We originally got the keys to our home in 2016 which means we’ve now lived here for almost five years. It feels like so much has happened during that time and today I wanted to take a look at some of the work we’ve done to the house as well as talking about how our lives have changed during that period too.
When we first bought our home, we knew we would need to do lots of work to it to get it how we wanted to be. I’m going to be honest and say that work is still ongoing and has taken considerably longer than we anticipated.
Celebrating 5 Years In Our Home
While we have completed some of the biggest projects, such as removing the hideous fireplace from the living room others turned out to be complicated than we expected.
We really wanted to restore the Victorian tiles we found under the carpets but in the end it was just too difficult to get them looking anywhere near nice enough so we ended up covering them with laminate. This was in the main dining area.
Five years on and we still haven’t decided what to do with the tiles in the hallway!
In 2017 we tackled the main bedroom, having been sleeping in the smaller back bedroom since 2016 when we moved as we knew we wanted redecorate. Finding out we were expecting a baby helped spur us on with this one!
We choose navy blue for a feature wall with an off white colour for everywhere else and all white furniture.
And then of course we needed to redecorate the back bedroom into a nursery for our little girl. We didn’t want anything hugely girly so in the end went with a grey and lilac theme. We recently upgraded her to a bunk bed which you can read about here.
It took almost five years and a global pandemic for us to finally finish our garden. It’s so lovely to finally have a usable outside space! We added artificial grass, a decked area, a pergola and a small shed as well as planters with herbs and lots of solar lights. We also managed to bag some free garden furniture and restore some grubby white plastic chairs for when we have extra guests.
We also finally fitted carpet on our stairs. We chose gray to match the dining room where they are. This was after having a slight disaster when repainting the hallway. We painted it green and then decided it really didn’t work and had to start again!
Our next project is to redo our lean to conservatory. The roof leaks and the floor is rotted so it’s going to be a fairly big project. Once that’s completed, we’ll be moving some of our dining room furniture in there so I can create a proper workspace for myself as I currently work from home but don’t have a proper desk space.
We also can’t wait to have more storage space!
Finally, we intend to redo our kitchen. The Kitchen faces North and has dark wood cabinets and a dark brown tiled floor. While the kitchen is perfectly functional (aside from the fact it has no space for a dishwasher!) I’ve never really liked it décor wise.
Our plan is to use a company that come in and respray/repaint all the cabinets rather than attempting to do it ourselves but this will save the expense of purchasing a whole new kitchen.
A lot has changed
A lots has changed since we first bought our home. We got married, both of us changed careers and we welcomed our first child.
Both of us are now self employed and I think worries with money have impacted how much we’ve been willing to spend on the house in one go.
Having savings to cover emergency’s is more important to us than the odd unfinished area around home. We tend to save up for each project that we want to tackle and go from there.
Despite being a blogger who writes about her home, I’ve never been someone who needs an Instagram perfect home.
Yes, I like my home to be tidy but I’m so grateful to have a warm safe space that we’re not struggling to afford that I can live with a few things out of place here and there and some areas that still need finishing.
Taking on a project home is a huge challenge and while we’re lucky in the sense we didn’t need to do anything really major like repairing the roof or knocking down I’m still proud of how far we’ve come, even if our home isn’t quite perfect yet.
