I’ve been so quiet here lately, I’m sorry! It’s been such a busy time. If you follow me on Instagram then you’ve probably seen the house that we recently moved it to. It’s a small but lovely semi detached two bed in a quiet Norfolk village, and it will be perfect for me and Dil. I say will be because before it becomes our family home, it needs a lot of work.
The house is social housing, and owned by a local housing association. These houses are very commonly rented out in poor conditions – dirty or poorly kept, often without flooring, a whole world away from professionally cleaned newly decorated privately let homes or flats. I know from the mass of Instagram messages I received that a lot of people had no idea this was the case.
I’m incredibly grateful and we are incredibly lucky to have found ourselves with a property like this one, but we are going to have to put in a lot of work. I got the keys to the house just under 2 weeks before we had to be out of the old house, and there was a huge rush to get everything done. Unfortunately we didn’t get as much done as we had hoped, but we’ve made progress and we will get there eventually. I want to share this journey here; for anyone interested in interiors or property renovation, and also to show some of the unseen/untalked about stuff that comes with social housing.
So far we have:
- Ripped up the awful carpet on the stairs and upstairs
- Sanded the floor boards
- Laid flooring in the living room
- Filled and sanded all the walls (100 times)
- Painted the hallway and landing
- Started painting Dil’s room*
- Painted my bedroom*
- Started painting the living room*
- Sanded and painted all woodwork and doors upstairs
- Added shelves to the kitchen cupboard to make a pantry
*paint kindly gifted to us by Valspar
Still to do:
- Finish sanding and varnish floorboards
- Wallpaper Dil’s room and finish painting
- Sand and paint stairs
- Tile hallway
- Finish painting the living room, put up skirting board and picture rail
- Sand and paint downstairs doors
- Put up curtain poles and curtains
- Renovate bathroom to add a shower
- Remove cupboard in kitchen to make space for dishwasher
- Finishing touches
- And probably loads more I’ve forgotten!!
We’ve also now got an electrical fault upstairs, so waiting to see if that’s an easy fix or something more complicated!
It feels like we still have a huge mountain to climb, but really we have made a lot of progress in just a few weeks which is amazing. I will share some more photos soon, once we are a bit more sorted, but for now here are the ‘before’ photos for you to enjoy!
You’re going to make it beautiful – I can tell! We’re about to get a council house too and I’m DREADING the state it is going to be in but we’ll have a few weeks before we leave here and you’ve made me feel confident now that we can get some jobs done! x
I loved seeing these photos all in one place – this is going to be such a happy home x