I posted at length late last year about all of the things that had gone wrong with our new house. This week marks a year since we moved and as I feel like we’re finally starting to settle in — I know, after 12 months! — it seemed poignant to give an update.

Many of the things that I’d written about are still unresolved issues:

• the central heating still needs replacing
• we still haven’t even looked at the blown extractor hood
• the doors still don’t fit their frames properly, and the conservatory door seems to be falling apart now too
• there are still places that smell like dog
• I’ve not finished painting over their terrible paint jobs

…but nothing else has gone catastrophically wrong (touch wood, if you’re that way inclined) and we have started tackling smaller jobs. Over the past few months we finally got round to fixing the various tap problems: completely replacing every single usable tap, including the outside tap. This means no more dripping, and more importantly, it no longer takes 45 minutes to run a bath (this isn’t an exaggeration, that’s genuinely how long it used to take.) Giving how much I’ve been relying on a hot bath to sooth long run aches and pains, this has proved a huge relief.

Ironically having fallen in love with this house (or, how this house was presented) because of the little office nook at the bottom of the stairs, the complete lack of natural light and cold drafts from the stairwell and garage conversion finally got too much and I migrated my ‘office’ to the conservatory. Having rearranged the dining table I’ve been able to fit a small desk in the corner, which is enough for my little laptop and me. Long term I’d like to properly convert the garage to a decent home office and remove the conservatory, extending the kitchen out of the back with attached utility, but that’s a few years off yet.

After digging up the garden with my sister earlier this year I’ve been able to get beans, peas and tomatoes in the ground over the past month or so. All of the strawberries survived my risky early planting, and the raspberries and blueberries are doing really well too. The garden is providing much needed solace on bad days, as well as a good excuse to get up and move around for 5 minutes here and there; there’s always weeds that need pulling. Even from this viewpoint by the kitchen window, you can see what a huge difference there is between the ‘jungle’ of 2018 and the more controlled/planned planting happening now!

(And no, I’ve still not built the kid’s climbing frame.)

I still feel betrayed by this house sometimes, as daft as that sounds, but each tiny moment of pleasure adds up, and one day this should all feel like a minor blip in an otherwise blissful home life. Hopefully. :)

Lead photo by John Moeses Bauan

After my last post on food storage for potential Brexit shortages, I’m sure I’ve convinced you all that I’ve gone full-on ‘tinfoil hat’ wearing, zombie apocalypse predicting, hippy nutjob. Let me reassure you that, while I’ve always been a bit of a hippy nutjob, I still don’t think there’s going to be a zombie apocalypse…. read full entry »

After blogging at the beginning of the month about my belief in autonomous parenting and independent play, a big part of which involves chucking the kids in the garden and letting them get on with it… The kids are taking it in turns to "rescue" each other off the climbing frame. Taking bets on who… read full entry »

After Flymo pretty much demolished the majority of my seedlings earlier on the year, my enthusiasm for the garden waned somewhat. I lost interest in the daily maintenance required to keep the beds free of dandelions, grass pathways free of nettles etc and the continued (mostly) good weather has given everything a massive boost. I’ve… read full entry »

Last year we built a cat run. The original plan was to have one built for us by a guy who specialises in bespoke wooden runs but after 2 visits he went quiet and despite numerous calls and emails we’ve never heard anything back. Anyway, we did some searching and found some metal run panels… read full entry »

In August last year, we bought 21 rolls of turf on a whim to replace a large patch of gravel out the back without a) measuring the garden or b) making preparations beforehand. It took 3 days to de-gravel, de-concrete and then lay the turf which, having been sat outside a local Homebase, was already… read full entry »

…next to Izz, who’s fast asleep in her car seat. Typing feels weird, because the skin on my fingers has been shredded from shovelling gravel and lifting concrete. We went out to try and buy Isabel a slide yesterday, and while we couldn’t find one (end of season, all shops seem to be swapping garden… read full entry »