Sunday 8:39

Last time I wrote, we had 20 days to go to our holiday, I can’t believe we’ve been back home for 19 days already. We had an absolutely fantastic holiday – one of those where, at the end of the holiday, you are ready to go home and face life again.

Since we’ve been back, we’ve been busy busy busy. The new house has a fair amount of work for us to do to make it ours, and some of it we are able to do ourselves too.

Our first priority was to set up our office/study, as this will be our base from where we plan all the other work to be done. And this space needed a fair amount of work before we could use it. There was a carpet on the floor, which the husband ripped up before I could even get a picture. We chose a lovely blue for the main walls, which immediately changed the space once it was applied.

We also tried to do a polished cement floor ourselves, but we weren’t that successful. Took a trip back to the hardware store, and invested in some self-levelling screed and laminate flooring, which worked like a dream

Replaced the lights with some cyberman-inspired spots, fitted blinds and painted the bricks and suddenly we had a very nice space.

I also framed the bits and bobs that I collected at the Discworld Emporium and put it up over my desk, along with the Assassin's’ Guild flag that I had acquired at the same slice of heaven.

My desk is set up and ready to go. Let’s hope my muse loves the new space as much as I do.

We also gave the kitchen/dining room a bit of a make-over, with some new curtains and accessories, and I am really enjoying this space as well.

My favourite, however, is the sparkly things dangling in front of the big sliding door – most of which we bought from the Christmas store in Bremen – and the rainbows they cast across the kitchen as the sun shines through.

We met with our builder last week-end, and he is currently busy drawing up the plans for the other renovations to be done. Can’t wait to see the pictures in our heads become a reality.

UFYH: The Dining Room

[I wrote this post in August already, but somehow managed to not post it. It has been stuck in my drafts for more than a month. Unf.]

After talking about it and talking about it for months and months – in fact, almost a year – we have finally started getting some traction on fixing up the last little bits so we can put our house on the market.

We have outgrown our house. We probably outgrew the house about 2 years ago, but have been master procrastinators while we decide what we’re going to do. In that time, of course, we had many, many, many discussions about exploring overseas options, and I think this is one of the reasons we didn’t actually do anything to get the house sale-ready.

We are very lazy people though, so to get going often takes a fair amount of motivation. I also tend to work in batches, so when I discovered UFYH, I knew it was going to work for me (especially considering it is mostly how I work already).

First UFYH test run was for the dining room. More specifically, the area around the fireplace. This is the before:

The sheer number of items packed in this area made it very very difficult to clean, so this area became a serious health hazard. This area also plays home to our WIFI and DSL routers, and, when we have a failure, it is sometimes a little time consuming figuring out which bit goes with which bit and which bit is the broken bit.

First step was to remove everything (and I mean everything) from this area and give it a good clean. This was done over 2x 20/10 sessions

Next, I re-cabled the area underneath, using cable ties to keep each cable neat and tidy and easy to trace. I also made sure none of the cables were intertwined in any way, so that a single cable can be moved without upsetting the others. This was a nice easy 20/10.

Next up, I cleaned the ornaments we wanted to keep and returned them to the mantel. The other things that were on the mantel that didn’t belong there (but we wanted to keep) also found homes in this time.

Lastly, I unwobbled the magazine stand I use for my recipe books, and cleaned each of the recipe books. It is amazing how much grime they pick up, and how nice they look with a little wipe down – so, going forward, each time a recipe book is used it will receive a quick wipe down before returning to its home. This

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I took some time today and ufyh-ed our dining room. It took several 20/10 sessions and some 45/15 sessions, but it is done and has proven to me that this method works for me.

Back yard phase one

This weekend we started on the back yard and these are some of the pictures of it.