Wednesday 25 January 2012

living room and fireplace update

As a little reminder to you and to us, this is what our living room looked like when we moved in. The sculpted artex walls, stone fireplace and dark wood all seem like a distant memory now. We've been living without a living room since the plasterer's visit in early December. Jeezo, plaster/plasterers makes an almighty mess.
before
after
We've been painting like demons til our fingers bleed and finally the walls and ceilings are done. New lights have also been fitted and all (all!) that is left to do is fit the laminate flooring. As you'll see we've gone mad with white, top to toe. The chimney breast wall is painted grey however. It turned out a bit curvier than anticipated as those pesky stones were very lumpy indeed and although perfect straight edges would've been sooo good, we didn't want the fireplace to get any bigger that it already was. I felt that we couldn't go for white here as although I do like interior design from the northern snowy fringes, igloo was not really the look I wanted. However, until we have new heating, I'm sure an igloo would probably be warmer. I'm not caring though as I can see the end in sight for this room and I am very excited about that. The walls will need jazzed up by some artwork but that can happen later. Soon, we'll be able to relax on our couch again and watch the TV. Bliss....
Ok. That's that thought over with as there is still far too much to be getting on with.
Since we're here I also thought I'd include some photos of the old bookshelves that is also a recipient of the white (and grey) treatment. I've painted the shelving white and their backing grey to give them some interest. That's saved me a trip to IKEA for a billy bookcase!

Saturday 14 January 2012

A stormy start to 2012.

 Apparently it has been a bit windy when we were away. We returned from a short holiday visiting family in Skye and on our approach to the house, we felt that the place looked different somehow. "Don't we normally have more trees than this?' I said to Craig as he drove into the drive. Bizarrely the answer was yes, two were not where they were supposed to be. One narrowly missed the house and the other had decided to move in with the neighbours. Luckily no serious damage was done - the neighbours have a squashed wheelie bin and a flattened hedge. So, the news really wasn't hamming up their weather reports after all. We didn't even feel a breath of it up north where you expect the weather to be lousy at this time year. Being a Tiree lass I do enjoy a good gale, nostalgic memories of childhood, that said I was glad we were away when this happened. Two trees coming down either side of the house must've sounded like the world was ending! Exactly why there's no trees on Tiree. Looking on the bright side, we were planning on taking these two down anyway due to their close proximity to the house.

This pic on the right shows how close the tree came to squashing our wee house. So much so it  actually dislodged some of the guttering.
 Here it is from the other side -totally uprooted!
 Our fence is also in bad nick.
And that will be some ex roof tiles. Now we are in operation clean up and neighbours have been coming to our door with chainsaws revving and even machetes at the ready (and that was just one guy! - note to self, don't cross John). This would normally worry me but we've been glad of the help as it's a hell of a task trying to move their mighty bulk.

Thursday 5 January 2012

the dining area - work in progress (with a little help from our friends)

This is our dining area on move-in day. Big ideas planned for this space as we want to knock down the wall between it and the kitchen to create one big area for cooking and entertaining. However, the kitchen makeover is down the list of things to do right now as we need to save up for that one. In the meantime we are trying to improve the space the best we can. This has meant yet another paint attack on the dreaded pine ceiling. I couldn't face it myself so luckily our good friend Asta volunteered her services for beer. We were happy to oblige. Another (also good) friend, Les, helped re position the hall lights in a row. More beer coming right up! Now looking nice and retro and will go excellently with the Seventies Habitat dining table I bought on Gumtree which is patiently waiting in my mum's garage until everything is ready for our first dinner party.