Project Build | The Last Gasp: Lynda's Build
Meet Lynda. Normally working hard behind the Feather & Oak scenes with her impeccable seamstress skills she kindly joins us on the blog as she begins planning & building her next family home - sharing her valuable knowledge along the way so you can rest assured you are well prepared, educated & inspired on your personal building venture.
The Last Curtain Call
How many encores can one have in a build? Remember that move in date? Almost one year from when we started to scrape the site, we finally had our first nights’ sleep in our new home. It was a big weekend with family visiting, birthdays and anniversaries. It was great to have the table full of family on all sides. It was also a great to collapse at the end of that weekend. We are almost six months on from then and are still moving bits around and doing another wave of reducing, repurposing and donating. The concrete drive has finally been sitting long enough for us to park our vehicles on – quite important in Pegasus – and it has changed the whole house frontage and it makes the minimal landscaping much easier to visualise.
Remember I said that over the Christmas break we would be painting - and paint we did. Looking back now, I don’t know how we got there – even with one of us having their old injuries aggravated. The day our front door went in was fabulous. We had it painted by the joinery company, and they made a beautiful job – I had to paint the bricks around it for my own satisfaction in the following two days so we could almost see the whole picture, if you squinted. It was very satisfying to see those colours collide how I had imagined they would. The Juliette balcony wasn’t too far away and when the builders returned to bolt it in place and fit the reveals it was another great day. The fabricators made a great job, and it was worth the wait. To have people stop, look, give us a nod and a thumbs up from a distance was a great compliment.
When I looked back at my first blog, that ambitious six-month build had doubled. We wanted the grass established before we moved in – it remains a bit lower down the ‘to do’ list at present. Those first days were busy with unpacking, sorting and finding homes for things I had forgotten about. A kind of organised chaos but it was our space and our things. Some of those things we had missed for some time. I was grateful I didn’t have the headspace to make those final decisions on how we dressed the windows. I did put up tracks and installed some automated sunscreens where they were needed – the latter I fell in love with and will now, never consider anything less. To have no chains dangling about is fantastic.
Only a month after we moved in did I finally finish painting all the internal doors. Nowhere near the professional standard of the front door but that is how the budget rolled. I have had a lot of enjoyment placing wallpaper samples about the house to ‘live with’ and pieces of art we have had stashed to see where their final resting places will be – well for a reasonable time anyway. It is always good to be able to have a swap around in the future 😊
The kitchen is everything we wanted it to be from a functional and practical point of view. We are happy with the aesthetic too and how it links in with the whole house. It is a space worth taking the time to plan well. Life revolves around the kitchen and all living spaces can be seen and are connected to it. We have had people around our dining table, played music roulette and started making new memories in a new home. Our table is a sheet of ply on some desk legs with a very nice tablecloth – it is a perfect size so I suspect it may be there a while. Maybe it’s the chairs - which I am so happy about purchasing and stashing in storage. I guess if there is anything I can say, or ask at this point, it is, “is it really worth all the stress and pressure to have everything perfect when move in day comes around?” For us it isn’t, definitely not. Once we were in and living in all the spaces, the rest of the decisions followed.
Waiting for the shutters to arrive was worth the wait. We had opted to put them into four areas - they weren’t the main event in any of those spaces and we are happy with what they have added from a privacy and light control aspect, and of course they look great with their clean lines.
We decided to concentrate on finishing one space at a time. An obvious choice to focus was our own bedroom and a place we could relax in. We had a stash of timber we used for behind our bed and some wallpaper to go above that. After the wardrobes were finally in, we were able to move things out of the other bedrooms and boxes and finally be contained in one area. The word stash gets used a lot in this blog – and again the fabric I had stashed for the curtains in this room came out of hiding and finally realised its place. The same timber we used in our bedroom also found a home as a feature wall in the main toilet that was a perfect backdrop to put up my Marilyn print. Wallpaper makes such an impact and can totally change a room. I had great delight coming home the day the wallpaper had gone up in what I would call the snug or living area.
This wallpaper I had seen hung elsewhere and sometimes you just know that this is the beginning of a beautiful thing – a bit like when I saw the tiles for the ensuite floor. I love the wallpaper so much that there was enough for a wee pop of it in my office spot. I remember reading one of Katy’s blogs about when to splurge and when to save – this is a definite splurge and who needs art on the wall when you have a fantastic wallpaper?
Rugs! I love them. They really anchor an area and both the lounge and dining area have been defined, transformed and cozied up. Between the wallpaper, rugs and our own things, the house is starting to have our stamp put on it. House was becoming Home. It is a process layering the layers to get where you want things to be. It is interesting to see however, that some of our things we thought would work, simply do not. Some of those things, especially the sentimental ones, have been relegated to what we fondly call Sefton Heights which is a space up the stairs that looks a bit like ‘from whence we came” 😊
There is still much to be done and we have given ourselves some time to get there. We had thought a year, but six months of that year have already gone! Tiles still need to be laid on the splash back areas and I have also opted for some feature tiles on the back of the breakfast bar. A herringbone pattern for those tiles is under discussion…I would like to be taught to tile as I think it would be very satisfying. Much dirt and sand has been relocated and we finally have an almost level area for the small amount of lawn and fire pit area. The big back deck has become a sorting area for many things and an area to dry the washing – we do not regret biting the bullet to get that complete. One side deck is almost complete which adds to the constant transforming of the whole space. We do need a trip to the friendly plant people in Amberley at some point soon to capitalize on the Spring weather. There are still curtains to go in four other areas – two areas, you guessed it, have fabric in my stash yet to be made up. The other two areas we are musing on.
We can now walk through the house and enjoy that vision we had four years ago when we first purchased the section. It has morphed and ebbed and flowed since then thanks to the right people who crossed our paths along that journey. With no shortage to things to do to ‘finish’ there may be another blog in me yet. But really, do we ever finish, completely? There is always something …
Until next time,
xx Lynda
