A New Home

Dream kitchen (image: Johanna Flyckt)

A big hello to everyone and apologies for having been away for so long. We have been through the exciting but very time and nerve consuming process of buying a house.

I don't know what buying a house is like in other countries, but here in the UK once your offer has been accepted, you will need to invest money in surveys and searches, which can cost you several hundred Pounds, while the house could still fall through any day and for any reason. So for about 3 months we were spending money on our potential future home and kept our fingers crossed that everything would work out fine and so it did!

And now here we are, in our new home. It's a wonderful feeling to finally own a place, but as I have learned over the last two weeks, it also requires a lot of patience.

Our house was built in the 1950s and needs quite a bit of updating. Let's say not much has been done to it since 1969. And as much as I love vintage, it really needs a faceover.

But where do you start? Upstairs, downstairs, bathroom, kitchen?

The oven in the kitchen is broken, so a new kitchen would be great. On the other hand, the shower in the bathroom is only dripping, which makes washing my long hair a nightmare. Therefore, a new bathroom is in order. Especially as the old one has fitted carpet on the floor. When was that ever a good idea?

Anyway, I think you need to live in a house for a while to get a feeling for it and to realise what you want to do to it and after a few weeks in the house, we decided that it's the electricity that needs doing so we'll be rewiring the whole house for a start. Boring, you think. I know. But also a great opportunity to finally use the skills I acquired during my interior design course, so I have drawn up a lighting plan for the whole house. Daunting at first but not that hard after all.

Lighting is such an important thing to get right. Inadequate or poorly planned lighting can not only be annoying when doing your day to day tasks in a house, it can also completely ruin a house's atmosphere.

Well thought through lighting on the other hand creates ambience and offers you adequate task lighting where you need it without creating any hot spots.

So let's get started. Again, I'm becoming impatient and I want to see this house change. Bring the electrician in, or like the English call him tenderly, the 'sparky'.

tbc...