Instead of putting a stop to all spending and saving for the baby's future and Karen's maternity leave I've taken another angle. We're going to get all the big expenses out of the way now. We now have everything we need for the bathroom. Originally we had decided to put this off for a year or more so we could save for it. Now I just want to get it out of the way. The last thing I want is to miss out of my child's early months/years because I'm buried under a sink. The plan is to have a big push and get, at the very least, the bathroom done before the due date of early December.

Once the bathroom is done we only have the hall/landing to do. The expense here is the tiling for the hall floor, which is about £100 per square metre if you want the repro Victorian stuff. We plan on buying that now and getting it out of the way. Hopefully by this time next year we'll be all but done...

Bricks and Brass

Just found a new website that I instantly added to my bookmarks and thought I'd pass it on - tis called Bricks and Brass. In their own words, it:

...provides comprehensive and easy-to-find information for people who are looking for an older house, own one, or just love them. We focus on homes from the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian periods in the UK.

I found it while googling for "victorian porches", looking for how best to restore ours to how it might have been. More on that later. I'm off to explore what other gems I can find on the B&B site.