So Project House is underway but I’m afraid I haven’t got much of an update yet.  Things have slowed down a bit on our new Barry Island house refurbishment. Why, you may ask?  Well firstly my Mum has moved to a smaller property which needed some serious updating. This has meant that Mr C has been laying laminate floors for her while I’ve been decluttering the old family home and garden. In addition Daughter Number 3 bought her first house.  Being a poor Millennial she had to buy cheaply which meant buying a house which needs a fair bit of work. So, amongst other things, Mr. C has been teaching her and her other half how to tile, whilst helping them fill a 10 Yard Skip with old kitchen and bathroom paraphernalia. The perils of being a member of the sandwich generation eh!

Glass Roofs

She’s got a fantastic sized garden for a first home.  To be honest, it’s a pretty good sized garden for any home.  She has a lovely patio which catches the afternoon and evening sun – perfect for wine o’clock! She’s been talking about building out onto the patio which would add value to the house and bring extra light in to the living room too.

There are some gorgeous glass roofs around for conservatories right now and boy do they change the look and feel of your house. If she were to put French doors the width of her dining room and build a conservatory , she could have one of those on-trend lantern roofs.  This would allow natural light to flood into the lounge area, making it a fabulous light and bright living space.

A Courtyard Garden?

We’ve been having similar thoughts about our own house. Unlike our previous house which had a large back and a small front garden, our new house has more of a small courtyard out the back.  I hesitate to say a ‘courtyard garden’ yet, as at this point, it’s distinctly lacking the garden side of things. We need to get some colour into the area first. It’s distinctly grey and ‘concretey’ at the moment so more small skips coming soon we reckon.  

I can imagine it though, with a few hanging baskets, a duck-egg blue painted wall, colourful flowers, a bistro set and a little summer-house. Quite the perfect setting for a sundowner really. A Summer House aka conservatory/extension/orangerie would be a perfect addition to the back of our house. Not only would it bring a lot more light into the area but it would mean we could still enjoy the sunshine in the Autumn and Spring when it’s not quite warm enough to sit outside.

New Kitchen Blinds

Anyway, it’s all pie in the proverbial sky right now as Mr. C is currently putting in our new kitchen. The wooden floor and white Shaker-style units are already in situ as is the Rangemaster range. So far though, I’ve yet to decide on tiles.  Numerous other decisions need to be made too. but boy am I useless at making decisions! I’ve spent weeks looking at different websites looking for blinds for my bay windows.

I don’t want curtains as I want a more minimal and contemporary look. However, I’ve been wavering between roller blinds and roman blinds and simply couldn’t make my mind up on the colours. (How amazing would it be to have an interior designer who could make all those decisions for us! Am I really the only person who stresses over the simplest of home-improvement decisions! Aaargghhhh …)

As it happens, I went for some Roman Blinds from MakeMyBlinds.co.uk . The fabric is called Speckle Sunflower and they look absolutely stunning on my bay windows in the dining area and on the smaller window above the sink. They really finish the kitchen off well and look way more stylish than I was expecting. Even better, they didn’t break the bank!