All good plans (part two)

Good evening you wonderful people. The end of August marks 6 months since we bought our beautiful home, and we’ve learned a lot along the way. Mostly, that a renovation has unexpected surprises, no matter how prepared you think you are, and it costs more money than you’ve planned for. As I mentioned last week, we had (and still have) big plans for this place, but things change the more you settle into a home, and you have to mould and adapt to those changes along the way.

The day we moved in, it was a cold winter morning in February, with frost covering the overgrown lawn and biting at the half-rotten windows. We looked at the huge stretch of grass in front of us and thought: we have to spice this up a bit. So, we planned an outdoor kitchen, which we’d build ourselves and use some of the old kitchen when we replace that to save on costs. We also wanted to have lots of herbs growing in the back and wild flowers in a designated section. It was hard to see what it would look like on a cold grey morning, but I knew we could make it beautiful and somewhere we’d want to spend our spring and summer days in. We hoped to have the house kitchen completed pretty early on, so imagined we could complete the outdoor kitchen, herb and wild garden before summer hit and we’d host a boatload of parties. *Present us laughs in the face of past us.*

Now for upstairs. There are a total of 4 bedrooms, all doubles and all also decked out in LED multicoloured strip lighting, which was removed after living here for approximately 4 minutes. There is a main family bathroom, a Jack ‘n’ Jill ensuite between 2 of the bedrooms, and another ensuite in what is mine and John’s bedroom. From what we had discovered, the plumbing had all been renewed in 2008, and wasn’t yet a main priority, but the bathrooms were not decorated to our taste, so we aimed to have one of these bathrooms renovated before Christmas of 2024, budget depending.

I’ve not yet mentioned the detached 1 bedroom annexe which came with our house, and that we thought would make an ideal office for John as he works from home full-time. This then meant that 2 of the bedrooms in the house were spare, as we only needed 2 for us and our daughter. So what to do with 2 spare bedrooms? Guest bedroom, definitely. But the other one? I cycled between cinema room, games room, yoga studio, even though I haven’t done a downward dog since 47AD, and library. I love reading and I was getting carried away with images of Belle in Beauty and the Beast living the dream with that library in the castle (apart from being held hostage by a monster, but y’know, we can’t have it all, can we?)

Our first night soon crept up on us after hours of unpacking, and we got Everly to bed in 1 more layer than usual on account of single glazing in the height of an English winter, and it being such a stark contrast to our last house, which was a newly converted barn with modern insulation and underfloor heating. John and I collapsed on to the just-pieced-together sofa and celebrated with some Prosecco. We excitedly discussed these plans and made a physical list and timeline of when we would have all the jobs completed. And so we went to bed like kids at Christmas: full of expectation and giddiness for the days ahead.

However, most of that giddiness subsided the next morning, when we awoke to an absolutely freezing cold house. The heating had broken. And there was a metallic smell coming from the family bathroom. We looked at each other, laughed and said “f—“.