Thursday 19 September 2013

under renovation...


As you can tell from the photos my life is complete chaos right now living with 2 small children in the middle of a building site.  I've really enjoyed reading along with Naomi of Coulda Shoulda Woulda with her mews house renovations and has inspired me to share what my life is like right now. 

When we moved into our Victorian terraced house 3 years ago we were completely overwhelmed with all of the space just coming from a small 2 bedroom flat.  Fast forward a couple of years and 2 kids later we are pretty much busting out of this house.  We are in the middle of extending our kitchen and because of all the structural work involved we pretty much have to tear down the back half of the house and start over.  With things costing a fortune in London it's not in the budget to move out during the construction.  

My son was really excited about the tools and builders until he quickly realized that it meant that all of his toys have moved to storage and there is very little space to run around.  Because the kids are on different sleep schedules we moved my daughter into my son's room since she goes to be about 1.5 hours before him.  And my son's little toddler bed now sits at the foot of our bed which he is pretty annoyed about.  He is really into his own space and actually despises sleeping in the room with us.  My wonderful husband pointed out yesterday that we are about 1/3 done with the project and it feels like an eternity already.  Trying to stay really positive about the whole thing because we are getting to build our dream London house and all of the inconvenience is so worth it.  The builders are all working really hard and the poor guys are getting rained on nearly everyday.  It's insanely loud and dusty as our neighbors got bought out by property developers and building works are going on simultaneously.  Luckily everyone in this house is a sound sleeper and the kids can sleep through the noise.  All of this construction is so typical in London currently and you can walk down any street and a handful of houses are being extended or having basement excavations.  It's the sign of a booming property market!

On top of it all, it's become winter overnight and it is freezing cold inside the house.  We thankfully got hot water back but the radiators have still not been hooked up yet.  The only thing separating the back half of the house to the outdoors is a couple of pieces of timber so we are layering up and I really need to dig out the gloves.  The builders have kindly built me a temporary kitchen in my living room and I'm getting quite creative cooking with a microwave, toaster oven, and panini grill (which I have hardly ever used before all of this).  What is so ironic is that we spending a fortune building a bigger house but we are actually really getting by living out of 2 bedrooms, a make shift kitchen and no bathtub for the children to bathe in.  You will frequently find me roaming the streets looking with 2 dirty kids searching for a bathtub and I'm so lucky to have such great friends all living within walking distance.  All I can say is that this is going to be a long cold winter!

image sources

Hopefully by the New Year we will have a spacious and open kitchen to enjoy and I don't even know how many meals I will be cooking up to repay everyone for always taking us in and feeding us.  I am very excited that we ordered our gorgeous aluminum bifold doors for the new kitchen yesterday and will be installed in 4 weeks time.  It is seriously the most expensive item on the budget and they really will transform our kitchen.  What I'm really excited about is that it means we won't be freezing our buns off anymore, well except for when they start tearing up the upstairs where our bedrooms are!  More reasons to stock up on cashmere sweaters not that I ever really need a reason.  In the meantime I will continue to fuel my Pinterest addiction and keep ordering wallpaper, tile and carpet samples to keep me sane.

4 comments:

  1. OMG so similar to you right now but I guess it's because we are in London doing renos so the whole time I was shaking my head in agreement! My neighbour's old house also got bought out by a developer and they are doing basements which is crazy living next to! What is going on with the market anyway? aren't we in a recession still?? Not fair though because you make even your renos looks nice ;p The side return is one of the best investments and returns for a Victorian so even though I hate to say it - it will be worth it! Please keep us updated on the works xx PS we are ordering our bifold doors today!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's funny how we can always fill up any empty spaces with our junk. It doesn't matter if you're moving from a flat to a mansion, you'll still fill it up in no time at all. I'm absolutely terrified of clutter. Each time we move, we seem to require a bigger van/truck etc. BUT......I would love to have a spacious kitchen. I can't wait to see what your house looks like when it's done.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Looking forward to an inaugural Margarita Monday in the new kitchen!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wish to have that kitchen design. Looks so organized and cozy.

    ReplyDelete