Unlike previous renovations, when we've actually lived in the properties as they were being renovated, this time, we have lived in an apartment, by the sea, a good couple of hours drive away. Each...
Renovation…
In the beginning, our blogs were mainly about destruction, demolition, debris, dirt, dust and sometimes, despair. It wasn’t easy, and sometimes, sitting in our new “home”, surrounded by boxed up belongings and builders’ tools and ladders and half built walls, we did wonder what we had done. But those walls do get built, the tools are finally dispensed with and the familiar belongings find new homes. We’re now able to document the “nice” bits of the reno project – the upcycling, the recycling, the repurposing. Making empty spaces into rooms. Breathing new life back into a house which needed a lot of TLC.
We hope that this journal will provide inspiration if you are embarking on a similar journey. We hope that it will give you the courage to just do it. And we hope that it will give you an unshakeable sense of belief that it can be done. Because it can. And guess what? We’re still doing it. The house may be finished – although we never say never – and so our focus has been on major demolition and construction work at both the front and rear of the house. Want to know all about our renovations?
Open a bottle of wine, curl up on the sofa and come and join us on our journey…
recent renovation blogs
andalucian reno journey #1
The renovation - well, I say *renovation*, but what I really mean is demolition - started in earnest a few weeks ago. We are very lucky that we've bagged ourselves a gorgeous apartment to rent, in a...
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...
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...
the snug reno : update 1
We’re finally beginning to tackle the room which we’ve rarely gone into – the indoor cellar. Indoor, because we also have an outdoor cellar. This room sits under the living room, but feels joined to...
living room reno : update 1
We’re at the stage in our house renovation, where we can now be quite a bit bolder in terms of decor. We’ve taken on an Istrian stone house, which in parts, is over 200 years old – and possibly more...
downstairs bathroom reno : update 2
For the first year of living in the house, we made do with the bathroom we inherited. OK, we tarted it up a bit – everything painted white, essentially – but it was still quite poorly laid out, with...
garden reno : update 1
It seems like no time since we were in the depths of winter, with no kitchen, a gaping hole in the wall where the new window was being fitted and heavy falling snow. It’s now mid-summer and...
kitchen reno : update 7
Given that work on the kitchen started way back in November, we did cut it a bit fine to greet our first guests last week. Admittedly, the scope of the project grew and grew, but we did think our...
well room reno : update 1
When we renovated our house in West Didsbury, in 2014, we knew that we wanted a concrete bench. A multi-purpose bench, where we could cook, eat, work and hang out. Our builder had not done one...
our renovation story so far, in istria…
Most people, at some stage in their lives, will embark on a renovation project. Whether it’s doing up a corner in the living room or a full blown house rebuild, it will bring its stresses. We did it...
downstairs bathroom reno : update 1
In the year that we have lived in The House, the small downstairs bathroom has gone through a number of changes. It’s not in the most ideal location, being right off The Well Room, which will...
kitchen reno : update 6
Oh, didn’t I just end the last renovation blog post on a bit of a high? Loving that the undercoating was about to start in the kitchen, meaning we could almost, but not quite, see the finishing...
kitchen reno : update 5
We think we are now on the final hurdle, kitchen renovation wise. It seems like we’ve been living forever without a decent working kitchen we can call our own – in fact, since we sold our house in...
kitchen reno : update 4
It’s the weekend, but that doesn’t stop our builders. Give them their due, there’s some work ethic being displayed here! We *think* that the major drilling work might be over for this phase of the...
kitchen reno : update 3
It’s been a while since I’ve recorded anything about the kitchen renovation, simply because nothing massive – or Instagram worthy – seems to have happened recently. But actually, a lot has happened...
house reno : stairs : update 1
Who’d have thought stairs could be so problematic? To be honest, I’ve never really given stairs a lot of thought, because they’re just…there. But our stairs need a lot of thinking about, because...
house renovation : floors
Although our house is quite old – we think parts of it are over 200 years old – and is quite traditional in structural style to many of the stone houses in Istria, we are determined to stamp a...
well, well, well…
One of the more unusual features of our house is an internal well. A working well, at that – we know when we’ve had a deluge as we can hear the rain water roaring into it. We don’t know how old it...