Tag: house

At one time I wrote a lot on this blog about houses, and this house in particular once we bought it 4 years ago. One major feature is that the basement kitchen floods fairly regularly, maybe 4 times a year? This is obviously not ideal however the structural work required to put it right was around 20% of the value of the house, and shortly after we bought the house the bottom dropped out of the UK property market so we couldn't borrow against the house.

Fast forward 4 years of cooking in wellies once in a while, and running down the stairs to check the basement every time it rains a lot (in Northern England, you can imagine this gets really old really fast). Actually even when it wasn't underwater, it was a pretty nasty kitchen, always damp and it had no heating so in winter it was whatever temperature it was outdoors. This sums it up: my mother's old dresser, standing on bricks to keep it out of the water

At one time I wrote about little else than the house on this blog, but these days its a pretty rare occurrence. However this weekend marks three years since we bought this place and moved in, and it does begin to feel like a home. In fact the house is …

This week I finally got around to making the big cushions for our bed. We do have some but they were cheap and are now old - and I reallocated Kevin's onto my office chair about a year ago. Since we do often read or use the laptops in bed, cushions …

I'm currently redecorating in the house and have moved my office up to the top floor temporarily - I like it up here but its a flight of stairs to the bathroom, two to answer the door and three to get a cup of coffee and I also have no wired …

This weekend I took some time to make some curtains for the bedroom. Since we bought the house we've had some rather unattractive and slightly broken metal blinds. The room was otherwise OK though and we just kind of moved into it and worked on the rest of the house …

There haven't been any house updates for a while - because I haven't been here so haven't done anything! However we did realise earlier this year that we were never going to find the time to lay our own patio, we've been in the house two years now (can I get …

We're hosting Christmas for family this year (actually its Kevin's family, but that's a technicality), and between preparations for that and having a new camera in the house, I have some nice photos. After all that we've done on this house, suddenly it feels like its coming together into a …

It might not seem like a year since I announced a completed house purchase, but it is. A year and a few days in fact! Actually buying the house felt like a huge achievement, buying our first home took 9 months, cost a lot in surveyors fees and involved 3 …

Recently my friend Deb, Leeds Geekup organiser and Ruby developer, gave me two baby courgette plants ... she even went so far to photograph me, slightly tipsy, leaving the pub to get the bus home:

I did get the plants home intact and planted them out. I was going to post …

We've been decorating the living room since what feels like forever, I'll post some proper pictures of it finished but here is a sneak preview of the photos I took of the new nest of tables that's been waiting for us to finish decorating for a few months. I finally …

Last night we came home at around midnight and disturbed an intruder. Nobody hurt and nothing taken, is the short version.

We got back, walked up to the front door and I decided I needed to water my plants as they were looking at bit sad. So I went up …

Its Easter, which means its the only time of the year we reliably get 4 days off in a row from work without taking leave. And one thing I don't have is a lot of holiday allocation. So, we've got good intentions of getting as much as possible done in …