Although we are lucky enough to have a few options regarding where we can eat, sometimes we just want to eat in the living room, where the big woodburner is and where we can watch TV. When we've done this in the past, it's had to be on the sofa, eating dinner on our...
Although we've largely finished the renovations of our stone house, I can always find something else that needs to be done. So, effectively, it always "unfinished". But not on the scale of these properties, which have been designed to be deliberately "unfinished"....
Not all renovation projects need to involve demolition and mess and heavy tools and living with dust and dirt. I like to think that's all kind of behind us - at least for now, but we never say never. These days, our renovation projects are quite small scale, very...
In a previous post I wrote about our desire to eradicate the parts of internal walls which have not been plastered and are still the original Istrian stone. Some people would love the walls, but as the years have gone on, I have to say my love of exposed stone -...
Throughout the house, in most of the rooms - apart from the ones we have totally taken apart and renovated - there is still evidence of it being an original Istrian house. A lot of the walls are either fully plastered, or at least, partially. And where they are only...
Looking back over photos taken when we came out to view the house in Istria, and stay over as guests of the owners, has been a real experience. I can remember, obviously, what condition the house and garden was in - pretty awful, to be fair! - but as we live in the...
Sunday 16th October 2016 saw us meeting up with the couple who we were buying our Istrian home from, and staying over in the house. With hindsight, all a bit bizarre. But then, not much about this adventure has been normal, so I guess we started off as we were meant...
The kitchen was the first room in our Istrian stone house to receive the full renovation treatment. The units we had inherited were ripped out, the flooring taken out, the ceiling taken down, a new window installed, brand new units and appliances fitted and under...
A small, abandoned cottage - in need of much TLC - sits behind our main house. It belonged to one of our neighbours and when he offered to sell it to us, we decided to go for it. The little house, which we think was possibly connected to our house many, many years...
This rather lovely rustic, wooden A-frame ladder, hinged at the top and held together at the bottom with thick rope, hasn't really been utilised in our house as well as it could have been. It's usually covered in throws, which as the weather warms up, are discarded...