House tour - part 1

You're all probably sick of hearing about our various renovations at home and after spotting something on another blog, I thought I might show you 'around' a bit and let you see the before and after of our home.  There is still plenty to do and things will probably change again in places, but at least then you'll have an idea of how far we've come and how far we still have to go!

So, to start, some background.

We've been living here for a little over three years now.  It had previously been a family home for about 20 years and we get the impression that the family always struggled to have enough money to invest in the house.  That has had its pros and cons for us.  The pros being that there are some nice original features in the house - bare floor boards, some coving/plaster work, original doors, stained glass, fire places.  The cons have been - out-dated wiring, windows and heating, shoddy work throughout, wear and tear showing its affect.

To follow Julie Andrews'/Maria's example, let's start at the beginning.

We fell for the house as soon as we saw it and could see the potential in it, and thankfully the vendors needed a quick sell, so we jumped at the chance of such a spacious house within our price-range.  We lined up some builders to start work as soon as we completed and moved into temporary accommodation whilst they were hard at work.

They rewired:

Knocked two rooms into one:

Knocked a new door-way between the living room and dining room:

Refashioned the en-suite bathroom:

Fitted a new kitchen:

And filled the garden with rubble: