Still so much to do

Just in case you were under the impression that our house must be nearly perfect by now I thought I would share some photos that show you how much more there is to do. It's not just the windows!

One of the biggest things we're ignoring is the cupboard under the stairs. With this lovely peeling checked vinyl wallpaper. The fact that the fridge is there makes doing things difficult. Also we're worried that if we start taking off the sagging wallpaper, half the plaster may come away too.

To legitimate our worry, here is a close up to show that a previous owner decided that tin foil was a suitable plastering/polyfilla material.....

...so much so that they used it around the kitchen cupboards too...

...and around this pipe in the outhouse

We realised the other day that we haven't actually done much in the bathroom, apart from make my Mum clean it and put some nice plants and pictures in there. (Having just checked though we did put on a new door knob and make some curtains AND spend hundreds on our boiler!!!)

And this broken extractor pipe has always annoyed me too. Broken, why? Because someone cut it to feed an electricity cable through.

Jon won't be happy, but for all his and his Dad's painting, they've never done the final coat on the hallway.

And this large unfinished polyfilla lump has been in the sitting room since we took out the carriage lights in September! 

The woodwork needs painting around the door. Maybe we should paint the door too, what do you think?

Again, Jon and Stephen need to finish the painting of the stairs.

Also, we have 2 fire hearths upstairs in the bedroom and music room that we covered in black bin bags and rugs as soon as we moved in because we thought they might be made of asbestos. We should think about what to do with those. (14 Agnes Road was where we used to live by the way)

This is the hatch to the loft. It is very dirty. We should do something about that.

Bits of the floor in the kitchen are coming up. But I know that Maudie's boyfriend Luke laid some the same in their house so maybe we could get him to do ours too.

There's also the small issue of the strange half blocked fireplace but more on that soon!

Modifications

After mixing up my tasty compost with my Mum the other day I realised that our compost bin was a bit too tall. It was hard to reach in when moving my compost and I got a bit grazed heaving buckets of the good stuff in. So I decided to take the top off. Jon bought us a new saw and we got to work.

A trip to the archives

Inspired by the need for new windows we decided to try and find out what our little house looked like prior to pebble-dashing. So we booked a visit to the Waltham Forest Archives to see what they had. Unfortunately they didn't have any photos of our road but they did have lots of lovely Ordnance Survey maps. So we found out that our house was around in 1895 and that it did used to have a bay.

O/S 3.60 1895

Trying to avoiding the inevitable

One of the reasons I post so much about the garden, and increasingly little about the house, it that we're starting to come up against the big projects. The things we're a bit too lazy to do, or can't do, or can't afford to do. Unfortunately these projects just seem to multiply.

The big one of the moment is our windows. Whilst I'm not that bothered about living in a faux-cottage for the time being (we're here for the long-haul and anyway we can't afford to do everything at once) the downstairs window needs replacing. This brings up lots of ugly questions about what to do with it. The only thing I'm certain about is that I don't want little panes of glass anymore.

1. Shall we get all the windows done at once or should we spend all our savings on making the bottom window better?
2. Should we go all out and get a bay reinstated? Did our house even have a bay? Could we even afford this, ever?
3. Would the house look funny with a flat window on the ground floor?
4. How will installing new windows affect the pebble-dash?
5. Why do we care about the pebble-dash?
6. Is patchy pebble-dash even worse than normal pebble-dash?
7. Which quote should we go for? 
8. Can't we just spend the money on something fun like a holiday and some new shoes instead?

Just to add to my worry, I found a funny growth on one of the windows the other day. It didn't have anything growing in it, just brown powdery stuff. Arrrrrgggghhhhhh!!!

Patterntastic!

One of the good things about working on a short term contract is that just a year after you get one leaving present, you get another. This time, along with a natty bag, mug, badge and sweets, I got a lovely moquette cushion - a bit of a tradition when leaving the Learning Team at London Transport Museum.

We (oh ok it was Jenny Lloyd, aka Mum Lloyd) decided it looked best on the Welsh chair along with some tartan blankets, just to really bring out the pattern.

If you too want to go nuts with pattern you can order moquette cushions from the LTM shop. Then you can imagine you're sitting on a tube train (or a bus!) in the comfort of your own home.

The good stuff

Mum Guthrie came down to keep me company during my 2 weeks of unemployment and do some gardening today. This seems like a good excuse to show you some pictures of my Alys-wanna-be garden.

Look! Isn't it beautiful? And I can eat almost all of it!

Can you spot Mum doing some weeding next to the sunflowers?

Courgettes and beans and calendular and sunflowers!

Strawberries and chives and thyme!

Red chard and purple cabbages bring some tasty colour to the garden. I can't believe how far it's come in so few months. Can't believe what it looked like in December!

While Mum was here I also made her help me turn the compost into my new bin. This is because it would be dirty and a bit smelly and require heavy lifting and these are some of the things my Mum likes most about gardening, along with serious pruning.

Putting the tasty brown stuff in the new bin.

Giving it a good stir.

Red worms! Scrumptious!