It’s only taken us 20 years to turn our house into a home
An adventure in self-sufficiencywith
ON October 31, Halloween, we celebrated 20 years of being in our current house. Having never lived more than seven years in a house as a child, this is quite a feat for me.
I remember moving in. The previous owner, who was supposed to be out by lunch, was still packing at midnight while we sat in the removal van eating fish and chips.
The cat was not happy. Eventually, we, piled mattresses on the floor and went to sleep. Not an auspicious start to life in our new home.
Since then, we have seen our children grow into adults, decorated their rooms several times and added new cupboards because they never throw anything away.
My son moved out into his own home and his sister was quick to turn his room into a study, complete with a skeleton called Kevin.
Downstairs, we revamped the clinical dining room into a comfy living room and added a log burner. It’s great at Christmas.
The kitchen, at the back of the house, was old, dark and dingy.
Worst still, it was next to the bathroom, and I hated cooking while people used the toilet.
When the chimney collapsed, filling the house with smoke and soot, we seized the day and built a new kitchen courtesy of our local DIY store and my husband – the doors are still wonky.
We added a log burner, saved up for a new cooker and accidently bought a large sofa (I pressed a button on ebay), which turned out to be one of the best buys ever – it literally hugs you while you watch the dinner burn.
With the old kitchen gone, we installed a new bathroom disposing of the orange, corner bath and square toilet, which I’m sure was fashionable at the time.
We then decided to add a sunroom at the back of the house, supposedly to sit gazing over the garden and installed window seats with storage.
My husband immediately filled the room with “man stuff”, including two telescopes, a table, most of his tools and several pairs of boots. That is still a subject for discussion.
Living in a cottage is idyllic, but does have its disadvantages. One of which is storage, as the lofts are situated above rooms all over the house.
They are generally only big enough to accommodate wasps’ nests and families of mice.
Thank goodness we don’t have possums in this country.
John the builder extended his prowess to building suitcase storage, cupboards, and bookcases on the quirky halfway landing – a weird space of no use at all. He was defeated by the open-plan staircase, an accident waiting to happen.
So we called in a friend and now have a place to tidily store the vacuum … and John’s tools, a ton of masking tape, the cat box and more of John’s boots.
Looking back, we certainly have made a lot of changes around the place, but we’ve turned it from a house to a home – although it took 20 years to do it.