recent blogs

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...

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....

concrete table

concrete table

When we lived in West Didsbury, we renovated our three bedroom terraced house, knocking down internal walls, and eventually creating a very contemporary, open plan home, which included a large L-shaped concrete bench, with storage underneath. When we bought our house...

entrance to our home

entrance to our home

When we bought our house in Istria in 2016, it looked very different to how it does today. It was kind of quarter renovated. The roof was new. The guttering was new. Windows had been fitted. And that was just about it. But, we saw the potential - even seeing ahead, to...

secret garden progress

secret garden progress

It's only called the Secret Garden because it's partly hidden from view and it sounds a whole nicer than the back garden. Since the weather broke and we've had lovely long days of hot sunshine, the builders have been beavering away, trying to recreate our vision. Back...

demolition…

demolition…

We've thought long and hard about how much current renovation we want to do in our Istrian stone house, as it is imminently going on the market, as we have plans for a whole new adventure. However, with the demolition and clearance of the small stone cottage behind...

garden wall construction begins…

garden wall construction begins…

Having lived for six years now with the view out of our living room window being the small stone house we purchased from a neighbour, things are going to be looking very different, very soon. The vine...

hallway reno

hallway reno

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...

an anniversary…

an anniversary…

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...

secret garden reno : update 1

secret garden reno : update 1

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...