Change is Gonna Come

Finally (FINALLY) we are making progress. It isn’t a lie when people tell you it’ll get worse before it gets better, but now the plumber, electrician and plasterer are in and underway, it does feel like the end is in sight.

I’ve made some rough changes to the floorplan to give an idea of the small structural changes we are making at this stage (bigger plans afoot when we’ve earned some more money).

In red are doors we’ve blocked up and in green where we have moved doors to or knocked through. Not much has changed, but we’ve created our ensuite, moved the downstairs WC door out of the kitchen and made an opening between the Sitting Room and Family Room.

The knock-through downstairs has made such a difference

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Meet the Neighbours

If you could choose a way to meet the neighbours at your new house, it might be housewarming drinks? Asking for some milk or sugar? Taking cakes round to introduce yourself? Okay, that one was from an American sitcom.

Don’t be silly.  The absolute best way to introduce yourself is to go and ask them to move their car as you will be digging up the street to put in a new gas connection. Obviously.

Don’t worry though, it’ll only be like it for a week………

The Big Before

No renovation story would be complete without a raft of “Before” pictures, so we won’t disappoint.

To recap, we’ve recently picked up the keys to a five bedroom Edwardian terrace in the Hampshire market town of Petersfield where the previous owner had lived since he moved in with his parents some 60 years ago. I mean, I’ll let you be the judge but I don’t think much has been modernised over the years…

Firstly, here’s the floor plan to put the pictures into context. Our medium/long-term aim is to do a side return extension (think that is a London-ism) from the back of the Family Room to the end of the current Kitchen and open it across.

Apologies for the quality of the pictures, they are stolen from RightMove as I wanted to show you the house before it was empty and the gutting process had begun.

Oh, we actually own this.

I can tell you now, when you buy a fixer-upper you WILL have that moment when the champagne has been sipped and you’ve taken ironic photos in front of the painted (flaking) front door when your thoughts range from “where the hell do we start?!” to “what the hell have we done?!”.

I had visions of our first evening being spent sat on the floor in our lounge-to-be eating a takeaway on a picnic blanket under candlelight. In truth, we scraped off the wallpaper in two rooms and started prizing (smashing) out the hideous brick fireplace, that had so thoughtfully replaced an original Edwardian masterpiece, before returning to my parents’ house to sleep not very well on our respective single mattresses. On the floor.

Still, after a few weeks the excitement is back and we’ve decided to start a blog to follow the story of what happened next.

We hope you enjoy it, because we probably won’t!

Everyone has gone, the champagne is empty and we’re left to rip out this monstrosity.