Back in the summer I brought another foot stool at a carboot for the princly sum of £3! Extra seating is always useful in our little house. It got put at the one end of our sofa where our cat Stella decided to claim it as her own...

Seriously she is really attached to this stool, if I happen to put magazines on it she give me the stink eye until they are moved. As it was obvious that this has now become a fixture I decided it had to be recovered as the pink velvet it was covered in was pretty horrid. 

We had an off cut of fabric which I got from a charity shop a few years ago, I have used it in a few projects like my patchwork blanket but I still have a piece left that was just big enough to cover the kitty stool!

Now if I was going to do this properly I would have stitched the top and the side panels separately, because its just Stella using it and I wanted to do it quickly I simply streached the fabric over the existing stool and stapled it underneath...Stella stared at me the whole time I was doing this.

I also decided to blanket stitch around the existing piping in a matching burgundy wool.

It actually came out pretty well and looks way better than salmon pink velvet.

Of course now I come to take a pick of Stella on the new stools she buggered off! Take it from me she does likes it as much as I do!

So the new flooring finally went down in the bathroom yesterday afternoon, we went for black and white check as its pretty classic and goes with just about everything....

I love it and am really happy with how it looks! We just have the bath panel to do now. We're slowly getting there!

On sunday we went carbooting out at Frome, we had a great morning and managed to pick up some great bits. Rich managed to get his old ammunition case for just £5 (down from £10).

So what do you do with an old ammo case that your husband brought on a whim? Well obviously to persuade him to let you paint the inside white and keep loo rolls in it! duh!

Luckily Rich loves this! Phew!

We own a lot of books...seriously a lot. Most of them art art books meaning they are large and never bloody fit on a conventional  book case. So since we took the bookcase out of the living room so we could have our other Ercol armchair in there instead we have been really short of space for all our books. I have been asking (nagging) Rich for months to make a built in floating shelf in the alcove over the tv, he finally manage to find some time in the week of New Year....

Rich got it finished last weekend then it needed painting, I wanted it the same white we painted the walls so it would blend in.

The paint finally dried enough to be able to put our books on it, so I spent an evening going through and editing our book collection. Only the favourites have made the cut!

I love a room with books in, it feels to naked without them! It feels so much more homely now!

Ok so I meant to post this a week ago but with one thing and another it hasn't happened! As usual at the end of the year I like to do a little round up of everthing we've managed to get done on the house in the last 12 months.

The biggest project of 2013 was definitely the bathroom revamp, most people don't take a year to do this but we where hampered all the way through by lack of time and money (the curse of the freelancer!), meaning that there where whole months were we where both so busy with work that the bathroom simply had to wait.

Heres a quick recap of how it look Christmas 2012...

and heres Jan 2013 when Rich go in there with heavy duty tools...

As the floor was rotten from years of pipes leaking, it all had to come out and be replaced...lets not talk about it...it was hell, it snowed we had no loo...best forgotten about really. 

This makes it all look deceptively simple, trust me it wasn't! There the long nights of trying to get the loo plumbed in, we had to replace the first bath after it accidentally got chipped meaning we had to find the cash for the replacement! Rich ruptured a disk in his back after changing the bath tubs over meaning there was two months where he wasn't allowed to lift anything. We had to send the first radiator back as it was bent. We didn't have enough money to buy all the tiles we needed up front, we had to buy them as we earned the cash so a job that should have taken a month took six. I remember sobbing into a tub of grout while tiling late into the night as I was convince we would never get it finished. But finally we are nearly there, we just have the lino and the bath panel to finish, the flooring guys are booked in for two weeks time and I cant wait!


The next big job for 2013 that desperately needed doing was the windows throughout the house needed replacing before winter, luckily I convince Rich that this was a jobs he didn't need to tackle and that it just might be money well spend to get professionals in instead!

This was hands down the best thing we spent money on in the last year (or possibly a close tie with getting the new shower hooked up), it wasn't cheap, we had to sell our Landrover the fund it but it was totally worth it. We have really noticed the difference this winter too and I love that the house now looks 'right'.


So those two have been the main jobs this year, ok not much ticked off the list but both well over due for been sorted out and have made our lives a little more comfortable. Of course we have done other stuff, we brought lots of new furniture and other bits for the house this year (and sold all the old stuff too), all scored from junk shops, car boot sales or being given away free or repurposing what we already had which has kept the budget under control!

So that was 2013, we have more major jobs lined up for this year which included re-roofing the garage to give Rich somewhere to work on his car and making a start on getting the kitchen redecorated. These two are massive projects and it will all depend on time and moeny as usual so we are being realistic and about how far we are likely to get by this time next year. It can be very frustrating when you have lots of lovely ideas you want to see through!

We also need to say a huge thank you once again to our parents for all the support and help and to our brilliant friends and neighbours, thanks for the use of various loos and showers when we didn't have either! 

Lets see what 2014 has in store!