Getting the keys!

Today was an exciting day. We got the keys to our new house! It feels amazing to know that we are free from the restrictions and insecurity of having a landlord.

James picked up the keys today and went over to our house (OUR house!!) to drop off the car load of stuff that he took back to Birmingham.

My fab husband even put together Georgie’s bed so that is officially the first piece of furniture into the house!

The house even comes with a mysterious locked cupboard…

And a free wind chime!

We have some decorating do to in our future, but nothing too major.

The kitchen/diner needs a complete makeover but the units are in better condition than we feared, meaning that we will probably get away with some sprucing up of the cupboard doors, and replacing the lino wall covering with tiling & painting. The lino floor will be on the to do list, and in the meantime at least it is easy to clean and maintain.

We were expecting to have to change quite a bit of the flooring upstairs as the spare room & the girls’ room both have awful squeaky lino flooring. James has investigated those rooms and thankfully the lino isn’t fixed down at all, and he pulled it away to reveal floorboards in excellent condition. Instead of laying laminate flooring as originally planned, we are going to look into sanding and varnishing the floorboards instead.

The hallway and landing is pretty much plain plasterboard so we need to decide what to do with that. The understairs area isn’t blocked in so my dream project is to turn it into an indoor playhouse/den for the children, which will then have storage for some of their toys and books. A cheap & fairly temporary way of doing this could be with a fabric wall with a tie back door & window, and fairy lights attached to the underside of the stairs for lighting. I’m not sure if going all out with a stud wall would be feasible at this point!

Our bedroom is an ugly shade of green with a border around the walls at ceiling height, so giving that a quick & cheap makeover will be high on my priorities list. I’d love a calming colour that isn’t too cool. The carpet is dark green & we can’t afford to change that, so we will have to hunt for something that works well with that.

James has arranged for the removal “man & van” company that put our furniture into storage in December to go and get it all out again on Saturday, which will give him a week to get it vaguely organised and to shift a load more stuff out of the storage container into the house. Stair gates will be a priority!

I get my hands on these keys a week on Saturday, when James comes down to Cornwall and takes us home. I can’t wait!