Sunday 26 May 2013

Slowly but surely

Sometimes the speed of this whole renovating business is so painstakingly slow, especially when a number of things are on hold waiting for a big piece of work. While things are definitely not moving as fast as either of us would like, sometimes you need to stop and look at the things that have been done. So that's what I'm going to do and when I stand back and look at it, we've actually done some stuff!

I'm sure it won't surprise anyone that there's been a tweak to the floor plan! I had an "a-ha" moment a couple of weeks ago (at about 11.30pm and then had difficult sleeping) which will see the front of the house stay predominantly the same and return the facade to what it was originally. It's very important to us to try and restore/retain the original features of the house where we can and then the re-building of the back will be more contemporary.


I've been inspired to get back into planning and I've realised that there are so many decisions to be made that don't have to wait.  In fact, it will be go, go, go once we start and I'm sure we won't have the time then, so it makes a lot of sense.

The first decision on our list was picking paint colours- exciting! I have a serious home magazine addiction and I've been paying lots of attention to paint colours. I decided a while ago that white was the way to go and after some gentle convincing Paul has finally come around to my way of thinking (yay!).

Dulux Antique White USA was definitely the front runner for me but because there are so many shades of white (mind blowing!) and they can look different in different light we headed off earlier in the week to get some samples. We came hole with two colours- Antique White USA and Natural White. I was really happy with how they look on our walls and there was no trace of yellow tones. Although there's not a huge amount of difference, we both agree that Antique White USA is the perfect colour for us.

We also had another win this weekend with the cement in front of the garage finally being completed. The shed was finished at least a year ago (there was an old single car asbestos ridden garage there before) but we've been waiting for the gap to be filled between the end of the driveway and the new garage.  It's looking good and it's really nice for Paul to have it finished. We can also finally put the cars in there!

Paul has built the frame for the side gate. Of course it's an electric one (we don't have keys for our doors, we have remote controls!) and now we just have to make a decision about what material we're going to use for the gate and the front fence. Once that's done it can be finished and the old gate can be pulled down (the demolition part of everything is going to be fun!). We won't talk about the fact that the position of the new gate covers where the laundry door was going to go!

I'm also in the middle of a couple of furniture painting projects which of course I'll share when I'm finished.

Erin xx