Completion in time for Christmas!

I'm very happy to write that the house is now (very nearly) complete! Everything is finished except for the front porch, the roof on the pool house, the driveway and the garden. The completion date was scheduled for May this year, then August, then November. I had planned for different friends to stay there during August, however as it wasn't finished we had to either cancel or stay somewhere else nearby. The renovation was delayed a year in total, but the end result was very much worth the wait.

At the beginning of December, Jon and I spent a week there and it was a very happy (and slightly overwhelming) moment walking inside and switching on the lights and heating, knowing we'd be able to stay there. We met the transport company and unpacked all the furniture, cleaned the house and moved all of the old furniture from the garage back into the house. Surprisingly, all the furniture from the garage was perfectly fine after spending almost two years in there. I was expecting it to be a little damp but Anthony did a great job packing it all away and raising it off of the floor. 

The best part about going to the house at the beginning of December was that we could buy a Christmas tree and prepare the house for staying there with Mum, Dad and Granny over Christmas (plus Anthony, Sally, Christopher and Greta who came for Boxing Day). We'd booked our flights for Christmas months ago and as there were multiple delays I wasn't sure we'd definitely be able to stay there so this made going at the beginning of December to prepare for it very exciting.

The view from the lounge is still as amazing to me now as it was when I first fell in love with it. The sun rises are beautiful, and at this time of year there's a mist that covers the ground that made it feel as though we were living above the clouds. 

I love the beams and the front door, which are the originals sanded down, and the flooring works really well in the house as it lightens it up (although it feels cold on the feet so slippers are definitely needed!). I love everything about the kitchen, which has been very well tested after cooking Christmas dinner there. The decision to remove the skylight and lower the ceilings in that area was definitely the right one. The high corridor through to the bedrooms makes a feature out of that space and the skylight there gives plenty of light. The whole house is light and bright, which is exactly the feeling I wanted.

I'm glad we changed the original design of the bathrooms and went for double showers in each en-suite as they all feel much more spacious than they would have done otherwise. The middle bedrooms feel bigger now the furniture is in, and I was pleasantly surprised that a double bed fitted into the smaller of the two. The green windows grow on me each time I visit, and they give the house its own unique identity (and make it visible from the bottom of the hill!). I'm also really pleased with the travertine tiles outside and the swimming pool. The pool was only finished the week before we were there so there wasn't any time to heat it up, however I'm really looking forward to trying it out in the Spring. 

There are a few things that need sorting, such as a shower that doesn't drain correctly, grout haze on the floor tiles (we spent a long time trying to remove the grout haze from the floor!) and the heating taking longer to heat up in some areas, however considering the size of the project I was expecting a lot more things to sort. Anthony really did a fantastic job managing everything as the project was going along.

The garden still needs a lot of love, and the driveway needs finishing too. In January the builders plan to lay the electrical cables under the driveway (there's thick rock under it at the moment and a digger will be needed) so we'll have to wait for that to be finished before doing the driveway. The porch and pool house roof should also be finished by the end of January, and then it's just the finishing touches that are needed. Jon and I plan to spend a few months at the house next year so that's plenty of time to sort all the wardrobes, log burner and soft furnishings ready for any friends and family who'd like to come and stay!

It's been a long journey to get to this point, but the end result has exceeded all expectations and I'm very grateful to everyone who has made this happen.