Our New House–and some Pics from our Old House

Another Sunday visit to the new house today, because my hubby wanted to do some more work on the garden. While he was packing the car with more stuff to take over, I took the opportunity to take a few pictures of the flowers on the front of our house, looking beautiful on what must have been the hottest and sunniest day so far this summer (far too hot for me!).

This is a glorious dark red clematis that we have had growing against the front of the house all the time we’ve lived here (14 years) and it’s looking better than ever!

There are still masses of buds on it so it should be an even better display in a few days’ time.

My hubby has bought 3 hanging baskets for Mum’s patio, and until we move, they are hanging in our porch so he can water them.

On the right hand side of the front door we’ve got a honeysuckle and I really thought last year that it was on the way out, because it had about one flower on it all summer. It seems to have got a new lease of life this year.

Our kitties are basking in the sun this summer, not eating much, not doing much at all because it’s so hot, but what they are doing a lot of is rolling! Rare to catch them both at it side by side:

Although Beatrice is much fluffier than Phoebe, she doesn’t seem to collect a lot of bits on her fur when she rolls, but Phoebe is a grubby little tyke and gets absolutely covered with bits of dead vegetation, dust and grit, and brings it all into the house! Phoebe is the rolliest kitty we’ve ever had – she’s always at it!

Yesterday my hubby called in at the new house on his way back home, and I asked him what had been done since Thursday when we were last there, and he said, “I don’t know. I didn’t look.” ROFL!!! Duh. Men… I said “How could you be there and not look?” He couldn’t answer that one!!

Actually, to give him his due, not a lot of progress has been made since then, because John won’t be back till tomorrow to continue working on the kitchen, and Chris was still away baling hay, and it looked as if Andy had been there on his own. Things should hot up again tomorrow, though.

I went upstairs to find that the doorway between the bedroom and the en-suite bathroom has now been broken through, so Andy had obviously been busy! This is the view from the bathroom side.

The view from the bedroom side:

Through the new doorway you can see the doorway broken through between the existing bathroom/loo wall. This one is going to be my famous arch that I had to twist Andy’s arm to get him to agree to, with the existing loo remaining on the left, and on the right will be the wet room shower area.

The basin in the bedroom is going, and that corner is where my dressing table is going.

The existing door into the bathroom from the landing is very attractive, with engraved glass panels, and I have asked Andy to put this in the doorway from the bedroom into the en-suite. We’ve got two or three spare doors from downstairs, and he’s going to put one of those on the landing as a replacement, and both this one and the existing door into the loo are going to be sealed, and boarded over on the inside. We didn’t want to lose the look of the end of the landing with the two doors, as it is original and lends something to the proportions of the space. The door furniture upstairs is different, though, with lovely original art deco brass handles, so the one on the engraved glass door will have to be moved onto the door from downstairs, and either the existing wooden one, or a new one, will go onto the engraved glass door on the bedroom side. I may find a nice china one.

All the bathroom fittings have now arrived – bath, basin, taps, wastes, shower… Most of these are still in their boxes and haven’t been opened. The larger items have been delivered here and will have to be taken over by Chris once there’s room in his van, and I didn’t want to risk opening them because the boxes will protect them from damage in transit.

No further progress on my ARTHaven since Thursday, but I expect once the team is back in place tomorrow, things will move forward rapidly again.

My hubby is working on the fencing around the garden, and has ordered some replacement panels for the few rotten ones, and is fixing some kitty-proofing on some of them. He can’t complete the job until the new garage goes up. He also put another coat of Cuprinol on the garden fence and watered the plants. Meanwhile, I put another coat of white paint on my shabby chic shelving unit and unpacked a couple more boxes, but I have decided to hold off unpacking any more because it will be easier to do it once my ARTHaven is finished, and also it was much too hot to do anything much today!