Well, it’s all go here in my little corner of the world. I cannot wait for this to be all done. It’s moving fast but it’s messy and tiring. The external wall insulation (essentially, all the grey styrofoam) has gone up around the house and they’re starting to do the first coat of render. The …
My dear friend, Abby, gave me this awesome mid-century modern dining set. She gave it to me because was getting rid of it (it had belonged to her parents) and I needed temporary furniture to get us through our first year of living at Matilda House before the renovations started. I didn’t originally have any …
Things have reverted back to looking pretty messy around here with all the supplies for the external wall insulation (EWI) and everything that goes with it but the EWI work has started along with remediation of work that was either not completed or done poorly / incorrectly but the previous builder (too many things to …
I’ve been staring at the side of this 6 foot x 8 foot shed out of my back windows for three years. I was going to get rid of it before the construction started but we decided to keep it because it was handy to have to store things in. It’s now finally gone and …
Phase 2 has started — 3 years into this journey since I purchased Matilda House. The exterior is getting completed. There’s still work to be done inside but I’ll be happy to get through this next big tranche of work. In preparation for the external wall insulation which is going on the outside, I finally …
I’ve managed a lot of renovation projects over the years between personal and work-related projects and this one has taken the cake. Everything has been delayed (even my grown-up sofa that I ordered in January is still not in stock) and the costs are rising left and right. Time overages and cost overages are not …
Read more “The challenges of renovation work in uncertain times”
This doesn’t exactly look like a house we hope to inhabit in the next five weeks but that’s the goal. A crack at the front (which wasn’t subsidence, thank goodness) proved to be more of an issue than originally anticipated so the builder decided a better approach was to re-build the impacted section. And the …
I took the little princess by the house over the weekend because she hadn’t seen the updates in quite a long time. We are STILL waiting on new windows and the front door but the building team have been putting up the plasterboard and they’ve been tiling the non-window walls in the bathrooms. Things are …
First of all, I have to say that I’m pretty far behind on my real estate terminology as I’ve been using “Master Bedroom” — which, in my defense, is also how it’s commonly labelled here in Ireland in the property listings and also how my female architect labelled what will be my room! And then …
Things are still sloooow with construction at the new house so I’m digging deep to keep myself motivated by looking back to the improvements on the original Tilly’s Cottage. Here are some before and after photos of one of the original upstairs bedrooms. The “rough luxe” approach to design was in vogue when I was …