It's a little drafty with no roof in the bathroom!

With the sky looking particularly grey it's quite a worrying time to have no roof on our bathroom. When we bought the house we hadn't really realized the full extent of the repair work required. Well maybe my partner did realize the work required but made it sound a lot less scary to me. When he said new bathroom I didn't imagine for one second the roof needing to be removed.

I'm starting to understand now just why people don't restore houses all the time and buy them all ready complete to move into. I thought it was a simple task of ripping out the old bathroom and putting in the new. I hadn't even thought about plumbing needing to be moved, electrics re-wired and roofs repaired. I guess that's just a womens way to think about pretty shower screens and tiles and not have a clue how it all goes together!

Building a slate fireplace hearth

With the weather still bad outside it is impossible to carry on with the roof of the bathroom so today is for jobs indoors.

Today we have help from James's dad who is building a fire place hearth using slate. With the slates in place it's now a job to fill the area with cement to put the finishing slate in place.

It's so nice to see the fireplace coming together as it's something that we want rather than what was in the house when we bought it, finally the house is taking on our personalities and our tastes.

Will Laura Ashley make my dreams come true?

So as my regular readers will know the house build has been going on for nearly 8 months now and we have well and truly run out of money and energy on the project. For my partner James he keeps trucking on bit by bit each night ticking off jobs on the epic to do list. Whereas my early excitement of buying our first house and thinking pretty curtains and bed linen days are over and the reality of renovating a house sinks home.

Well today with the help of fellow blogger Annie Bean and the gorgeous brand Laura Ashley i'm entering their blogger competition to win £1000 to spend at Laura Ashley to decorate a bedroom.

I can not contain my excitement whilst writing this post as it has reignited the spark inside me to visualize how my dream room will look one day.

Here is the dreaded bedroom that we moved into! and yes the walls are still stained and disgusting, the ceiling is still cracked and moldy, the window has no curtains and the skirting boards are not attached to the walls. at least the lamp shade serves a purpose! The room is pretty much exactly the same as this now except it has a temporary bed slap bang in the middle of the room. We don't have any wardrobes in there and a lot of our clothing is still in storage whilst the rest of the house is worked on.

 To win £1000 to spend at Laura Ashley would be like a dream come true, we have spent so much on the rest of the house and with all the unexpected problems of rotten and leaking roofs we now don't have the budget to do up the bedrooms for a long time.

I've looked at the Laura Ashley site and drooled quite a lot and dreamed at what my bedroom would look like if I won the competition. My room definitely needs a refresh not just for spring but for the whole year ahead!

Here are the items i'm dreaming to squeeze into my room -

Firstly an actual double bed! Currently me and my partner have two single beds pushed together it's not ideal and it's two divans with no storage so this white bed with the ottoman at the end would be amazing. 

Next on the list would be curtains as we haven't got any yet and these gorgeous duck egg blue blossom curtains are perfect.

 Lastly i'd love to do a feature wall in this tree wallpaper..... 

Here's to keeping my fingers crossed that I win but the reality will more likely be back to the building site with a bump but it was nice to think about the pretty things once again as recently it's been buying concrete and insulation and isn't very exciting at all!

Flooding continues in the kitchen

Unfortunately our temporary roof wasn't quite as watertight as we had hoped and the rain of the extreme torrential variety had caught us out. Waking up to the sound of dripping water we were shocked to find about 2ft of water in our kitchen coming through from the leaking bathroom roof. 

With buckets in place to steam the flow of water it was now time for James to get up on the roof in the pouring rain to make the roof as water tight as possible. Still only a temporary measure as its far to dangerous to work on the roof in such rain. We will just have to make do with a tarpaulin roof tonight and hope that the next day is a little dryer and we can finish the roof of properly soon

At least the floor has had a good clean!!!!

Adding some paint to the walls

With the whole house now torn apart in every direction I decided to get some colour on the walls in the living room in the hope that we can at least make one room a little more homey. I know the rest of the house needs a lot of work and so does this room, but with a little colour the room feels a lot warmer and definitely a lot less like a building site!

Unfortunately once the paint had dried we decided that we didn't like the satin sheen on the wall and will soon repaint the wall in the same colour but with a matt paint instead. At least the colour we have chosen we are happy with.

Using reclaimed glass

Recently James's farther found a piece of old glass at a local farmers and after finding out that the farmer no longer wanted it brought it around for us to use somewhere on the house. The glass made the perfect window to go in the front door, letting light into the house but also adding something unique that makes our house special.

The glass cleaned up beautifully and looks stunning and makes a wonderful statement to the front of our house as well as letting in lots more natural light.

Repairing the bathroom roof.

With a very old, rotten leaking bathroom roof there is only one thing for it, to rip it off and replace it. Waiting for a dry weekend we see a break in the bleak weather to remove the old roof.

Unfortunately the dry weather didn't last and soon the torrential rain started pouring and the water wasn't only flooding the bathroom but also found it's way downstairs and flooded out the kitchen area. Unlucky for us because we don't have a proper kitchen yet in place, we had all our food items stored in cardboard boxes on the floor right under where the water poured in. Cost us a small fortune in soggy soup sachets, solid packs of water soaked flour and sticky gravy granules!

After cleaning up downstairs it was back onto the roof to complete the job as best as we could to make it water tight over night to continue the roof repair the next day.

Unfortunately when you need to go you need to go! luckily it wasn't raining at this point. 

Fitting a new kitchen

We started the renovation at the front of the house building the living room and into the dining room not really touching the kitchen but now we have made so much progress that it's time to start attacking the kitchen and the final stage of the down stairs renovation.

The biggest problem with this area is that it's really very cold, and letting in a lot of cold air, to combat this and to save money in the future we are insulating the walls to retain the heat. Here you can see the top of the walls stuffed with insulation roll to fill in the gaps. Then over this we covered the walls with insulated plaster board. 

Seeing the last of the block work getting hidden away behind new plaster board really does feel like we are finally putting the house back together rather than tearing apart.

The Cornwall Home Show

I'm very excited to have received two tickets to the Cornwall home show this weekend courtesy of Arco2 in Bodmin. Hopefully I won't get to many new ideas for the house as I can see me wanting to spend lots of money on our new project.

 Next on the shopping list is splashback and kitchen tiles so hope to get some inspiration for our little Cornish home at the show.

If you see us there please say hello :@)

A job for the ladies!

With the first coats of paint drying it's time to get around the house with the paint a second time round. I don't think I realized how much harder it would be painting the second coats of paint, partly because the excitement of seeing paint on the walls has worn off by now and secondly because it's very hard to see how well the second coat of paint is covering when it's the same colour as the first. Anyway with the help of James's mum and myself the room has now had two coats of paint. I can't believe I have got to the age of 27 and never painted a room before, it sounds quite a shock statement but with less and less people getting on the property ladder and more people living in rented accommodation there are less people doing DIY themselves. I know it's only white paint so far but i'm really enjoying the learning curve doing up our first house.

Seeing paint on the walls is really encouraging us both with the house renovation, I can't wait to get colour on the walls and get pictures hung..... I know i'm dreaming quite away ahead but it's a nice thought. Now back to the jobs to do just in this room..... Sand the beams, paint the beams, build custom furniture for the tv, build dvd stands, make window sill, fit surround sound, fit lights, new floor, fit skirting boards, but for now we need to get on with the rest of the house before we can add finishing touches to the front room.

Didn't stop me buying new curtains though! Just going to be a long wait before fitting them!