Work Done So Far & The Vogue 1419 Pattern

Although we haven't started the main renovation yet (we are thinking about ideas, I promise!), we have done some things around the house & garden.

The first thing we tackled was the fruit trees in the garden. When we viewed the house back in February we were aware that there were a lot of trees, but didn't realise just how many of these were fruit. So this summer the garden was starting to look like a raid in the Tesco fruit aisle!  There are currently two pear trees, one of which the pears grow so high there was no hope in hell of us managing to reach them.  There’s a greengage tree, but unfortunately the squirrels are rather fond of these so we didn’t get a look in!  Apple tree wise we have a selection of both eating and cooking apple trees, and there are seven of these in total two of which didn’t fruit this year.  So as you can imagine it was like apple wonderland.

We have some friends, Rob and Sarah, who have started there own business (The Kitchen Swanscoe) making juices, jams and biscuits (the fudge is amazing).  So we asked if they wanted to come and help us collect the apples in return of some of them, as there was just no way that we could use / store them all.  By a random coincidence they had just started an initiative called The Random Apple Company.

So on the last Bank Holiday Monday in May August (I appear to be losing my mind and track of time!!), they appeared all ready to go to pick some apples and pears.  We decided to start with the largest tree (which was a fantastic idea as we were totally knackered after this!!).  The first thing was to pick up all the apples from the ground and put the rotten ones in a spare water butt that had been left with the house, this was to stop us picking up the same ones all the time.  Due to the size of our largest apple tree (estimated at 150 years old), we couldn’t shake it by pushing and could reach to ‘poke’ the apples.  So Mr A and Rob from The Random Apple Company tried to get higher into the tree using a ladder….

…. This didn’t fully work, so Mr A gamely climbed into the tree and started to ‘ride’ the tree, which worked much better and it started to rain apples!

It was a most productive day’s work and we got as much as possible off the trees, there’s still a lot left that didn’t want to fall off.  So I’m still going out at the weekends to collect the rotten fruit and am still trying to pass apples on to anyone and everyone that I know!!

So the photos below show the outcome of the day in relation to apples and pears, the first is the volume of rotten fruit we managed to collect from the ground…..

…. and finally the fruit (and Rob) in the trailer waiting to go to back to The Random Apple Company base.

In other non-renovation related news, my little sister has encouraged me to take part in a sewalong for the Vogue 1419 Coat!

I am a total beginner when it comes to sewing (I can do minor repairs) but am so very taken with the style of the coat I’m going to give it ago, so we shall see how I get on.  I’ll never keep up with the sewalong but hopefully I will manage to get it finished.  Although time could be a massive issue - work, travel, Hybrid 9 band stuff, house renovation, normal day-to-day house related stuff and running (I did the Chester half marathon this year and am hoping to do another next year)!!  The way I see if, if you’re not maxed out to the edge, then you’re not doing life properly!

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

Netty J

P.S. Hello to my first follower on BlogLovin you made my day on Thursday! J

P.P.S.  We took the stud wall in the music room out this weekend, but more on that later!

Where to Start....

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So moving swiftly on to this blog post.

So Where to Start........

This applies both to us and the house renovation, living room, bedroom, music room, windows, extension, etc,etc... and to starting this blog.  Neither of these being helped by the fact that I work away and Mr A plays in a Heavy Rock Band (Hybrid 9), in fact they were playing last night in Northwich.  All of which takes up time, as I said last time.....we need a plan!!

I'm thinking it's best to start at the beginning, we decided to sell our old house around October 2012 as we had seen a lovely building that had the potential to be converted into a awesome home.  Long story short, it was a commercial property (this became a bit of a theme in our house search!) and it wasn't possible for us to buy it :(

After this disappointment we thought we would take advantage of the lower purchase prices for houses and would see if we could sell ours to enable us to move on.  Anyway cutting a long story short (again!) and skirting over a number of heartbreaks, let downs and saying nothing of the 'interesting' selection of houses that we viewed, we found Our Forever Home :)  We moved in at the start of August and now we are settled in and 'sort of' unpacked!

So I thought I would do a quick round up of the house layout and save individual room tours and our plans for them for a later date.

This is the ground floor layout and was perfect for us as we had decided that we needed a pyramid (not an easy task unless you live in Egypt!!).  The previous owners had their business operating from the house, hence all the office space.

.......and this is the first floor, this shows the area of the original 1902 (we think) house and the 1970s extension that wraps around it can be seen on the ground floor layout.

These are the original layouts from the Estate Agent details, we have changes planned (in our heads only, nothing paper wise yet) but haven't updated the layouts.

The house is tucked away in half an acre in-between streets and the brook, it's a lovely peaceful setting.

So I going to sign off now with one final photo, I realised two weekends ago that we had been living in the house for a month now.  I have decided to chart the progress (or lack of) and the seasons with a monthly photo taken from a similar position as the first one.  So this is photo 1 - 09/2014.

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

Netty :)

The Forever Home

So I've followed the example of my little sister by deciding to write a blog and going for it!! She writes an awesome blog about crafts, knitting and art. It can be found at knitwitsowls, if you are interested pop on over and have a read :)

I gathered my courage, have been brave, bitten the bullet and set up a blog to follow the renovation of our new Forever Home. I'm not sure if anyone will read this, but at least at the end of everything we will be able to see the progress we made and where we started.

This is a photo of Mr A and I in front of our Forever Home, it was taken on the day we got the keys.

The idea behind me doing this blog is to give me the inspiration to get going on the renovation and the motivation to keep going should I need it. So first to plan.....

I think that's it for now, I haven't decided how often I'm going to blog, whether it will be once a week or month, or just as and when we are doing things on the house. Any feedback or comments will be gratefully received, I'm making things up and guessing a bit at the moment!

If there's anybody out there, thank you for reading.

In the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger "I'll be back"!

Netty :)

P.S. I have finally managed to load my photo yay!! Its taken a week and trying on three different machines and 'old faithful' my ancient laptop has manged it.  It doesn't mean much to the rest of the world, but its been driving me mad since last Monday :)