So you must all be wondering what is happening at the Butts? (that's our house name for those of you who've forgot - I know it's been a while but like you could forget that!) You are probably imagining that everything is now complete and the Dunns are smugly sitting in their perfectly polished house too busy admiring its shiny wonderfulness to be bothered to blog. Well, hah, if only, is the answer to that.
I guess I need to get in to a better habit of updating this blog as the whole point of it is to record our progress, the highs and the pitfalls of this Do-It-Yourself game. A tedious long winded game I might add. And recently we've been down more snakes than up ladders. And, we've been up a hell of a lot of ladders.
So, what have we been up to that's not to photograph and share with you lovely people? We've been dealing with a lot of shit, that's what. Can I say shit? Yes, I think so and my mum's not reading this anyway. In fact, probably no one is... Apart from you, my dear friend.
It has been problem after problem, expense after expense since the bells rang in 2012 thus putting a swift halt to the decorating. Firstly, as you know, the trees and fence came down, then a sewage pipe burst (nice, and yes that's the shit I refer to), also we had the leaky roof and then we had solar panels fitted to then discover that the house is not earthed so we can't turn the blasted things on. Needless to say, fixing all of that costs a lot of money but with not a lot to show for itself. Pfffff.
Gardening, gardening, gardening has been the main source of entertainment however as clearing up costs nothing. The trees are finally disposed off (thanks again to those who helped) and we now have enough wood to see us through next winter (yay, a positive!). The grass has had its first haircut of the year and we've started a veggie plot as well as growing things in the greenhouse. My fingers are actually green. Must buy gloves.
Before we can make any progress inside, we need to get the heating installed. Going to go for underfloor heating which I like the sound of as its nice not having ugly radiators. You'd think that this would be a simple process but we seem to be struggling to get anyone to actually do the work for us, for a fair price anyway.
Our next big task is to get the extra wiring done that we need for the solar panels. Craig says we need to dig a trench. That sounds quite hard, think I'll just dream about getting a nice new kitchen instead. Ah kitchen porn, that never fails to cheer a girl up!
Mmmmmm. Delicious.
Here's a pic of our gorgeous new multi fuel range cooker that is still sitting in our garage eagerly waiting to be installed and start making us beautifully risen cakes, succulent roasts and generally just keeping us nice and toasty. Unfortunately there's been more dilemmas with installing this than we first entertained. There''s all sorts of regulations about how close it can be to this, that and the other. Most significantly, we can't have it sit on a wooden floor and a further 1/2 metre around it can't be wood or other such flammable material either. So we had to re think our whole plans. I was just about to order some nice large porcelain slabs in a light beige colour to do the whole kitchen and dining area when I thought more about the floor and the implications of laying these tiles. It's so bumpy and uneven it would cost as a fortune to create the necessary smooth surface. And with such posh tiles, we wouldn't want to lay them ourselves as they would have to be absolutely perfect or it would show up like the proverbial wart on the end of your nose. Tilers as uber pricey people (should've been a tiler..or a plumber...or a roofer) and we couldn't really afford it without cutting back elsewhere. Although I was secretly happy (sshh) about not having to clean anymore of that white laminate flooring, we've in the end decided to stick with the wooden floor plan and making a feature around the cooker with tiles. I then took to scouring the internet looking for retro floor tiles. I found amazing tiles, reclaimed Minton on ebay but it seemed like sacrilege to put them under a cooker in a 70's bungalow when the should be proudly reinstated in a grand entranceway of a Victorian period house. Keeping with that theme however, I've just ordered these tiles from Fired Earth, which I think have a bit of a retro vibe to them. Are you digging it?
