Author: K

• Electricity update

  The electrician is making progress! We have a fancy new fuse box that doesn’t crackle, Tim’s and the boys’ wall sockets are done and the red room is done. He will be doing the infrared panels in those rooms next time. For now, we can actually start painting walls and other nice things that aren’t…

• Guessing game: how many trees are in the boxes?

  If you guessed somewhere between 20-50 then congratulations, you are not even close. Not even a little. We knew we had saplings being delivered, and not really any idea of what to expect and how they’d be delivered, but.. We didn’t expect them to be literal twigs! All those twigs in there are individual cuttings…

• Snaaaaaaaake! 🦡🦡🦡🍄🍄

  In December, Tim was digging along the length of the kitchen waste pipe to see if it had collapsed or something further down because it was constantly blocking. And found a large jar with an actual snake in it! Pretty gross, right? Tim poured it out onto the grass and the sound it made as…

• Tiling finished in the kitchen. Mostly.

  It would be nice to have a room finished to take photos of “tadaaaaa” but I suspect it will be a while before a whole room is wholly done. So here’s a couple of pictures of the done bits of the tiling around the window and range. The ceiling is bare plywood holding up insulation…

• Drinking water! Winter update!

  We haven’t made a post since November, but we have been doing things. Just nothing to completion, everything lately has been piecemeal. We had the windows fitted in December – during a week of -8C temperatures which was.. unpleasant. Our electricity bill went up to €800 for December to warm up the frozen house once…

• Painting the stairwell

  Haven’t touched the landing area since we put the walls up because we wanted to focus on “necessary” things, not decorating. But I finally got fed up with how dingy it is up there and wanted to brighten it up. Only with a primer until we decide what colours we want, but white is still…

• Plastering update

  So we moved in a couple of weeks ago and Tim has already posted a couple of things so these photos are old. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share the final look of the walls because they’re pretty slapdash. But these are the walls we have and I shouldn’t hide them just because…

• Slow progress on the lead paint

  I’m kicking myself for not taking a photo of this wall when I was ready to patch it up. So much of it crumbled away, leaving a large hole at bottom and top left, large chunks out of the window edges and the whole bit above the window just fell off. Not to mention big…

• Lead paint worries

  I tried to put a wall board onto the wood frame that you can see along the right of the photo above but had to take some of the wall away in the corner to do that. Plasterboard and styrofoam were covering this green paint on crumbly plaster. Pretty sure it’s lead paint. All other…

• Kitchen fitted!

  It’s amazing how much a kitchen makes a house feel like a home. I’m glad Tim was with me today because we had to have a long hug after seeing this. Still a way to go but seeing it start to come together was quite emotional, we love it. And look how smooth that plastering…