recent Renovation blogs
our initial advice when buying abroad

our initial advice when buying abroad

Finally, work has started in the house. We visited last week and arrived to the sound of chiselling and hammering as years of plaster was starting to be removed from the walls of the rooms on the first floor. The downstairs rooms were filling up with scaffolding and...

our renovation learning : #1

our renovation learning : #1

Although we have renovated houses before, this seems a very different renovation. In our very first house, we did change it a lot, but we did nothing structural. Mostly, it seemed to be constant decorating and moving things around, which we did ourselves. When we sold...

the start of something new…

the start of something new…

Although it still feels as if we are on a very extended holiday here in Andalucia, and will be returning to Istria and our stone house, we're going to soon realise that this is not the case. We actually completed on the Spanish house in October, but have only visited...

a whole new renovation

a whole new renovation

When we decided to sell our house in Istria and move to Spain, we initially didn't look at future renovation projects. We thought that we wanted somewhere we would move in, and tinker around the edges, putting our stamp on the property. But, the more that we looked...

honeysuckle success story

honeysuckle success story

Over the past four or five years, we've had mixed success with our three honeysuckle plants. They have been moved around the garden quite a lot, due to some extensive renovation works, and last year, we dug them up out of big wooden planters, where they were supported...

a little bit of art deco design

a little bit of art deco design

Our Istrian stone house has not an iota of art deco about it. With a very traditional Mediterranean stone house structure, a Scandi inspired interior and a contemporary exterior, there's nothing at all that hints at this popular design style of the 1920s and 1930s....

repurposing a chimney pot

repurposing a chimney pot

One of the stranger things we packed into the back of the removal lorry when we came out to Istria, was the large clay, chimney pot which had been removed from the roof of our West Didsbury house, when we were renovating it, because it was redundant. I'm not sure why...

house reno : stairs : update 3

house reno : stairs : update 3

It's been a while since I first posted about the stairs which lead down from our living room, into what we now call The Snug. I'm glad to say that the very dangerous wooden stairs which we inherited have now been completely renovated and made a lot safer in the...

villa cesare : savudrija : istria

villa cesare : savudrija : istria

A little bit of a different renovation tale today. One that is slightly more ambitious than the one we have embarked upon! When we're out and about in Istria, we often stumble upon what we think are hidden treasures. Things that we think only we know about. Istria is...

our very unique feature

our very unique feature

Although the whole job isn't quite 100% complete, we do have a very, very unique feature in our house. If you've never seen any of our photos, or read any of our renovation blogs, you might not not know about our Well Room. And, that's clue. The name we call the room....