House Renovation :: Week 4 ::

It doesn't seem as though there is much to show for this week really, though I have been down to the house a lot and working a fair bit. The last little bits of wallpaper removal are time consuming and mostly everything else I've been doing is cleaning.

I managed to fix the electricity problem myself, which was great, because it saved me the cost of an electrician plus it meant I could get back to work. It was a actually a very simple solution, the stop cock, which we have only been turning on occasionally when we need it, was dripping and where a cloth had been tied around it, it was dripping directly on to the wall which housed a plug socket, it was an empty socket but it was switched on. I turned it off (making sure all electric was off first obviously) and the problem was solved.

A lot of time this week has been devoted to working out our bathroom plans. I'm finding having to make decisions a super stressful affair. Bathroom suites and tiles are not like paints, they cannot be changed at the drop of hat! Having said that I am glad that we've decided to paint everything white to begin with. Choosing paint colours on top of everything else would just be much too much!

I very excitedly stumbled across the Fired Earth store in Cheltenham this week. I did know it was there but as I've never needed it before I just hadn't really registered in my head. I squealed with joy when I noticed it and spent quite some time admiring all the beautiful tiles. So much nicer in real life than on the pages of a magazine or on a computer screen. Johnny and I are no where near any kind of agreement on these things yet, but I hopeful we'll find something we both like soon enough. We're also struggling with the idea that we should create something that's neutral and easy to resell, versus something that is totally ours and we love. I think I'm veering towards just doing what we love. We may decide to sell in a couple of years, but we may still be living in there in 10, in which case we'll have lived in a house that feels as little like ours for all that time as all the rental houses we've lived in.

We've chosen our radiators now and we have gas being connected next week, so hopefully by next Friday there will be more to show. You never know we may even have heating and the bones of a bathroom.