December!

Well December crept upon us and Christmas is finally here!

... what a year it has been for Richard and I and the house build project! although we're still not complete we feel we have built ourselves a wonderful home and we are finally loving living here.

- Lots of work still to do but it seems only like detail at the moment!!

We have the outside landscaping & driveway to concentrate on but can't do that until the spring so for now we're  sitting back relaxing more, enjoying the lovely spaces we have created.

Richard has a week off now and wants to concentrate on his study/music room - I think this is important for him as he needs a space to go and relax.

Playing the piano etc is what he needs to do..

We finally managed to put our stags  head up in the hall:

I've owned him for years and years and bought from a neighbour along time ago. We have never had a space suitable!  Finally we found the appropriate space to hang him - my little nieces Leah & Millie came to visit & he was lying on the table (getting a bit of a make over!!) and on seeing him Milly said "Sven! Sven!"(for those of you who don't know - he's the reindeer in the the Disney film Frozen!)  so of course he is now called Sven & is hanging above the stairs in pride of place. He has been festively adorned this year with very large baubles!!

The IKEA dishwasher hinge saga continues - as I had said in the previous blog: our friends Georg & Milo ordered a hinge from IKEA in Munich. Milo sent it, I thought I'd received it, but this week they received in Munich?!? in the meantime IKEA had sent me one as well? (Like buses I know..!!)  honestly I have no idea where it came from?! 

(I have to report though it's not yet installed & it's still in the box!!)

Our Rainwater Harvesting tank is now fully working and we are flushing toilets with Greywater (rainwater) this feels good & is one of the eco designs we wanted.

We continue to enjoy Pebworth and village life, and have become very involved in lots of activities!

We recently wassailed around the village singing carols to raise money for the church, we seemed to be very well received and we raised over £250!

We are looking forward to New Year's Eve as there is a bit of a do in the Village Hall with food & bring your own drink,  entertainment & party games etc.

It will be nice and that one of us doesn't have to drive!

We think we have finally sorted the electrics -  as we have had a month of electrics tripping - trying to find the source was difficult but with a process of elimination we think we had a faulty breaker! so it's nice now that TV programmes actually record all the way through and we aren't plunged into darkness on a regular basis!! I was most concerned that the oven would go off during the turkey cooking 😳

I have been busy working in my studio fulfilling orders for Christmas stockings!

I intend to spend the winter months building up stock to sell, developing some workshops, all hopefully with an aim to have an Open Day in the spring so people can come along and see what I make & create etc!

....So all my family are arriving today to spend Christmas here for the first time.

I get to enjoy my wonderful kitchen and have been preparing food now for a couple of days I'm so looking forward to eating some of it !!

The Christmas tree is up & a few decorations here and there I'm sure next year will be even more lavish!!

Unfortunately my son Alex cannot join us this year; it will be the first Christmas in 25 years that I have not had him here.

And so we would like to wish all our friends and family a Very Happy Christmas and a Joyous New Year and extend thanks again to all those people who have supported us and helped us in all sorts of ways this year we will be eternally grateful!

Merry Christmas! X

November

November finds us working on the interior of the house finishing what is a very long list of jobs as you can see from the picture!!!

We have had the Rainwater harvesting  tank delivered - it took a while to get it down off the lorry but we managed it eventually. However the hole wasn't big enough!!! so poor Richard spent two days trying to dig a bigger hole and looked as though he had come in from the Somme! Nightmare! We are yet to solve this problem & definitely need machinery - so watch this space

Harry & Richard trying to put a round peg in a square hole!!

I finally got my downstairs toilet and chose to paint the wall a very dark grey called 'bowler hat' by Dulux; it was a risky move but think it sets my picture off superbly:

Richard commented that my previous blogs contain a lot of photographs of what I want the house to look like and not what it does look like - so I have taken more photos for this blog of the interior!

Many of the rooms are not finished but I hope you can start to get a feel of our living style? 

The study slowly becoming a study... 

The hall floor is well under way ...

Family bathroom

Guest ensuite bathroom...

Guest bedroom...

Master bedroom ...

Master bedroom ensuite yet to be fitted...

My cheeky drinks cabinet! Still can't find the key...

The kitchen 

The lounge ...

Still no dishwasher hinge...***

Well I hope that gives a little more flavour of our home, I'm now concentrating on getting ready for Christmas ....

...... see you in December

Wendi x 

*** dishwasher hinge update: would you believe it but my Great friend Milo from Munich has bought one for me in Germany!!  She is sending it to me in the post! How ridiculous that IKEA in the UK won't have any until February 2015??!! Amazing 😊

October

Well October is nearly over but we've had fantastic weather - probably the warmest October I can certainly remember.

This month sadly we lost our beloved dog Saffi; she was only eight years old and had had a history of illness but still her passing was unexpected.

We are left with our oldest dog Sooty who is 13 1/2. He doesn't appear to know what's happened.

It's a sad time for us and she's left a big hole in our lives.

We have continued to work hard by ourselves on the house albeit progress is slow! As you can imagine we don't have a lot of time as Richard works more than full time but we're happy and living comfortably!

The exterior of the house is now finished - we have guttering and fascia and the house is completely sealed and weathertight. This has meant we have achieved our final sign off !!!!! 👍😁👏👍😁👏

This is such great news for us and we are waiting for our final mortgage payment.

It will give us the opportunity to get the driveway done and finish some more internal jobs and pay some debts!

We still need to achieve final sign off from Local Authority Building Control; this may take a while yet and importantly with a new build we can claim the VAT back. At this stage it is quite a substantial sum! 💷

We have had a guy round to design the garden and drive - all the hard landscaping and we're hoping he will start soon weather providing! I have lots and lots of ideas but not a huge budget, it's often been quoted as "Champagne ideas & Lemonade money!" 

We will work with the landscaper and have to do some of this work ourselves to keep the cost down but the driveway has become quite a priority due to the mud which keeps travelling inside - any rain just turns it into a horrible sticky mess as it's clay, very difficult to live with!!

Idea for terracing

Idea for decking

The house is proving to be warm without any heating on which is good but only in the main living area at the moment - I think this is due to a combination of appliances giving off heat and bodies! We're finding upstairs less so and in fact even in what has been quite a warm October the bedrooms seem quite chilly.

Once the towel rails are plumbed in we're hoping it will be less cold?

What is very interesting is when we first started this project people would say - 'Grand Designs' 'Kevin McCloud' - I would scoff and say what a load of rubbish but on reflection, most of what Kevin McCloud says and what happens on Grand Designs is true! Most if not all of the scenarios that happen during a self build are true! I don't agree with "it would take twice as long and cost twice as much" which is one of his sayings though; and although it certainly has taken us longer (but not yet twice as long) it definitely has not cost twice as much! I suppose this is because we simply didn't have twice as much to spend!!

On reflection we could've had many more advanced technological things put into the house too and this is an area which is advancing at a rate of knots! We didn't necessarily want some of them and often could not afford them! We have built what we think is a modest family home with the luxuries we wanted; things like the integral vacuum cleaner, a mechanical heat recovery ventilation system, air source heat pump and so on.

There are so many things like electric glass that changes from clear to opaque - here's a link if you're interested  http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JQhDxgGjkok All sorts of wacky things we could have spent thousands of pounds on but we did not want any of that & feel satisfied we've chosen well to suit our lifestyle.

As we now approach the winter months (which I am informed will be a harsh one) I am looking forward to almost hibernating! We are both feeling quite exhausted and certainly need to recharge our batteries! 

I'm hoping to spend many months in my studio getting my products made to sell and organising some workshops. I have so many ideas and can't wait to get stuck in!

I am still sick of painting doors but I plod on with it and Richard continues to lay floor tiles: we are nearly completed in the hall and weirdly I long for a downstairs toilet again!!  it's amazing what you miss? It will seem a luxury for a while!

We are also hoping to finish the study before Christmas, we have a lovely baby grand piano which we miss and it would be so nice and relaxing to sit and have a sing song round the piano like we used to! 

This room has been planned as a music and office combined; 

I'm thinking we should get a small sofa in there and like this one from IKEA - http://m.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/art/00245050/....

...talking of Ikea I have had a major problem with them. I received a phone call (after many trips to Coventry and Wednesbury to buy an item that was listed online but when I got to store was no longer available!!!) telling me the dishwasher hinge would now be available in February 2015 - well considering my kitchen was purchased February 2014 this is totally unacceptable! I asked how they would resolve it they asked me to go to my local DIY store and purchase a hinge from them. B&Q sell 50 different hinges!!! Watch this space as I am currently writing a stinking letter to customer services!

This month we also spent a long weekend away in Harrogate - a much welcomed break. We went along with many of our new friends we have made in Pebworth.

I have not talked much about Pepworth on my blog but must say that we have found it to be a fantastic village with a really superb community feel.

We have become very involved and really thrown ourselves into all the things that go on here; Harvest supper, quiz night,  dinner parties,  barbecue parties, choir to name but a few! I've even joined the Village Hall Committee! 

One of the things we may do next year is join a group called the 'Pebworth Porkers' it's a group of people (led by our local farmer) who rear a number of piglets  using a Rota system for feeding. Once fattened up they go off and are humanely slaughtered and then turned into delicious cuts of meat. We have also bought half a lamb from our a local farmer Nick & Lucy which was superb! Really love supporting local suppliers!

Harewood House in Harrogate (http://harewood.org)

And so now we are busy concentrating on Christmas as we spent the last two Christmases at my parents. I am looking forward to being in charge this year! I seem to be inviting anybody and everybody! Of my 4 children only 3 will be able to come this Christmas as my son is in Cyprus (with the army) and not home until January. We'll Skype or FaceTime etc. 

But for now I'm enjoying making my Christmas cake and planning where my Christmas tree will go etc etc...

See you in November 

Wendi x

September

Once again time flies and Autumn is upon us - although it looks like we'll be getting an Indian summer! 

This weather is really good for us as we are still working hard on the exterior of the house; we've had a massive amount of clearing up, hired a skip which we filled to the gunwales, lots of runs to the not so local tip and we finally cleared the massive mound of earth: this time only three lorries so 60 tonnes - not bad for us!!!

We now have an enormous hole ready for the rainwater harvesting tank; so the connection from the house to this will be next..

...in the meantime Richard continues every weekend to work hard on putting the fascia and guttering in place, Our very good friend David has tirelessly helped & it's made such a difference to a fidly time consuming job!  

It's looking really nice as you can see from some of the photos. We are optimistic this job will be finished at the weekend and then hopefully we can get our final sign off!!! 

Paul has scraped the border alongside the driveway so that I could get some of my potted plants planted to save having to water them as they were struggling,  however it's like planting in concrete; horrible horrible soil. We've worked out to get 4 inches of topsoil will be two 7 yd.³ skip fulls! 

The studio is nearly up and running & I have finally unpacked all my boxes and I've tried to create areas where I can work: wet and dry - not that I have actually achieved much on the textiles front this summer! My friend Carolyn (who has OCD in the tidy department!!) helped to put my fabrics in order...

Very organised fabrics?!! Wonder how long they'll stay like that??!!! 

Sketchbooks & boxes full of inspiration...

 I did do a little cushion project: dyed some fabrics and then printed them and now I'm embroidering  before I make them up into cushions more photos to follow..

Our new editions :

we finally decided it was time to have some more chickens! As I have been enjoying using my ovens and baking a lot -  I get quite fed up buying eggs; so we have bought three chickens - Daisybelle who is a hybrid Sussex and Rhode Island Red cross and will lay 300 eggs p/a. A Copper Maran called Matilda she is a pure Breed will lay very dark chocolate brown eggs approx 230 p/a and A Buff Orpington called Bodacea (Bodie for short) she's essentially a pet chicken who will become a very large bird & won't lay much & is broody often but we're ok with what works out at approximately as 10 eggs a week!! 

Matilda the Copper Maran

Daisybelle the Daisy Belle

Bodie the Buff Orpington

Lovely dark brown Maran eggs... Can't wait!! 

Chickens from The Warwickshire Chicken Coop http://www.warwickshirechickencoop.com

My dads been attacking part of the garden that's got very overgrown; I plan to take down & reuse the trellis, put the shed behind the trees with the compost heap and have a vegetable patch here - another job for another time!!

Finally I'm quite excited as we've been nominated for an award with Whychavon Council. They have 3 categories 1.A Heritage property 2. extension or conservatory and 3.a new build.

 Judging takes place in November - unfortunately we may not be finished enough to be considered but Stuart our Architect has put us forward anyway

You can read about it here: http://www.wychavon.gov.uk/news-and-alerts/-/blogs/the-hunt-for-great-design-starts-here

And so I'll sign off again and will hopefully be back with more exciting news soon!

Wendi x