HELLO ELLO,

I can’t actually believe it… but it’s been 2 and a half months since we moved into the new house.

Time has quite literally flown…

And… I have to apologise because I have been an utterly TERRIBLE ‘blogger’. (‘Blogger’ in inverted commas, because it still seems a bit bonkers that I have my own blog and clearly I’m not that great at keeping up to date with it!!)

Anyway, its time to rectify my wrongs… so here is a little run down of the new house and where we are up to with planning, the renovation etc.

 

 

Where to begin…

Well we now live in the countryside… and that’s a bit different!!

Mainly it’s very very very good different… but there are also a few ‘adjustment’ differences, that we are still working on…

Namely, the fact that it is currently the crack of dawn and I am wide awake thanks to Mr Owl, Mr Birdies and every other Fathingwood animal that feels like it’s appropriate to have a party in my garden at 5.05am.

 

 

The other is the spidey spiders who are absolutely EVERYWHERE… but lets face it, they are totally awesome and are obviously a real asset to the house. NOT.

However… I will not complain, because we are absolutely loving living here and I am sure I will become at one with nature… eventually.

The spiders… maybe not so much!!

We have moved to a beautiful little rural village just outside of Manchester. It’s not too far from the old house but it feels worlds apart in terms of way of life.

We live on a gorgeous little road and there is such an amazing community spirit here, which is something that we just didn’t have so much of in Hale.

 

 

Everyone is so lovely and friendly and I am total a social monkey, so for me this community life is a complete dream.

And… the best bit about the whole thing is we have three amazing pubs all within a few minutes walk from the house. I am absolutely LOVING it.

MR GIN here I come…

 

 

The house it’s self is a very very old, beautiful terraced cottage. It literally has so much charm that it doesn’t know what to do with itself.

It actually used to be a mid terrace back in the day, but the cottages to the right of it were sadly knocked down in the 60’s, so now it is propping up the end.

 

 

The moment I walked through the door I fell in love and even though we haven’t put our own stamp on it yet, it already feels completely like home.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been a few ‘challenging’ days and we are absolutely desperate to get going with the renovation.

But hopefully good things come to those who wait and we really need to keep our fingers crossed that the planners like our plans.

 

 

After LOTS of back and forth with the architect (he hates me)… we finally submitted our planning application a month ago.

So for now we sit tight and wait out the gruelling 8-12 weeks until they tell us a yay or a nay.

It is fairly safe to say that in terms of planning we haven’t picked the easiest route…

The house sits in a conservation area and in green belt land… so there is no permitted development allowed here. Unfortunately, you need planning permission to so much as chop down a tree…

 

 

But… we love a challenge and it wouldn’t be quite right if we didn’t complicate things for ourselves.

So for now I will stay optimistic and hope that we get told a YAY!!

As it stands the house has two receptions rooms, a kitchen, utility room, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom… plus an attic room but it doesn’t have proper stairs up to it and it isn’t properly converted.

 

 

We have asked to create 3 reception rooms (although 2 will be open plan), a kitchen, utility room, downstairs toilet, 3 bedrooms (one ensuite), a dressing room and a master bathroom.

We would be gaining the extra space through doing an attic conversion, a double storey extension to square off the back of the house and then another single storey box extension on the back of that.

IF we get planning permission, it is safe to say that the builders (and I) will be veeeeerrrrryyyyy busy.

 

 

The house is currently very quirky.

There are quite literally bits of walls everywhere…

And we also have multiple different floor levels, which is far from ideal when you are trying to create and open plan space.

It has most definitely NOT been every architects dream house to design!!

 

 

In terms of the design for the interior and internal layout of the house, we are not quite there yet.

I have of course spent hours on Insta and Pinterest swooning over beautiful homes.

I have ideas… in fact I have too many of them…

Obviously the house will be grey. Thats a given.

But unfortunately for me, I am one of these people who loves lots of different styles and it takes me months and months to make any decisions in the fear of getting it ‘wrong’!!

That said… my flavour of the month at the moment is a white company/ Neptune type feel... with a scandi influence. 

But I change my mind like the wind, so next week it will be something else… there leith another problem!!

 

 

However, I am told that before I can get too carried away with the interior ‘stuff’… I do have to deal with the fairly important task of trying to work out where we are going to live while we do the work…

We have batted many ideas around but the plan at the moment is to live on site… in a caravan… for probably 4/5 months… over Winter!!

I actually can’t work out if its a genius idea or just plain bonkers. But either way… we are currently on the hunt for a caravan to either rent or maybe even buy!!

We are complete caravan novices and totally out of our depth… so if there are any experts out there, then all advice is very much welcomed… (yes this is a PLEA!!)

 

 

I will of course keep you updated on our renovation journey and I will write again when we hopefully have some (good) news to tell…!!

Before I go I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who has been so kind and messaged about our new home.

It has been so overwhelming and I am really grateful that I get to share this journey with so many amazing and inspiring people…

All my love

Gem xxx

♥