It’s been 12 months since we moved into our new home and after viewing what felt like 30 houses, being gazumped on one, we knew that whatever house we chose we’d need to do major renovations to create our dream “forever home”. A term that still doesn’t feel right saying…

When we first moved in, despite the patterned carpets, artex walls and no shower we absolutely loved it and what made it even better was the fact that we have such lovely neighbours.  One of our neighbour’s knocked on the door on day 1 with homemade brownies – now if that’s not a sign of a good neighbour I don’t know what is.

So after months of meeting potential builders and architects, choosing the design of our extension and submitting it to planning permission we’ve finally got the extension off the ground – literally!

First to go was the coal shed which we’d been using as an additional dumping ground to host all the boxes that we couldn’t face unpacking.  Then the foundations around the house were dug up which was very exciting as for a short time the children felt that we had a house with a moat!

The plan for our extension is to have a contemporary looking wrap around extension that will go 3 meters to the back of the house and 3 meters to the side and will be rendered white and be a stark but hopefully great contrast to the 1930’s style brick house.

We’re creating an open plan living room, kitchen and dining room with glass sliding doors into the garden and most importantly a gorgeous bathroom with…….a shower!! It’s crazy the things that you take for granted but having a traditional bathroom with no shower has been something we’ve all missed.  In a desperate bid to get a shower I even tried the retro plug showers but even they didn’t fit..

We’ve done lots of cosmetic building projects in the past including decorating a 7 bedroom student house in Durham but never on this scale so it’s a bit daunting but exciting at the same time.  We’re all super excited about having diggers in our back garden, especially Tim, but we’ll probably not be as excited when we realise just how long that the garden will be out of action!