I hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Year. I can’t believe it’s already the second week of January! Wild. It’s been lovely to take a break, but now it’s back to work and back to blogging (which is much more fun!)
Late last year and over the break, we have been working on the house renovations some more. Nothing major, after the big ol’ bathroom reno took it out of us. But we’ve got some nice new garden beds, where I’ve been growing various things, including my first ever dahlias. Photo evidence of these garden prima donnas below:
We also cut down what felt like endless quantities of overgrown trees and hedges. It’s a good start, but there are still so many to go. Not to mention the stumps that we’ll need to rip out at some point. However, there’s already so much more space and light in the house and garden with the heavy hedging starting to give ground. The goal for this year is to start turning our backyard of red dirt into lush grass.
New year, new windows
Inside, I made some progress on painting window frames and fixing the fly screens. Most of them were so badly ripped, there almost wasn’t any point having them. But now we have some nice, tight screens and the insects can stay outside, where they belong.
Of all the painting jobs I’ve had to do so far, I think spray painting window frames is my favourite. It’s as close to instant gratification as you can get with painting. Yes, there’s lots of prep work and drying time. But so much less than when painting anything else. And the end result! So crisp and fresh. I couldn’t believe what a difference changing these frames from beige to white would make.
I also discovered that replacing flyscreens yourself is both much faster and much cheaper than I thought. It’s one of the few jobs that has turned out less, rather than more, so that was nice. It also makes such a difference having clean, tight, hole-free flyscreens in the windows again. Maybe others wouldn’t notice, but I do. Not only is it more functional, but I like to think it’s all helping to make the old girl look less shabby and down at heel.
2024 is about flexibility and optimism
Other house discoveries were less fun. We have some things we will need to prioritise instead of other areas, which is a change of plans, and may need professional intervention. That’s a bit disappointing for both the plans and the budget.
But that’s life with a fixer-upper! There’s always something that needs work. I have a love hate relationship with that. I would love it if there was less to fix, especially things like drain problems. But at the same time, I do find real satisfaction from learning a new skill and fixing something myself. Watching this house come back from where it was almost a year ago has been so rewarding. And it’s already a lovely place to live. I can’t wait to see what she looks like at the end of another year.
And I look forward to taking you on the journey this year. There’s lots of house reno work to share, lots of books to review, and a third anniversary of the blog to celebrate. Thanks for coming along on the ride!
