It’s been a long time since I posted here – as I said last time, essentially the build is finished and we are down to finishing touches – there are just a lot of them. We haven’t touched what used to be our garden – so there is a fair amount of landscaping to be done. But the biggest change left to happen is the wooden floor which will go throughout the open plan space downstairs. Once we have done that we can empty the storage units and make the house feel even more like our home. In the mean time we are spending a fair amount of free time decorating. The girls have been home over the past few weekends, so Charlotte and Chris mucked in as we decorated our old bedroom.

Then Becks and Phil have been home over Easter and have gone mad with the white paint. Between the four of us we have pretty much covered all of downstairs. Just the kitchen to paint downstairs – it needs too much careful taping and dust sheeting to protect all the work surfaces so that will be a job in itself. But the downstairs looks amazing. Much, much lighter.

And we’ve stolen an idea we saw on the TV during the week and painted the surround of the roof lantern a different shade – and what do you know, it looks fantastic.

And for those of you who have seen Maddie and I decorate previously, will not be surprised to hear that we have had a bit of a match pot frenzy – unlike us however, we made a decision in a single day and so won’t be living with patchwork walls for months on end as we have in the past.