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An insight into the things in life that make me smile

Moving house

Dragging our bathrooms out of the 1980s

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I promised you all an update on the house and I’m a woman to keep my promises. Although we’ve been so busy that I can’t deny it’s taken me a lot longer than I planned to get round to writing this.

Let’s start by talking about bathrooms. This house has two. A downstairs loo and then an upstairs “family bathroom” which has a bath in it, with a shower over the bath.

The Downstairs Loo

The downstairs loo was a pretty simple affair. A rectangular the room with the door on one side of it. As you go in to your left is the toilet and to your right a washbasin. The basin that we ended up having to replace unexpectedly a few years back.

A modern looking washbasin. White with a white built in cupboard underneath it. Around teh sink are some petrol blue metro style tiles.

I realise that I never actually got round to sharing what we’d done in there though so this time round I actually have pictures. It’s all relatively simple with some petrol blue metro style tiles around the sink, and a built in cupboard underneath it.

A close up of a white washbasin with petrol blue metro style tiles around it.

This isn’t the most attractive room at all and with no heating in there it can also be cold, especially in winter. There’s an outside wall (which actually goes to our neighbours garage as these are link-detached houses) and a small window which looks out onto a dead bit of space to the side of our porch.

Dream plans

If money were no object what we’d like to do would be to extend out of the front of the property and a new downstairs bathroom would be part of those plans. The porch is something that the previous owner handbuilt in the 1970s and it’s an incredibly useful space for shoes, boots, coats etc, but it is just stuck on the front of the house and leaves loads of wasted space either side of it. If we could build out properly and use all this space we could enlarge the downstairs bathroom and maybe even extend the kitchen too. That is also at the front of the house sticking out somewhat from the main building. Bringing all this area together would be a large piece of work and completely transform the downstairs of the whole house, but for now budget doesn’t allow us that at all.

Practical plans

What is possibly more in budget is trying to move the toilet to the opposite end of our downstairs bathroom and try to squeeze in a shower where it currently is. We’ve done some measuring and think it should just work. A small handbasin could I think fit on the wall opposite the door (possible as the door actually opens outwards at present) and that would make it usable as a full mini-bathroom. On a practical level, as a family of five this would be so handy, especially as our eldest has a downstairs bedroom.

Now we’ve found a plumber locally that we trust (more on him in a moment) it’s much more of a possibility we just need to save up – and get the other bathroom finished.

Upstairs Family Bathroom

The upstairs bathroom was functional when we moved in so we’ve really just made do with it since then. The tiles were a pale blue with some floral bits, but the sanitary wear was just plain white. At some point the main toilet pan cracked alarmingly so we found someone to replace that with just a simple cheap unit from B&Q. It did the job, but was nothing really to write home about.

The electric shower seized up – probably due to all our hard water clogging it up – and we replaced it with a like for like one from Screwfix with B replacing it himself. It was still quite pathetic as a shower goes, but at least kept everyone clean.

Problematic layout

The bathroom layout is far from perfect. As you go in it’s a square-ish room. Immediately opposite the door is the toilet. To the right of that is a washbasin and to the right of that is the tap end of the bath. The bath is across the wall with the only window in it – at right angles to the wall with the door in it. Between the foot of the bath and the door is a small Ikea storage shelf that we’ve squeezed in. The shower is actually at the foot end of the bath.

A view of a very 80s style bathroom with pale blue floral tiles and a sad shower curtain in shot. You can see the sink and taps end of the bath and also the shelf that runs along that wall of the bathroom and also teh mirrored cabinets. Poor lighting makes not look even more miserable than it was.

The wall with the toilet, sink and tap end of the bath on it has a built in shelf running the whole length of the wall just above all these and some of the pipework is hidden behind the wall that’s below this shelf. Higher up on the wall are some mirror fronted cupboard that the previous owner built to fit.

This layout means that you need a way of keeping the water off the bathroom window when you have a shower. At the moment we do that by having two shower curtains – one either side of the bath. Again, not perfect, but workable.

Upgrading the shower

For ages we’ve been wanting a better shower and just kept putting it off as we couldn’t work out how we’d manage without a bathroom whilst the work was done. We finally decided that there was never going to be a good time to get this done so just went for it. Replacing the whole bath wasn’t an option due to both cost and convenience.

The old electric shower with some blue and floral tiles still visible around it, but a few tiles already removed. The whole situation looks very sad, not helped by the poor lighting conditions for the photo.

We stripped off the tiles on the wall where the shower is and then got a plumber in to decommission the old one and put in plumbing for a new shower and accompanying pump in the next door airing cupboard. We then tiled that wall ourselves and got the plumber back to actually install the new shower. This plan meant a week without a shower, but with some careful use of plastic sheets we could still use the bath.

A wall with dodgy looking plastering but showing two capped off pipes sticking out of it.

We’re now at the stage where the new shower is installed, but we’re still plodding on with re-tiling the rest of the room and it’s very much a project that’s been worked on in dribs and drabs as time allows. The shower curtain over the window side means that we can still shower whilst the rest of the work is ongoing, although on the flip side that does remove some of the pressure on us to get the job finished.

What we used

The decor choices that we’ve made so far are relatively simple, but the amount it’s changed the look of the bathroom is unbelievable. Like in the downstairs loo we went for metro style tiles, but this time in white and combined with black grout. The tiles came from B&Q as they worked out cheapest compared to other places we found locally. For things like the tile adhesive and black grout we actually bought these from Amazon as they were cheaper than the high street DIY places and there was the added advantage that it was delivered. Some of the other smaller bits we needed like rubble bags etc where also cheapest on Amazon. I know prices change regularly, but it’s definitely worth shopping around to get the best price on things.

A wall tiled in white metro tiles with black grout and showing a shiny new shower with both a handheld he'd and a rainfall head. The adjacent wall still has the 1980s style blue tiles on it.

The shower were chose was a Triton one with two heads – a rainfall head and a handheld one. Absolute luxury compared to the dribble that we’d put up with for five years! This is the Triton Benito bar mixer shower. We saw it originally in B&Q but when we bought it saved about £20 by going to Screwfix. Looking today Screwfix (which is the same parent company as B&Q) is actually a whole £40 cheaper – so again definitely worth working out what you want to buy and then finding where has it cheapest.

A close up of the new shower and the white metro tiles with black grout in the background. A million miles away from the previous bathroom pictures.

There’s so much still to do and I haven’t yet touched upon what we’re planning for the wall with all the cupboards on at the moment. First though – we need to finish tiling around the bath area. Hopefully all these bank holidays in May will help us get it finished sooner.

Finding bargains

As well as doing the work to buy everything new as cheaply as possible we’ve been putting in some more work to see what we can buy secondhand. Facebook marketplace is full of things that people have bought and then changed their mind about. We’ve acquired a heated towel rail that we plan to use in the bathroom this way and last week’s bargain was a guy selling off seven (yes 7!) interior doors for the grand total of £50. All still wrapped in the original plastic and we think costing about £60 each. It means our garage is currently full of doors, but we have an absolute bargain there. We need to get hinges and handles for them all, but bearing in mind we were planning to buy new handles for all the doors anyway and paint them all this should save both time and money in the long run.

It’s also worth not throwing anything away immediately when you do work like this. Our old electric shower unit made over £30 on eBay, and as anyone doing renovations knows every little bit of money counts!

Five years and what do we have to show for it?

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Oh how I just laughed looking back at some old posts on this blog.

Just over five years ago we moved into our new house. I know clearly that that is how long it is as we’ve just been through the whole painful process of re-mortgaging as our initial (incredibly low) fixed rate period has come to an end. Needless to say that our monthly repayments have gone up. As have everyone else’s.

Nearly four years ago I looked back at how much we’d achieved in our first year of living here and (validly) pointed out that we hadn’t really done all that much as we’d had a baby in that time. A few days later and a burst of enthusiasm had me writing about our unplanned renovation of the downstairs loo, although it seems I never actually got round to showing you the final result. A shame, because we did indeed finish that particular project and it still looks pretty good.

Then we moved into 2020 and we all know what happened next… The blog posts about progress dried up and so did everyone’s social lives.

A two year old child sat on the floor of a newly decorated bedroom looking at books. The carpet on the floor looks very new and on the grey wall is a sticker picture of a large tree with colourful leaves and moneys and owls in it.

Some things have progressed though – albeit slowly. The youngest finally moved out of our bedroom and into the box room – which we redecorated for her during lockdown conditions. The eldest moved downstairs into the room that my step-daughter had previously used and there was a Harry Potter makeover that included having to source pretty much everything online and making great use of the then newly set up street WhatsApp group to borrow practical things like a pasting table. The living room has been re-jigged and now works so much better for us as a family, but there are plenty of finishing touches in there that still need to happen.

All this has been done on a pretty tight budget with lots of learning new skills. YouTube and the DIY bible my late father recommended dad years ago have both been worth their weight in gold!

The years have also seen us become regular customers of a local roofing company – ironic when you consider that the roof was pretty much the only thing flagged as “green” in the survey we had done when we bought the house. Apart from that, and having to install a new loo when the old one suddenly cracked in two and started leaking(!), the only other thing we’ve paid anyone external to do is fit a carpet. But even then as it was an offcut being used to carpet a box room it only cost me a total of £100 and was another complete bargain.

Other things have stayed the same though. We’re still cooking meals on the “interim” gas cooker that we installed when we moved in. We always said that we’d get the kitchen done soon as we needed a bigger oven and the existing space only gave us 55cm to fit on into. Needless to say I’m still putting in oven trays at an angle to cook a Sunday roast as they’re too wide for the oven otherwise. Roast potatoes cooked “on the wonk” is now a bit of a speciality of mine. My son also still has the thin and sun-bleached carpet in his room that made the removal men laugh when they first saw it. Sorting out his bedroom is still high on the never ending to do list.

As we came to remortgage we knew that despite the new baby and global pandemic excuses our progress on the house has been pretty pathetic really. That’s why we’ve declared 2023 the year of “making things happen” when it comes to the house. I’m pleased to say that we’ve started as we mean to go on with huge steps already taken to make the main family bathroom more usable and at present the whole family is enjoying the benefits of finally having a decent shower, rather than just a pathetic dribble!

What I need to do now though is get back to actually recording what we’re up to in the hope that doing so will help us see how far we’ve come and encourage us to keep pushing it all further. It feels a bit like we’ve failed over the last five years in really turning this house into a home, and I’m determined to use this year to turn that around.

Standby for a series of updates and progress stories!

Knowing no one

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The problem with moving somewhere new and knowing no one is knowing no one. I work from home and my kids are staying at their old schools back in a neighbouring town, so my opportunities to get to meet new people are somewhat limited locally.

For me, one obvious way to do so was to pop along to the local WI. I’ve been a WI member for four years now and I absolutely love the Herts Belles back in St Albans. In that time I’ve made some brilliant friends, learnt some new skills and had an amazing amount of fun. I realise not every WI is quite the same, but talking to this local one they seemed friendly enough on Facebook when I enquired about meeting details.

So last night I went along, trying to ignore the slightly nervous feeling in my stomach. With it still being school holidays locally they weren’t meeting in their usual venue, but instead at a local church. I knew roughly where I was going and pulled up in the car park outside slightly surprised to see quite so many women heading towards the church. I’d looked at their photos on Facebook and whilst they seem to have a healthy number of attendees I didn’t think there were quite this many.

I followed them towards the door of the church where I met three women who instantly asked “are you here for WI?” I uttered the word “yes” and before I could say any more the door was held open for me and one of them said “excellent, we can follow you then”. I quickly explained that that probably wasn’t the best idea, seeing as I’d never been there before, but it seems the only hall these women they could find in the church was for Slimming World!

After a quick discussion as to whether or not this was some sneaky NFWI ploy to get us all to lose a bit of weight, we tried several doors before venturing down a dark corridor and finally finding a room in which they at least recognised most of the women inside.

Once there everyone was delightful and incredibly welcoming. They were all very keen to find out about the Herts Belles and where I was living locally. Space was made for me to sit next to someone and I was given a quick run down of how they do things there. I’ll be honest and say it is a much older and traditional WI that I am used to, but I was made to feel so welcome by everyone there.

The official part of the meeting was done much more formally than I’m used to (I’ve certainly never had a set of minutes read out in full before) but I was surprised to find that they don’t actually sing Jerusalem, as I’d expected them to do so.

It was also interesting to hear about meetings that they’d had previously and also about future meeting and trip plans. I realise that with the kids I’m not going to be able to attend all meetings but it still seems like they have a nice bit of variety throughout the year.

Tales of a recent Gyles Brandreth event (that I think was a county event) and his advice for public speaking (“always make sure you have your nipples pointing forwards at your audience”) led our speaker for the evening into talking about how he was once researching Victoria vibrators and came across “nipple jumpers” which were apparently a thing to give people the look of erect nipples that you might get on a cold day, even when the wearer was warm. It was quite a start!

What he was really there to talk abut was Victorians and death. They way that they mourned the dead, what they did with their dead and how Queen Victoria pretty much ruined the whole mourning “business” by choosing a white funeral for when she died. All this with the occasional background noise of screams from a drama group that were rehearsing in a nearby hall. It certainly set an atmosphere!

It may all sounds like a bit of a morbid topic, but was actually fascinating. So much so that a few of us from the Herts Belles are now wondering about booking a little trip to Kensal Green cemetery in London for a tour.

Talk over, vote of thanks delivered, it was time for a cuppa. Being polite I held back a little and chatted to a few people before getting my (excellent) cup of tea and a nice biscuit to go with it. I then sat down and continued my conversations with a few of the women I’d met whilst slowly drinking my tea.

I noticed the President sat back at the table wearing her coat and looking a tad concerned. Also, a couple of other women who had headed off after the vote of thanks seemed to have returned to the hall. News soon spread around to tell us that there was a slight problem. We were locked in!

Yes, it seems that as we weren’t regulars there on a Thursday evening, and were tucked away down a dark corridor, we’d been forgotten about and locked into the church complex. I knew some WIs can be a bit “wilder” than others, but I certainly hadn’t been expecting a WI lock in at my first meeting!

I dropped my boyfriend a text to let him know that the meeting had finished, but saying that I wasn’t quite sure when I would be back as we were being held captive somewhat. “Well at least you can drink tea whilst you wait” he replied. Well, not really. There I was taking my time over my cuppa and enjoying chatting when a woman appeared at my side and told me to drink up quickly as there was only me and one other woman still with cups and they wanted to be able to finish the washing up. Well that told me. I don’t think I’ve ever drunk hot tea quite so quickly.

Apart from the rushed tea drinking and being held captive it was a lovely evening and so nice to actually meet some local people. It was also my first step towards becoming a bit of a WI tourist too. I find it fascinating just how different WIs can be despite working towards the same aims and goals. I’ll be becoming a dual member when I go back, but I’m also looking to broaden my WI horizons a bit more and find out what other local groups there are so I can see if there are any more meetings or activities that I can join in with in the area.

Finally… we moved

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Finally, finally, finally the waiting was over. This whole house buying process has made me realise that I’m no where near as patient as I always thought I was. From an admin point of view, I had absolutely everything in place for us to be able to buy this house, but for a while I felt so utterly helpless as other things (out of my control) held us up.

The day that our solicitor phoned to say that we’d finally exchanged I’m not sure that I actually believed him. We’d been ready and waiting for a week – even with our deposit money sat in the solicitor’s bank account – yet there always seemed to be some reason why it couldn’t yet happen. Then when it did I didn’t really know where to start.

There was quite simply so much to do. We had a week between exchange and completion, but luckily were planning to have a long overlap with our rented flat, meaning that we at least had time to clear that properly and clean it before handing back the keys, rather than having to rush. Moving house requires quite a bit of organising, as does juggling kids during the process. There were vans to hire, things to move, a storage unit to clear, plus all the general admin that goes with it. Utilities companies to talk to, address to change, things to organise. Lists, lists, lists.

It meant that the week between the two went in a complete blur and to be honest I’m not sure I really remember any of it properly.

We’ve now been home owners for three weeks. And whilst I’m still looking at a pile of boxes filling up my living room, I do at least feel like I have a proper home again.

So much of my efforts have gone into making sure the kids feel at home and have bedrooms that were ready for them and as a result of that I’m still living with all may clothes in a suitcase, but at least they’re in a suitcase in my own bedroom. One day soon I  keep promising myself that I’ll sort them out, but in a way they seem so irrelevant compared to everything else.

The house itself has turned out to be an utter delight and everything that we hoped for. Despite having been empty for so long it hasn’t really taken long to make the place warm and homely again. We were also incredibly relieved to discover that (nearly) everything in here actually works. With the previous owner no longer around to ask, it was all a bit of an unknown when we bought the house, and we were slightly concerned that we’d end up having to fork out for a new boiler soon after moving, but a quick service (from a lovely local man that we were lucky enough to have recommended to us) has shown that it’s working perfectly and should last us for years yet.

I constantly feel like I’ve still got tonnes to do and at times it can feel incredibly frustrating that things aren’t happening sooner – especially when it’s things that I’m waiting for others to do for me – but I need to keep reminding myself that there’s no mad panic to get it all done instantly, even if I want to. The only person setting deadlines is myself.

The kids have been with me for a fair chunk of the Easter school holidays so far and so my efforts have been concentrated on them, but now they’ve gone to their dad’s until they go back to school it’s time for me to get organised and try to get everything else finished off so I can properly crack on with life again. So much seems to feel in limbo at a time like this and I’d discovered that I’m someone who finds that limbo position difficult and quite frustrating.

I’m also keen to try and get some balance back in my life again. The last nine months have been treading water and making do. I feel like now we’ve properly moved on and can actually live life to the full once more. It’s amazing the things that I’ve missed over the last few months. Simple things like having a home for my possessions, being able to open a cook book and have space to properly make a family meal from it and having time (and space) to craft again.

Expect this blog to be my happy place once again. Somewhere where I can share all the things that make me smile. I’m expecting it to feature a fair bit of crochet, lots of news of what we’re getting up to at home, and also a fair bit of tea drinking. You have been warned!

 

The waiting…

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I’m sat here today unable to concentrate on anything. Every time my phone pings I jump in the hope that it’s a message or email from either the estate agent or our solicitor. I am literally on the edge of my seat and getting nothing done as a result.

I’m someone who likes to be in control and get things done. When a job needs doing I crack on and do it. No faffing around. But, I’m utterly useless when things are out of my control. And that’s exactly where things are now.

We’re in the middle of the house buying process. Our offer was accepted, our mortgage is arrange and we have the deposit all in place. The searches have all come back without any problems and even the full building survey failed to tell us anything that we didn’t know already.  The property is empty. We’re in rented accommodation. It’s a probate sale and there’s no chain.

It should all be straightforward from here. But it isn’t. And right now there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.

I am desperate to move. Utterly desperate. This flat is far too small for all of us and I’m simply sick and tired of tripping over stuff when ever I try to move in here. I want to be able to give my kids a bedroom each again. I’ve had enough of paying money for storage for most of my furniture and boxes of stuff and I really, really want to be reunited with some of my possessions, that I haven’t seen for months.

Emotionally I’m also ready to move on. Staying here was only supposed to be temporary and I need to move to the next chapter or my life. Of my new family life.

The school Easter holidays are fast approaching and we need to have more space by then. Need to. I’ve told everyone that. The estate agent and our solicitor. There’s just one person that I have no control over and that’s the vendor’s solicitor. And that’s where the whole process seems to be stuck at the moment.

I can see no reason for any legal hold up. Nor can our solicitor. The estate agent can see no reason for any logistical hold up, and he says neither can the vendors. We’ve signed all the contracts and other paperwork and our deposit is already with our solicitor.

Waiting.

That’s all I feel I can do at the moment. Wait. Patiently.

The problem is that I’ve discovered I’m not very good at being patient.

I want to crack on and do things. I want a definite moving date in the diary so I can pack boxes, plan electricians and get quotes for replacement windows. I want to get in there and start cleaning and decorating. I want to start exploring the house and garden and start making plans for what we want to do with them. I want to move.

But all I can do is wait And hope that it won’t be for much longer.