What a difference a week makes...

Just a week after opening the door for the first time I feel we've achieved quite a lot. With both the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms completely gutted and the kitchen stripped bare eagerly awaiting it's renovation, we've had the frustratingly expected initial dealings with builders, roofers, fitters etc. It seems you run around trying to get hold of these people only for them to let you down or just entirely fail to come back to you. Nonetheless, in one 'fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants' kind of weekend we've managed to book a roofer to fix the roof in ten days time, a fence-man (unsure what you actually call somebody that puts fences up for a living!) to re-fence the left hand side of the garden next week and we've secured a builder, a plasterer and a painter for the internal work! When it rains it really does pour apparently.

Ofcourse, with the delighted feeling that you are really getting somewhere comes the inevitable 'oh, how much will that cost then?' moment and I'd be lying if I said everything I listed above is going to come cheap. Even mucking in as much as possible ourselves and pulling in favours from family members to help out ,we are already into thousands of pounds on our current tab. Scary for two people on very average wages. Thankfully, unlike many people who take on home renovation projects, I have D - the man has our whole life on a spreadsheet and crunches numbers better than he crunches his daily cereal bar. He keeps his head in the game and not in a dark corner sweating the small stuff. Which leaves me to run off with the gnomes and fairies into the huge garden waiting for me...

Which, by the way, has had some adjustments over the weekend. The little green house has been cleaned out and no longer looks entirely neglected. The huge bush that blocked the path to the garden was ripped out and in it's place sits a pretty little flower bed. Having the fence-man round meant taking a closer look at what we were getting rid of and led to the unearthing of a pretty little mallard sitting on eggs. She was very well hidden (clever girl) and once we knew she was there we steered clear and left her to it. It was lovely to see something happening naturally that we have spent many-a-worrying hour trying to replicate with an incubator.

We've made the decision to upcycle the old shed into a summer house that will be stationed at the canal's edge. I envision a delicately painted hut with electric hook-up for a beer fridge and a heater for the cool summer evenings - shed of the year stylee... we'll see what the end result actually is!

The general layout of the vegetable garden, the chicken pens (with room for expansion of course) and the bee hive with it's corresponding wild flower garden has had it's rough draft, leaving just the many, many man hours ahead to get it looking something like what we have in our heads.

Recipe of the week has, rather tragically, been a digestive biscuit with a cup of tea made on the go. With everything in full swing it's hard to stop and hash out a vegetarian extravaganza with organic whatsit here and locally sourced thingamajig there - so the modest, yet ever reliable digestive has sufficed on many occasion this week.

With sore arms and aching backs we shall plough on into another week of what is slowly becoming a project that is genuinely capturing our hearts - and we all know what they say about hearts and homes...

Come rain or shine, it will still be mine.

G