If you’ve been following my journey on Instagram you’ll know that in March, Dan and I moved into our forever home. I wanted to post another update following my blog post in June to update readers on what progress we are making alongside working full-time!

For a very long time the property was used as a halfway house for a religious charity so we were effectively taking ownership of a HUGE project. It was obvious not a lot of money had gone into any of the decoration, electrics, plumbing, the heating system or large kitchen – everything had been done as cheaply as possible and safety didn’t seem to be a factor in that. However, underneath the shoddy wiring and interesting décor’ is a jewel of a house just waiting to be rediscovered.

The first major task was the farm electricity. The whole farm was run off of the main, outdated electricity board on a household, non-watertight cable. Once this was sorted, the electrics in the house were then tackled and separated, with certain sections being turned off completely for being unsafe. The large house is now run off of 3 circuit boards so each section can work out how much electricity is being used.

Secondly, we had to work on the windows. Our house was the only part of the large property that had original, single-pain sash windows which looked lovely from afar but didn’t match the rest of the PVC windows on the property and did NOTHING at keeping the house warm. We had to replace 4 windows (1 which was over 2 metres long!) and fit a new PVC, lockable back door.

Amongst these other projects, I set to decorating the spare room so we could have guests stay over. This project cost about £80 in total and involved buying paint and accessories for the room. Everything else we already had or were gifted. Our own bedroom, living room and bathroom I decorated with the help of Dan’s Mum and sister just before we moved in, so they were already liveable. The bathroom does need replacing but with a little spruce up and regular cleaning, it should last us another 2-3 years. That way we can stagger the cost of the renovation. I’ve also been working on the garden all summer as well and next year I plan to really knuckle down on the vegetable garden and patio area. We are also planning to get our 2 stable blocks in place for the winter but this involves the boys and their diggers! So just waiting on some time from them – not that they really have any spare with how busy their business is.

Thirdly, our part of the property didn’t have a kitchen. It had space for a kitchen but the room was a large utility and 2 bathrooms. It’s taken a long time and we are about a month away (and a lot of hard work!) from having it finished but we are NEARLY there. We’ve removed walls, built stud walls, replaced the ceiling and rewired the whole room. Wren Kitchens have designed us my absolute DREAM kitchen and we are now just waiting for the plastering to be done before we get it painted and fitted. It will soon be a medium sized kitchen with a walk in pantry, mini utility room and downstairs shower room.

The kitchen and attached rooms are our most expensive project by far. It’s actually daunting working out how much money we soon need to part with to pay our lovely tradesmen for their hard work. Yet, once this kitchen is fitted our house is much closer to being a home.

I will do another progress report in the next 6 months – at that point we will have lived on the farm for a whole year! I already have a list of projects as long as my arm that I’d like to crack on with but a lack of time, lack of money and my sanity get in the way.

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