It’s all going on in our house at the moment. Remember a while back, when I giddily posted that we’d bought the place, but it needed work to make it the home we want? The work has started. We’re living in a mess. We keep saying “it’s only temporary” on repeat, and spend as much time in the garden as we can but there’s no doubt that we are very much having work done.
The man who lived there before us had been there since it was built, in the 90s, and I’d say he hadn’t changed the décor since then. So we inherited dated pastel wallpaper borders in some of the rooms, which we’ve been trying to remove ready for plastering. We also inherited 90s artex ceilings, which need to be plasterboarded over, hence the need to remove the borders first. We have furniture in rooms where it shouldn’t be, ladders on our stairs, and a kitchen full of buckets, plaster dust covered sheets, screws and stuff. It’s not exactly a pleasure to live there right now! There are only the 2 bedrooms left to do, but I need to break down huge, fugly wardrobes that were obviously built in situ and hence can’t be taken out in one piece in order for the plasterer to be able to do his job. So that means we have piles of clothes to add to the general upheaval!
Oh, and the plasterer can’t come today because he’s at a funeral, and can’t come tomorrow because it’s an Irish funeral and he’ll be hungover! I admire his candour though!
On the plus side, we have weekend tickets for the Moseley Jazz, Funk & Soul festival this weekend, so we’ll be spending much of our time away from the building site and dancing to bands like Soul II Soul and Chaka Khan in the park. It’s been a couple of years since I was last at the festival, so it will be a welcome return!
In other house news (because I don’t seem to have much else going on in my life right now, it’s pretty all consuming) our builder has been in touch about the other work we’re having done, which is BIG STUFF. Garage conversion, new house front and an extension, gulp. That will hopefully be less messy, for us at least, because we can live upstairs while all that’s happening downstairs. I shall link back to this post and remind myself of my (probably misplaced) optimism when it’s happening! Just waiting on planning permission (please be kind and quick, Birmingham City Council).
The funny thing about all this, is that when we started house hunting last year my Mom asked us if we’d consider taking on a project. And we said NO WAY. We want to buy a house that needs NO WORK.
That ended well…
Thanks, as always, for reading! x