Wet and wild

It's that time of year again when the weather gets a bit wild and unfortunately our new chimney fell victim to the gales. Luckily the stove was only out of action for a day and our installer was really quick in rectifying the problem.  A great relief in this cold weather! Another treat was unccovered when he removed our old hot water cylinder revealing this little gem.

In other news...the kitchen is in the process of going in and we are frantically painting so we can get flooring down in the dining room and hall. More photos and updates will follow. Promise.

Busy, busy, busy!!

As the title of this post suggest, it's been a busy week.

Last weekend we gathered some man power and the cooker is now in situe. Our plumber is currently in the process of connecting up our heating and we have near to hot water at the moment which is very exciting. Thankfully the moving of the cooker was uneventful but the process still has its dramas. The latest being that the reinforced concrete floor is not in the right position. (it was by our measurements but once seeing it in there, we've decided it needs to be a bit more to the left). Also, our loft hatch has been enlarged (read hacked to pieces) so to fit the accumulator  - it was ordered to size and made to size...excluding the insulation! doh!

Other excitement -our kitchen got delivered! This did not go without incident as this picture of our wall proves:

Typically, this was the side of wall that wasn't looking too bad. I did feel sorry for the lorry driver however as it was his first day on the job. Whoops! We did have a bit off a faff waiting for IKEA to sort this out for us and it's looking like the job won't get done til after Christmas now.

That aside, other works have been going well. Ceilings plastered and walls painted. Three bedrooms have now been carpeted. This means our middle room is also finished and and AND we've finally moved in to the master bedroom.

Here's the finished result of the latest bedroom. This colour scheme uses up spare paint we had from our old place (the hall at North Fort St). The cushions (a charity shop find - £2.50 for the pair), add a bit of colour to it and takes away from the 'beige-ness'. I nearly painted the stripes red too but decided (was told) that might be a step too far. Actually, I initially planned to put up retro wallpaper but as we're on a tight budget, decided to stick with paint. The creation of the stripes was a bit labour intensive but I think it was the right move as the end result is quite a calm bedroom; and bedrooms should be calm places.

a heated debate

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?

Now the fun begins in actually laying them and creating the smooth look that's in my head where the two different times of flooring come together effortlessly with a perfect neat, smooth join. Help!

showery with a chance of tatties

Finally our bathrooms are finished and I must say, we're quite pleased with the results. For a start they're not the colour of baby poo (do you remember the avocado suite and it's brown patches?). Instead they are clean and white and sparkly and this is very pleasing indeed. Although we did our best to source the best buys, the cost for totally refurbishing two bathrooms is disturbing. At least I think it is but I'm not actually going to add it up; we certainly spent more than a penny. (haha, get it?!)

Sorry. Anyway, moving on...

The main bathroom has grey porcelain tiles from Tile Star, bathroom suite from ebay (a good deal with some tense bidding on my part), the lights are from B&Q. The ensuite tiles are also from Tile Star - the black mosaic ones were quite pricey -hence why there's only a few off them- but the white ones off set that. The bathroom suite are also more ebay buys. I'm especially chuffed by the 'designer look' shower fitting from Plumbworld at a mere £75!

main bathroom

main bathroom

ensuite

ensuite

In other news, in case you didn't notice, it rained a lot this summer in Scotland. If you look closely at the picture on the right, you can see that there's actually a waterfall cascading down our steps.

And here's some of the veg we've managed to grow. Definitely on the way to living 'the good life'!

Demolition Man

demolition man

So here's the man himself, proudly wielding his sledgehammer and admiring his handiwork. I am very impressed at how seemingly effortless Craig made this look. I went to B&Q and wall was in tact and came back to it being no more.  Just like that! If you look closely here you can see that Craig didn't even bother to remove the glass vases on the window sill. That's also his good jeans and boots he's wearing too.

Hmmm, best not to dwell on that...

The not so fun part is that we are currently without a kitchen. Instead we have a make shift operation in the front room (I should really take a picture of that too). We have a microwave, steamer, slow cooker and could always bbq (if it ever stops bloody raining)!

Despite all the rain, Loch Leven is looking lovely - I took this photo during a brief sunny interlude. This was me walking back from the wee shop in Kinneswood where I bought a loaf and 1/2 dozen eggs. Overpriced by quite a margin but I thought, oh well at least I'm supporting the local grocer. Once home discovered both items were out of date -eggs by almost 2 weeks! Ah the dramas of living in the countryside!

 

Loch Leven

bathroom progress

bathroom in hallway!

We arrived home from a short break away with a small glimmer of hope brewing that perhaps our bathroom will be ready for us when we got back. Instead we were greeted by the bathroom in the hallway!

getting there

 A few days later however the tiler did arrive and this is now the state of play. Getting there. Apparently the plumber won't be back to finish things off for another couple of weeks. It's tantalisingly close to being finished and us having a clean, sleek bathroom to call our own. I can't wait for my first bath in here:)

The design has changed a bit and I didn't get my dookits but overall I'm happy with the end result. We do however have a big pile of the black tiles either broken or covered in adhesive that the tiler refused to work with. At £5 a tile we really do need to find some sort of use for them.

new tiles

 

 

I now need to get a mirror and blinds. The tiles are porcelain so we require a special drill bit to put up the mirror. It costs £200 for the bit so hoping our plumber has one in his tool kit.

Lottie's quilt inspiration

Home made baby blanket

brickwork pattern

Another blog post where I have start apologising for being so slack with my updates. There's really not been a lot to report on recently unless you want to hear about boring plumbing or electrical stuff. Yawn. We are about to order a kitchen so watch this space, its all going to take off any minute....Any minute now...promise.

As you've probably guessed, I'm about to go off topic slightly by showing you what I have been working on. Quilting is now my new craft passion I stumbled upon accidentally when trying to think what I could make for my best pal's baby. My brief to myself was that it needed to suit either sex, be personal and not too challenging. By challenging, I don't just mean in terms of skills required, although that too was a consideration, but also due to our recent loss, it couldn't be something that would push me too much emotionally. I had my moments but overall I quite impressed myself by focusing on celebrating a new life and not just thinking of our own tragedy and what could've (should've) been.

Making Lottie's quilt was not altogether straight forward. For a kick off, I started too late and even though Lottie gave me a few extra day's grace, I was still well behind resulting in the scaling down of ambitions. I 'cheated' by going for a brick pattern as this saved having to have all the squares of equal size and trying to painstakingly line them all up. Also the applique is machine done. I'd recommend taking the time to hand stitch this. The bit I was dreading the most was actually the easiest -the binding (Pimps as they say up here). I think I may have just got lucky. Anyway although the baby quilt is clearly miles away from house renovating it does still tie in as I think I may make a quilt or two out of retro fabrics for the house. This would please me. Now all I need to do is to find the time (and the right fabric). What do you think?