The First Floor Tour

Part 2 of the house tour - The First Floor.....

Here's the floor plan

This floor plan is how we are at the moment, as I've mentioned before Mr A and I have discussed building up over the flat roof part of the house, which would give us more space upstairs.  On this tour I will try to let you know what the room is now, what our plans are if we don't extend and what our plans our if we do extend.  Hopefully it won't be too confusing!

Bedroom 1 - Master Bedroom

This is currently our room and no matter what the future plans are it will stay as our room :)

We have the original sash windows in here, it can be a little drafty but we have now got two sets of curtains up.  One set are wool, so that has warmed it up a bit, that tiny white thing under the window is the incredibly tiny radiator for this room - it's no wonder it is cold!  The brown doors are an inbuilt wardrobe, if we extend the plan is that this will lead through into the master bathroom.  I don't think this photo does the size of the room justice.

Bedroom 2 - Guest Bedroom

This room is a similar size to the master bedroom and is currently our guest bedroom - yet to be tested out :)

Complete with fetching 1970s inbuilt furniture!  There is also a matching inbuilt wardrobe to the right of the sash window, this is back to back with the one in the master bedroom.  If we extend the plan is for this room to become a mega awesome master bathroom, and we will knock through the two wardrobes to give us direct access.

The reasons there is stuff in this room and not in any of the other photos is because we forgot to photograph this room before we moved in - Ooops!

Bedroom 3 - Wardrobe Room

This room is our walk-in wardrobe room, I have always wanted one of these :)  It is working really well and we just been given some fantastic pre-loved wardrobes from some of our friends, so hopefully the cardboard box wardrobes will be gone soon!  There are no changes planned for the use of this room with our potential future plans.

Bedroom 4 - The Box Room

This room is lovingly referred to as the box room, as it is our smallest bedroom (although it is still a reasonable size) and because it is full of boxes.

It is also Millie Cat's favorite room, I think it is because she can see the comings and goings of the road from the window.

If we don't extend, we plan to knock through into the existing bathroom to make a larger bathroom for us.  If we do extend it will probably end up as a large landing space (I'm paranoid about falling down our stairs as we have a very small landing area at the moment and you have to go past the stairs to get to the bathroom - I did consider a stair gate at one point!) that will lead through into the new extended part of the house.

Bathroom

As you can see from the photo below, it carries on with the 1970s theme of the house.

As I said in the box room section above, it will be a larger bathroom or a large landing into the new extension.

Well I hope you enjoyed the trip round the house and the fabulous selection of carpets that we have ;)

I still need to do a tour around the garden, workshop and garage.  Then there's all the original features that I would like to show you :)

If there's anybody out there, bye for now!

Netty :)

First Quarter Review

I have been doing a lot of blog reading lately, a selection of house renovations, books, sewing and a couple of baking ones.  I've noticed that quite a few of these have been doing first quarter reviews of the targets they set themselves for the year, and I thought that this would be a nice way to keep a check on my own progress.  So I decided to pinch the idea :)

So here are the resolutions that I set myself at the beginning of the year and where I'm up to or not up to as the case may be!

1. Take part in Water Wipeout.

Yay I have registered for this (a good start to reviewing my list).  It takes place in mid June, so I will let you know how I get on.

2. Do more running.

This ones not quite so good.  I started off with good intentions in January and then the man flu and laryngitis struck :( I did complete my first 10k of the year during the Bank Holiday weekend, it was hard going due to my lack of training, but I'm so glad I had a go :)  I'm back at running club now, just need to keep it up, my next outing is Race for Life 10k at Delamere Forest in May.

3. Put up my house planning board.

Done :)

4. Increase my core strength (should help my running).

I did buy a balance board earlier this year, I've been on it a few times but find it hard.  Balance isn't one of my strengths!  I'm about to give Boot Camp sessions ago, they are being organised by my running club, hopefully this will help.  I need to do something to build my strength for Water Wipeout.

5. Do more things that take my fancy.

This one is going well I went to a vintage fair earlier this year with my Mum & Dad and has a great time, have been to the Oxford Literary Festival for a talk and book signing by Diana Gabaldon, she wrote my favorite series of books - The Outlander series - this day was awesome and thanks to my Dad for driving a 4 hour round trip to have coffee and cake in the library and then queue for 2 hours in the cold for a book signing that he didn't have a book for (Mum and I had a great time) :)  Mr A and I went to the Home Building and Renovation Show at the NEC a couple of weeks ago, it was great to be able to pick the brains of people to see what would be required for some of ideas.  The outstanding item from the day was wireless speakers!  We have also been to a number of gigs so far this year, some big and some small, some outstanding, some great, some mainly focused on coughing and blowing my nose! and some not so good - Steel Panther - just saying!

6. Do a photo a day photo diary

I think this is going the best of everything that I challenged myself too. I'm currently on photo 108/365!  I originally wanted to use this to improve my photo taking skills, but it has ended up being more of a daily photo diary, but I don't mind as I like being able to see what I have been up to - check me out on Instagram (netty_armstrong).

7. Make my Vogue 1419 coat pattern.

Ooops - so far epic fail!!  I haven't even cut my pattern out yet - must try harder!

8. Finish unpacking the boxes!!

Also another epic fail, but in my defense it was on the to do list for my time off in Februry - cue man flu, laryngitis and lots of sleep!

9. Loose weight, we've got three weddings to go to this year and it would be good to look at the photos and think, I look nice!

Hopefully getting on to item 2 a bit more should help this.

10. Put up my year wall planner, I need this to stop me loosing my mind and so I know what's going on.

Yay, although I think it needs up dating!

11. Dress up more when we go out. I have a surprising number of dresses and tops, but never seem to wear them. I need to make more of an effort.

I trying!

12. Refurbish the Living Room

We have sorted most of the big decisions, there are a few things that we need to look into, but there is still plenty of time till the end of the year.

13. Refurbish the Master Bedroom

We have brought the paint (three different colours and a special little tin of magic), curtains complete with a separate black out lining (what can I say, I like my sleep), curtain pole and funky bedside lamps.  But you will need to wait for the details!

14. Get to grips with the washing pile!

This is endless as most women will know!  Hopefully as the weekends brighten up, I should be able to get more through the machines and dry outside.

15. Do a tour of the house on my blog ;)

Part 1 The Long Awaited Ground Floor Tour! is done and Part 2 the first floor is to follow soon!

16. Read for at least 1 hour a week.

This has been a bit hit and miss, it has probably evened out as when I have been reading its been for a couple of hours so should hopefully make up for the weeks I've missed.  I've also just started reading before I go to bed at The Hut, I always find this a dangerous balance as I'm good at convincing myself that I can't sleep if I'm enjoying a book!  On the plus side, I think it's helping me sleep better!

Currently reading:

Home Book - Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon

This is my third time reading, the latest book - Book 8 Written In My Own Hearts Blood - has just come out so I'm re-reading the series

Hut Book - The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I had heard a lot of good things about this book and am really enjoying it, it's surprisingly funny!

17. Do more on my family tree.

Ooops!

18. Make a patchwork quilt.
I have two quilts in mind, the first is a quilt made up of band tshirts to add a little bit of funky to our current TV watching blankets.  I have a design that I like and just need to have a look through our tshirts to see which can be donated towards it, I already have one only 35 left to go!

The second is from Love Patchwork and Quilting magazine and it is made up of their Block of the Month's.  I have all the back issues that I need now, but I think I might do the tshirt one first.

Well that's my first review done!

If there's anybody out there, bye for now!

Netty :)

The Long Awaited Ground Floor Tour!

So it's been awhile again!  In my defense I have been ill for about 3 weeks, with man flu and acute laryngitis & tracheitis.  This lead to one week struggling through work (conference calls were not fun!), followed by a weeks holiday.  Where I missed the whole reason I had taken the time off in the first place, Fightstar gig :( and then a week off sick.  It was a very quiet house as I was barely able to speak, but I did get to spend some time with Harry Potter and the gang and went on an adventure with Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin.  So it was all totally bad!

I also think it's the longest I've spent in the house since we moved in last year, and it had me thinking about what the original layout must have been (the bathroom is all stud walls and there probably wasn't an inside bathroom when it was built), what type of windows were in the back of the house.  The front are all sash, but I'm not sure what the back would have been and it looks like they were replaced during the extension work in the 1970s, and who has lived here over the years.  We had some more original documents through from the solicitors so more on that another time....

So here's the tour around the ground floor of our house...

This is the current layout of the ground floor.

Lounge

I think I covered the living room suitably before.  The only thing really to add is that the sofas have arrived, and after two weeks at home I can guarantee they are very comfy.

Library

The library has the only other downstairs sash window and with it those lovely curved walls.

You can just see at the top of the photos, that the room also still has its original cornicing, again with that beautiful curve going around the wall.  I'm planning on doing a post on the original features we have in the house at a later date.  Just under the window there is a hint at the dark wood flooring that's hiding under the carpet, one of my plans is to get the flooring out.  What's a library without some wooden flooring!

There is a chimney breast that runs through the room, but unfortunately the original fire place appears to have been removed, it's the same in the bedroom above it upstairs.  They have both been properaly bricked up, not just boarded, so i'm assuming that the fire places have also been removed.  we will check before we do anything just in case the are hiding in there.  My plan is to reinstate a fire place and mantle piece as the chimney breast looks odd without it, but not as the original.  Stay posted for more when we do the library......

Kitchen - Dinner

I love the kitchen, it was one of the biggest selling points for me and is complete with something that I have always wanted....an island :)

The people we brought the house off, very kindly left us our kitchen table which was awesome as at one point it was the only furniture in the house (along with a wardrobe that they also left)!  It's nice to be able to be doing things in the kitchen with people round and not only do they not get in the way, but they also have somewhere to sit.

As you can see, we have a rather fetching 1970s wooden kitchen, nice if you like the style.  What I will say for it is, it has been very well looked after and it must have been a top range kitchen at the time.  All the cupboard have little tags with the company that made it.

It's a lovely light, bright and airy room :)

Study

This room is currently classed as a study, it's where all the filing will live and stuff for my company.  The size of the room is probably a little overkill for the requirements but it makes sense at the minute.

It's got the same bright roof light as the kitchen and I love the high window, I'm sure it was done like that for privacy for the houses behind, but it gives this room its own feature.

Music Room

You remember we took that stud wall out in the music room right?

Entrance Hall and Downstairs Toilet

This is the side entrance but is the one we use most often as it is the one everyone arrives at first.  Also it's a nice big hallway, whereas the actual front door only has a little square before you hit the stairs.

Downstairs toilet and separate sink, not really much to say although very nice to have them.

Laundry

I also love this room, with working away having the ability to leave washing up all week to dry is just brilliant and it's all tucked away in its own place.

It comes complete with it's own plumbing and sink.....

..... a rail to hang shirts on hangers to dry......

...... and yes it is VERY green!

Front Door

And this is our very tiny front hallway and the original front door.

Fun Fact - there is the original lock in the front door, but nobody knows where the key is!  I imagine it got lost when they added the yale lock.

That just leaves the store and the workshop, which I think are better covered with the garage and gardens.  Also this has been a very photo heavy post and think I have probably put enough in already :)

I would promise not to leave it so long next time, but we know how well that's been going ;)

If there's anybody out there, bye for now!

Netty :)

Resolutions & Good Intentions

Sorry it's been a while again!! My slow start to the year has not gone to plan, as January had other ideas.


I've been doing a lot of thinking about my plans, resolutions and intensions for 2015, I always like to have some form of targets for the year as I find it gives me something to aim for and gives me focus on what I want to do with my year.


So here it goes.....
1. Take part in Water Wipeout.
2. Do more running.
3. Put up my house planning board - Done :)
4. Increase my core strength (should help my running) - balance board bought.
5. Do more things that take my fancy - Went to a vintage fair today with my Mum & Dad.
6. Do a photo a day photo diary - Started, check me out on Instagram (netty_Armstrong).
7. Make my Vogue 1419 coat pattern.
8. Finish unpacking the boxes!!
9. Loose weight, we've got three weddings to go to this year and it would be good to look at the photos and think, I look nice!
10. Put up my year wall planner, I need this to stop me loosing my mind and so I know what's going on.
11. Dress up more when we go out. I have a surprising number of dresses and tops, but never seem to wear them. I need to make more of an effort.
12. Refurbish the Living Room
13. Refurbish the Master Bedroom
14. Get to grips with the washing pile!
15. Do a tour of the house on my blog ;)
16. Read for at least 1 hour a week - Going well so far and I'm enjoying it.
17. Do more on my family tree.
18. Make a patchwork quilt.


Well I think that's it for now, next blog post the house tour, I promise!



If there’s anybody out there, bye for now!


Netty :)

Holidays & Transitions

So its been a while!  As I said in my last post, Mr A’s birthday was at the beginning of November and things always go a little crazy for us after this!  With all the present buying, wrapping, delivering, normal day to day stuff, work and this year added to all this I had my NEBOSH (Health & Safety) exam retake which hopefully I have passed.

We have also managed to fit in Adam and Holly’s beautiful wedding in Lincoln, don’t they make a lovely little family.

Some pre-Christmas visits with our awesome friends, going to see the last Hobbit film with my oldest friend J and putting the Christmas tree up.

 

These awesome bad boys are my new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles baubles, make by the fair hand of the wonderful Mr A.

We have had a great Christmas so far and have both received some fantastic presents.  Mr A got me some lovely presents including a cutting mat and rotary cutter for making my coat and quilts, and I think that I must have got a million wife points for Mr A’s present (tickets to the Mountain Biking World Cup at Fort William in Scotland).  My little Sister put me together a lovely sewing and quilting kit in a beautiful handy carry case and I got some amazing Hello Kitty shoes from my Mum and Dad, my niece the ‘Cheeky Monkey’ is going to be very jealous!

  

Boxing Day has mostly been a day of shopping, we are not normally ones to participate in the rush of the post-Christmas sales……but this year we have, not the clothes sales.  For us it was all about the house!!  We went to Sofaworks, where we were looked after by a very nice lady called Abby, and ordered our new sofas (eek!!).  These are the first sofas we have ever brought so it was a big deal for us, in the past we have been lucky enough to have been given sofas by people who are getting new ones.  It is also the most we have ever spent on anything excluding the house and ours cars!!  So it was a bit nerve racking, but we await the arrival of the new sofas sometime in early March with much anticipation!  But in the mean time we have Little Neal to make us smile J

Our other shopping exploits were a new washing machine (exciting I know!) as our old one decided that it had had enough just before Christmas.  We have the spare one that was left with the house, but to be honest that is starting to sound rough too, and with the sales it seemed too good an offer to miss.  The washing machine was from Currys and I have to say the service was a shocking contrast to Sofaworks.  We got told by a women (probably the supervisor) that everyone was busy and she would put our name on a list, funnily enough she didn’t seem that busy!  Then the man she sent over was useless and didn’t really seem to know much!  Anyway the machine was almost half price so we decided to go ahead and get it.  Although there was a lot of discussion over the colour, white, grey or black, the washer dryer (when we get it) will need to match and what size of drum to get.  In the end we decided on the Hotpoint 9kg, as it is a couple of models up from the one we had, and in grey.  Who would have thought it would be this hard to choose, when I was a kid I always thought just pick one they are all the same, oh how your view point changes when you are an adult!

Other Christmas purchases include a tassimo coffee maker and pods from Amazon, which will hopefully arrive soon as I can’t wait to try it and Mr A brought a new electro acoustic guitar.  Luckily he liked it as he may have pressed to far on the buy it now on ebay, but not to worry as it was the one he wanted anyway J

As the year is drawing to a close, it is making me rather reflective and in that I realise how much has happened and how far we have come this year….

We moved out of our first house together in April, which was exhausting, rushed and slightly emotional, as it our first home together, but it was also nice to be passing it on to a lovely couple who are where we were 7 years ago when we brought it.

Then in the August we moved into our Forever Home, and I still can’t quite believe that we are here and it is ours!

I’m also very grateful for the amazing family and friends that we have and the support that we have been given this year during the long journey that was the Council Planning Permission and also the time, blood, sweat and tears that were given to help us move, not once but twice!

This year we have also welcomed (only very very recently) a shiny new addition into our extended family (I must remember to add him to the family tree) and look forward to another addition to the family around the middle of next year, and then there are the two other new little people due next year to some of our friends J  It also seems to be the time for weddings and we have been invited to another two already for next year.  With those and the gigs that we have booked in, 2015 looks set to be a good year and also the year of the house renovation!

So I end with apologies for being so nostalgic but I did worn you that I was in a reflective mood!  I hope you have all had a wonderful holiday season and that you have a fantastic New Year.

Thank you for reading my blog, now I just need to work on my New Year’s resolutions.

If there’s anybody out there, bye for now!

Netty J

The Living Room

The Living Room

I’ve had a nice couple of days off work, Mr A’s birthday was last Wednesday so I came home from work on Tuesday night so we could spend some time together J  As always we have managed to cram loads in!  Including birthday celebrations (obviously), the Home Building and Renovation Show up in Harrogate which lead to an impromptu visit to Mr A’s Great Aunt, family fireworks, Christmas shopping and sofa testing!

More on the Home Building and Renovation Show another time, I had good intentions of taking loads of photos for my blog, but I got overawed by all the shiny things on show.  So I’m going to have to do a bit of internet trawling so I can show you the awesome things we saw!

Which leads me to the living room, first a quick tour of what it was like when we moved in and there was no furniture.

This one is looking from the front of the house to the back……

…… this one is the opposite way, I just love those curved walls on the bay J …….

……. And this one shows the doors that lead into the living room.  The furthest is to the front door and the stairs and the nearest one is to the kitchen.

Mr A was getting fed up of looking at where the previous owners pictures used to be, so we took a trip to B&Q to invest in some supplies.  The idea being that some temporary decorating would be good for cheering the place up and it would be good for trying some of our ideas out.

After Mr A’s hard work, this is how our living room currently looks.

The paint used on the feature wall is by the B&Q Colours Matt range and is called Cool Slate, we really like how this has turned out and will be using it for the final version of the room.

Due to the fact that we have such high ceilings (I’m nowhere near reaching them, even if I’m stood on my tip toes on one leg, with my arm fully stretched up!), we have decided to be brave and are going to have feature ceilings too!

This is also from the B&Q Colours Matt range and is called Clear Ocean.  The beam that can be seen on some of the photos (it’s about half way down the room and is from an internal dividing wall originally) this will stay white and we plan to replace the coving with some more traditional cornicing which will be wider into the ceiling (hopefully that makes sense).  We do have some nice original features in the house, unfortunately not in the living room though, I’ll cover these in their own post, were they can shine properly J  This cornicing will also be white and should hopefully provide a nice separation between the walls and the ceiling.

With all this in mind we decided to go and have a look at some sofas (a nice birthday treat for Mr A!), we went to Sofaworks as they seem to have a nice range of funky sofas and they aren’t just traditional or leather recliners.  The plan is to have a corner sofa but without the arms all the way round, I believe these are called a chaise group (it sounds very fancy).  We tried a couple in store, cue photos of sofas…..

Our thoughts on this one is that it would be too small for our living room.

As you can see this one makes me look like a hobbit and without sounding too like Goldilocks, this one was too big.

This one was just right ;) and is the one we are going to go for, just need to find time to go and order it!  We aren’t going for the orange though (it would clash with my hair!), we are going for the black and blue mix, it should really bring out the colour for the ceiling.

All of this excitement of picking sofas, lead us to marking out where to sofas would fit in the living room.  We must be mad as this followed a day of Christmas shopping in Hanley on the day when everyone else in the world seemed to be there!  So here are the photos of the marked out sofas (you can just see the brown tape)…..

This is just the chaise group sofa marked out, which fits nice and snug between the two doors.  As we are both sitting on the same sofa we are also going to get a footstool, so that we can both put our feet up J

The three seater sofa that we would also get is magically the same size as our other existing sofa, so we were able to just move that about to show us what space there would be between them for getting to the kitchen door.

So that’s about it for now, I covered some of our ideas for the living room in my last post and will put together an update post when we are a bit further along with the decisions, and when the sofa arrives of course!!

If there’s anybody out there, bye for now!

Netty J

The Update, The Plan & The Random Sewing Alteration

The past couple of weekends have been busy as usual and I have been trying to cram in too much, as I do!  I’ve have also been having issues with connecting my phone to my laptop for internet so haven’t been able to get onto the Blogger site to write my blog L But as of next Tuesday we will have fancy new internet complete with wifi! Wahoo J

The Update

I thought I would do an update about what we have been up to the pass couple of weeks.

We are still slowly shuffling through the boxes to try to find / unpack stuff as we need it, this has jumped up the priority list as it is slowly driving me mad every time I want to find something….do we have envelops? Yeap there were on the printer shelf, look in the printer shelf box, denied! Do we have any string? Yes somewhere…oh it must still be in a box, Doh!  You get the picture!  There are still loads and I must get on with it L

On a happier note, my Mum, Dad, Little Sister and nephew the Little Bean came round one Sunday, so that me and Little Sister could have a good luck at the Vogue 1419 Pattern (I’m totally shitting myself!).  We had a good morning and it was fun showing the Little Sister and the Little Bean around the house, and the Little Bean even had ago on Mr A’s drum kit J

He is so cute (I might be slightly bias).

Last weekend was definitely a music based weekend, I had the Friday off work and on Thursday after a drive home, a quick change, dinner by a certain Ronald on the go in the car and picking up the A-Laws, we made our way to Chester to see Tony Wright (from Terrorvision) and Milly (not our cat Milly) for an Acoustic set at The Live Rooms.  It was a small intimate gig, but it is up there in my top 10, the atmosphere was amazing and Tony was very funny.  One of our friends (Simon Dunkerley) who is also a photographer was there and very kindly took our photo with Tony.

This was followed by a well deserved lay-in (for me anyway, poor Mr A had work) and a day of rest on the Friday.  Saturday started to ramp up again, after a nice visit from our friend and his Dad, and then some boring house stuff, it was off to another gig in the evening.  This time it was Soil at the Manchester Club Academy, and it was yet again another awesome gig J  and may again have been followed by a visit to a certain Ronald (yeap there’s a bit of a theme to our eating habits but in our defence it was late and we were starving!).

Sunday saw me massively over estimating how much I can fit into a day.  I’m very good at this over estimating both at home and at work, which leads too much frustration on my part.  This is probably unnecessary and if I was better at estimating I would likely save myself from a lot of self imposed stress!

So my Sunday target was to peel the windfall apples from the weekend before and start to sort through some boxes.  I though I would put my lunch in the microwave (not Ronald related this time) and go to see if there were any more apples on the ground….three large baking bowls full later!  I managed to fill the sink, the little drainer sink thing and the bowl was still overflowing, I wish I had taken a photo!  After lunch around 2pm I made a start with the peeling and chopping, which I though would take an hour or two, at 3:50pm I stopped to have a brew and rest my feet.  When I came back I had a count of the apples that were left (it’s always good to have a target so you know you’ve made progress) and stopped after I got to 30 apples as it was looking like a mammoth task!  Finally after about a total of 70 apples and at 7pm, I finally finished!! As you can imagine after this nothing else was done!  If anyone knows of any better way to store apples over winter, rather than peeling and chopping for freezing please let me know!  Also if you have any good apple related recipes that would be good, as I have quite a few apples ;)

And then there was the surprise Trick or Treat visit from my nephew and niece (the Little Man and the Cheeky Monkey) this Friday J

The Plan

During the time Mr A and I have been together, there has been an overarching theme of us mostly spending time together in the car.  We seem to do a lot of travelling around, visiting family, going to H9 gigs, going to other gigs, shopping, etc.  This is where we do most of our catching up (ignoring the daily military style debriefs), organising, future planning, discussing ideas and now house planning.  So while on a journey to somewhere, we agreed the start of an outline for the house plan.

There are some ideas that we are currently toying with that effect what happens to certain rooms, such as do we pitch the flat roof or do we build up another storey.

There are also certain refurbishment works that affect the whole house, electrics, windows, etc.

So working through these and thinking about the rooms that would be least effected by these decisions and the ones that we are using most often, and would put a smile on our faces if they were tidy, finished and relaxing!  With all this in mind, this is the current starting point for the plan:

-          Electrics

o   We need a survey of the whole system, the fuse board is a little on the old side and there are sockets in the house that don’t have on or off switches!

o   This is the whole house and should be completed before any redecorating and such like.

o   If the house needs re-wiring that is our whole pot of renovation money blown in one go and we would need to start saving again before anything else major was done.

-          Windows

o   We have a range of original sash windows, wooden frames and uPVC framed windows.

o   The plan is to restore the sash windows, although the actual condition is extremely good and they are very well balanced.  Then the remaining windows we want to replace, most likely with black or grey aluminium frames (this is still under discussion, as we haven’t really looked properly yet), but triple glazing will be a must!

o   There might also be a bi-fold door in the plan too!

o   If we don’t need to re-wire the house, then we will be looking to do the windows, again this would be a massive chunk of the budget!

-          Master Bedroom

o   This room is only affected by the electrics so once that is sorted we are ready to roll for redecorating.

o   There is no ‘extreme decorating’ as Mr A likes to refer to it, in this room.  Just choosing paint and what sort of theme we want, and we can restore the sash window in the summer without causing any damage to what we have achieved J  Also it should be on the cheaper end of the scale to sort out.

-          Living Room

o   So this room needs the electrics looking at like the rest of the house, and there are also two windows that required replacing as well as the restoration of the sash windows (I love the sash windows, they are one of my favourite features!).

o   The plans include a photo wall, a wood burning stove, underfloor heating, bi-fold door, funky lighting, a feature wall and reclaiming Mr A’s piano from the A-Laws.

So there we go, the outline of a plan J  In other news, I’ve decided exactly want I want to do with the laundry room, but that will have to wait for now!

The Random Sewing Alteration

I was sorting through the sales at Tesco a few weeks ago and spotted what I thought was a top, which I liked and thought would be a good addition to my work wardrobe (I struggle with work clothes, but more on that at another time).  On closer inspection it was a playsuit, I am reliably informed by the Little Sister that this is what they are called….

….. I still really liked it, just not the shorts part of it.  On considering what to do, I thought to myself, I’m supposed to be making a coat, if I can’t alter this into a top I don’t stand a chance!

So very slowly I have measured, cut and machine sewed (the sewing machine is a scary creature) and Ta Da!!

Suffice to say I am very chuffed with myself J

If there’s anybody out there, bye for now!

Netty J

P.S.  Don’t forget to let me know if you’ve got any apple ideas