The worst house in London?

oh dear!

2010-06-26T20:23:00.003+01:00

Amy very kindly sent me her copy of RH by first class post so the suspense was broken on Thursday evening after an extremely long day at work, and, luckily, a glass of wine. Thanks Amy - I am really very grateful! And thanks to both Amy and Lesley for your reassuring words about the pics.

I have been trying to keep it in perspective but I'm really not very pleased with two in particular of the photos they used - the ghastly (and enormous) one of the pre-renovation bedroom, complete with hideous brass light fitting, plug-in radiator, ratty old cushions I bought in India when I was 23 and horrid old blinds we put up when we moved in just to have something to shield us from the astonished gaze of the neighbours. ('No, really Frank, there's somebody living there. Yes - someone's moved into the Worst House in London! Pass my smelling salts, I'm feeling faint'.)

Also not very keen on the similarly huge one of the rear extension in January looking not very charming, with wires trailing down the back of the furniture and the neighbours' upstairs windows in shot, together with the back end of one of our garden chairs. Don't they edit/crop/airbrush such things out? Been considering buying up and destroying all copies in all the shops within a mile radius of anyone I know, but my husband assures me that would be a) very expensive and b) mad.

Hey ho. Be careful what you wish for I suppose. I am going to take up Amy's suggestion and post up some new pics on here of the bedroom looking infinitely more pleasant post-renovation, together with some other bits and bobs we have had done, if only to make myself feel better!

Actually - here's one of the bedroom I took relatively recently - at least (unlike in RH) it looks clean!

I did like the story though - I thought Janet did a grand job. And my parents in law will be pleased to see their old car (parked in front of the garage in the 'before' ) shot made it into a national publication!

the suspense is killing me...

2010-06-21T21:38:00.003+01:00

Firstly, if anyone is still reading, apologies for the radio silence for the last 4 months. The evil world of work has sucked me right back in after four years at home, and I just haven't been able to find enough hours in the day.

I've just been alerted to the appearance of the Worst House in August's Real Homes. I'm not an RH subscriber, so I can't get my mitts on a copy yet ( Amy of South London Semi must be though, as she was the one to break the news!) If you see a copy, you'll be one up on me until it hits the shops...!

On the one hand, it will be a lovely souvenir and my mum and mother in law will be very proud...Also my daughter, who starts school in September, was only 2 then so it will be really sweet to have some of her if they made it in.

On the other hand...

- it was 18 months ago and I was still a bit shell-shocked from the build, so at the stage where I thought having a flushing loo and windows at the front of the house were pretty swanky. We hadn't really done much on the adornment front (not that we have now, but you know what I mean!)

- I didn't realise they might be photographing me, so neither outfit nor hair and makeup were exactly photo ready - doh!

-and worst of all, THEY TOOK PICTURES OF THE MASTER BEDROOM BEFORE IT WAS RENOVATED ( avocado bathroom suite, quite a lot of junk and cracked and sagging anaglypta ceiling anybody.) If those are in I will be very red faced ( in fact I am already just thinking about it!)

Amy - I think I shall have to take you up on your offer to post it to me if I can't find one tomorrow!

Hard work

2010-02-10T21:07:00.002Z

The week I went back to work after four years probably wasn't the best one to choose for reviving a blog. Good points - the tube starts from Richmond, so I always get a seat, and as any mother of small children will know, 30 minutes with a coffee and the paper is pretty much worth going to work for all by itself. Bad points - er, the actual work. But leaving that aside...

The new sofa bed arrived today, delivered with admirable efficiency and politeness. If you've not tried IKEA's online delivery service yet I'd give it ago - I've been really pleasantly surprised with how well it all works. You can choose your delivery day and they give you a 4 hour slot, then ring you an hour before they arrive (so you can get on with your day rather than mooching around looking wistfully out of the window.) Quite pricey though - you need to have a good big order to make it worth it.

Anyway, my husband is away at the moment, and to be honest he's not much use with an Allen key anyway, so my lovely friend and neighbour rolled up her sleeves on his behalf. We put it together in just over an hour, much of which was spent telling our four children between us to stop picking up all the nuts and bolts and making off with vital pieces of chipboard. But it is looking pretty good - although no-one has slept on it yet! My parents in law will have the joy of testing it out next week, as they're coming to look after the children at half term while I go out and earn a crust.

Whither style?

2010-01-29T23:12:00.002Z

Some funny things have been happening in the Worst House recently. We are actually buying more sofas and chairs. Husband approved and everything. And not the expensive ultra stylish ones from Designers Guild that he wanted either. They're from IKEA!

Having said that I didn't realise that even upholstery would be self-assembly. Imagine my dismay when our new armchair was delivered (the Karlstad large one in dark grey) and I realised I had to build the flipping thing from scratch. Our cleaner was here at the time and kept popping her head round the sitting room door with feigned concern and ill-concealed mirth as I wrestled with its various body parts. No point in waiting for my husband to come home - he doesn't know one end of an Allen key from another. I snagged a very good pair of 80 denier tights in the process - the velcro which holds the whole thing together is industrial strength.

I am very pleased with it though. It goes very nicely with the successfully re-covered Freecycle reject sofa in the big sitting room ( hereafter known as 'the one they wouldn't take') and means I can sit and read quietly in the corner while my husband watches Match of the Day. (Have you noticed how that seems to be on more or less constantly these days, or is that just my imagination?)

I have just ordered the rather less stylish but much more compact Hagalund sofa bed. It's really not a thing of beauty, but we have reluctantly decided converting the loft is going to have to wait a couple of years. In the meantime my in-laws are not the sprightly sixty year olds they used to be, so they need something better than foam fold out 'sleepover' beds to sleep on when they visit. In fact they usually have our bed, which I am also keen to put a stop to - I am rather fond of my nice white bedroom these days; I didn't mind so much when it was putrid green and semi-open to the elements!

Putting the Hagalund together is going to be fun. Might wait for a day when I'm absolutely alone...!

Normal service now resumed...I hope!

2010-01-20T10:20:00.003Z

Wow, that was a long pause! We had so many problems with the underfloor heating and electrics generally in the run up to Christmas and in all that snow that I sort of lost the will to blog, which is fairly unlike me.

The heating broke down two more times, including a week before Christmas, costing a further £250 to fix, before a friend of a friend who happens to be an electrician took a look at it all for me. Unlike all the other electricians I had been paying £75 an hour for he instantly spotted that the problem was nothing to do with the heating itself, but with the electrical supply coming in from EDF. Something to do with a neutral fault from the head. (No, me either!) But he had EDF in within the hour to replace the faulty part at no cost and (fingers firmly crossed!) no more problems have ensued. Apparently our electrical cables etc coming into the house date from the 1920s and will all need to be replaced, but that isn't urgent, unlike the neutral problem, which causes house fires if left untended. So we were officially living in a death trap. The moral of the story is that I should have called EDF straight away, but like most mortals I had no idea what to do, and neither did my lovely but entirely impractical husband.

We have a huge trench outside our house at the moment, dug by EDF but due to an entirely unconnected problem. We were plunged into darkness on Sunday evening ( just as I was about to place a particularly enormous and foolhardy online clothes order!) We didn't get power back until Monday at 11 pm, because only five houses were affected and we were therefore 'non-priority'. It was just like the old days of the build, putting the kids to bed with five layers on over their pyjamas and cooking by torchlight. Whenever we have a period of domestic discomfort we just have to remind ourselves of the months we slept in our bedroom on stilts for it all to seem ok. And EDF are going to give us £50 in compensation, which I might just have to redirect towards that clothes order!

And just to remind me, as we come up to 2 years in the finished (ish) house, of how far we've come: a picture of my daughter as as a 3 month old baby in the lean-to kitchen the week we moved in, and then as a toddler in the new extension!

domestic woe

2009-10-20T11:20:00.003+01:00

I'm so fed up with minor domestic hassles at the moment. It's exactly like one of those mole and hammer games - you bang one down and another pops up. After three visits from the electrician, hours spent on the phone to Nu heat and three separate thermostatic receivers being sent and rejected, the underfloor heating is working again - fingers crossed. The £550 we have spent wipes out any notional savings we might be making on gas bills, but by the end of it I'd have paid three times that just to get it working.

Then yesterday morning I put the tumble dryer on and the electricity meter started crackling again, with all the lights flickering away, just as it did a few months ago. I could have screamed! Instead I very calmly went to put the kettle on, only to discover that one of the swanky and thus difficult to replace under cabinet lights had gone. ( Having said that I pulled it out, poked about with the wires for a bit and then shoved it back in - it worked!)

My husband thinks we should get the electrician back to check out the meter issue but I just can't face it at the moment. The electrician is on first name terms with the whole family and our cleaner, but I think he could do with a break from us for a while. I have unplugged our OWL monitor just in case that was contributing to the problem (it had gone wrong anyway...!) I'm starting to wonder whether I should get EDF to look at the meter actually, seeing as it's 25 years old and I think 'belongs' to them as our electricity provider.

Oh and the automatic lights in the understairs cupboard have gone - the kids love looking for their shoes with a torch but I am less keen. They were £200 to put in, so I think I might wait and see what else goes wrong then get the electrician back to do a job lot...

sofa so good

2009-10-12T10:27:00.004+01:00

We have had a lovely weekend despite the rain and noticing 2 ( very tiny) damp patches in my daughter's room. It never rains but it pours, ho ho, not. Her room and the bathroom are under the rather strange flat roof which all these houses have on the rear addition, and when we moved in we knew that it probably only had a few years left in it. We were hoping it might last until we had got the money together to convert the loft, and then we could get all our roofing needs done at once. I am keeping my fingers crossed that we can leave it another few months.

We have had 2 more quotes for the sofa cover, and I have just signed on the dotted line for one. It would probably be cheaper just to buy a new sofa, but the idea is to eke a few more years out of this one while the kids are small and then get a lovely new one when they are old enough not to use it as a trampoline. It feels more environmentally friendly too, and less hassle ( I just have to write a cheque and wait!)

We have had to have a new receiver for the underfloor heating, as the thermostats have been transmitting away to a dead unit. Thankfully the weather has been quite mild, as we 've got to have the electrician back to to fit it.

Very fed up with minor domestic hassles at the moment, but I only have to look back to October 2007 to feel better! And it is another beautiful Autumn day today. Hope you're all enjoying it!

when good houses go bad

2009-10-07T11:37:00.004+01:00

Aggh. It's been one of those weeks when everything goes wrong!

I tested the underfloor heating on Monday, and three of the four zones ( eg kitchen, small sitting room and dining room) aren't working. That's OK now, in this nice warm muggy weather we're having, but what if we have a cold snap next week? Several phone calls to Nu Heat later and we have worked out that it's an electrical problem relating to the wireless thermostats and their receiver. The one bit which only carried a year's guarantee. Sighhh. So the nice guys at Harland and Voss are coming out tomorrow to take a look at it. I hope it will be quick and simple to fix, but I have a feeling it won't be.

Then I looked up at the dining room ceiling in an unwise moment yesterday and spotted a huge damp patch that wasn't there last week. We're not sure whether it means a leaking pipe ( the last bit of old pipework runs under my son's bedroom floor just above) or my son's habit of kicking over full cups of water onto the stripped wood floor up there. Really hoping it's the latter, as I can't bear the idea of having the floorboards up again!

Then Dawid, who is replacing the bit of the glass roof that cracked just after installation ( yes we are finally getting round to it!) noticed while he was up there measuring that the one next to it has cracked too! Double agggh! There are loads of them and at £250 a pop I could do without having to replace them all one by one.

Then, while I was out in the garden this morning I noticed that one of the slats on the cladding to the extension has worked loose and was dangling at a rakish angle over the sliding folding doors. I shoved it back in again and will have to get Dawid to look at it when he comes back.

And shamingly, I am going to have to ask Dawid to change one of the lightbulbs in the new shower room. My husband and I have both tried and failed to work out how to get the halogen spot out of its housing. Duh. Our only excuse is that it's not at all like the ones we had in our old house.

Actually writing it all down has been quite cathartic - and I realise it's not all that much really. Touch wood..

I have a lady coming out on Saturday to measure up and quote for the new sofa cover. In the meantime I am making do with an artfully draped cashmere blanket to cover the worst patch. I am kidding myself it is sort of shabby chic.

I have just noticed that it's almost exactly two years since I started this blog - time for a photo of the worst house at the worst time to remind me of how far we have come, cracked roof panes and damp patches aside?!

2009-09-29T22:08:00.002+01:00

Hmm. Not a lot of interest in the sofa yet - one lady was quite excited for a while until she discovered it was a long discontinued model and she couldn't get a cover for it from Bemz. (The toddler car seat I put up at the same time has gone though, so a partial success!)

I do think it's a waste just to throw the sofa away, given that it's largely sound. It shocks me that so much ends up in landfill when it could be reused. I think proper re-upholstery isn't really an option, given the price, but I have sent enquiries off to a couple of loose cover companies to see what they might be able to do. It looks a lot cheaper ( around five hundred pounds for something plain and inoffensive) but I suspect the snag will be the odd design of the sofa. The seat cushions are fixed, even though they've been made to look as though they're loose. Hard to describe, and no doubt even harder to make a loose cover for.

I've done it successfully in the past - the off-white Habitat Jasper sofa in the small sitting room was bought for my first little flat in Brockley in 1996, in the dark green that I then thought was the height of sofa sophistication. I had two plain cotton canvas washable loose covers made for it when we had our first baby in 2002 and it's been fine ever since. Not the most exciting sofa in the world, but not a DFS-style bulbous monstrosity either. ( With apologies to anyone who has a DFS sofa - perhaps it's just me but I am always amazed by how huge and hideous they look on those pamphlets that seem to fall out of every weekend newspaper!)

2009-09-29T09:54:00.002+01:00

Ah yes, Freecycle - I'd forgotten about that option - thanks for reminding me! I have been an enthusiastic giver-awayer in the past ( I freecycled my fridge freezer, baby car seat and 3 wheeler buggy) so I should have thought of that! I have put the sofa up and we'll see what happens!

Thanks for the furniture website tips too. I like the classic Florence Knoll sofa and the Barcelona chair, although I also rather fancy the French style grey and white sofa on the Maison du Monde site for our bedroom.

I'm on the prowl for a new rug too. I still love my spots but I am hankering after a change. I'm off to have a quick look round the shops while my daughter's at nursery! This leisurely life is going to end soon as I will be back at work in January, after four years at home with the kids. I think it's going to be a big shock for everyone involved ( not least the poor unsuspecting individuals in the office who will have to put up with me having forgotten everything I once thought I knew!)

2009-09-28T09:45:00.004+01:00

Loving this autumn weather - far better than the summer. We cycled to Kew along the river yesterday and sat having coffee in the sunshine while the kids ran amok in Climbers and Creepers. If only it could always be like this! I went into a panic about half term last night because I realised we are teetering on the brink of winter and that will be our last chance for a break before Christmas.

Two dreadful mobile phone photos ( still haven't bought a new camera after the France disaster with our old one) of the new paint colour on the front gate and door. A man knocked on the door on Saturday afternoon and asked what colour it was- he said he'd bought three testers and still hadn't got it right. Which is funny because I had just been wondering whether to paint it all black again - but after a public endorsement I am newly convinced!

We are having a new sofa debate at the moment. Our ancient tweedy one in the big sitting room is actually threadbare, with the stuffing showing through, but my husband loves it because it's deep, huge and comfortable. Plus he has mild delusions of grandeur ( and looks at our bank account less often than me) so his idea of getting a new sofa would be to spend £3k at Designers Guild or SCP.I looked at re-covering the old one, but the quote was £1700 plus the fabric and VAT. I think we should spend £500 on something practical at at IKEA ( dark grey Karlstad, I've already earmarked it!) because the kids are still at the stage of leaping on the arms, tearing all the cushions off and wiping jammy fingers all over the sofas we do have.

The one snag is what to do with the old one. I think it's too tatty to give to a furniture project, which means getting the council to pick it up. That would be fine - except they charge £30 and expect you to leave it in your front garden for the duration of their ten-day pick-up window! That'll go down well with the neighbours!

Are you sure?!

2009-09-11T19:22:00.002+01:00

A neighbour a few doors down took in a parcel for us yesterday. I hadn't met her before, as they moved in over the summer (this is London remember - even noticing a house has changed hands is fairly unusual!) Anyway, I introduced myself and she said 'Ooh, you live in the lovely house! We like that one...!' It turns out that she and her husband have been admiring the Worst House from afar. Never have I been so proud - I could have hugged her.

My husband is still smarting from the time back in 2006 when we saw a couple walking down the road looking at all the houses and posting notes through the doors of selected ones. They looked at ours (still in full garagey splendour) and moved hastily on. My friend several doors down got one of the notes - it was a personal plea to let them know if they were thinking of selling as they were keen to move into the road ( a proper handwritten one rather than one of those fake ones you get all the time from estate agents telling you that they have a Mr Smith who will buy your house if only you'll give them a ring.) My husband's ambition is to get one of those and frame it - then he'll feel really sure the WH has rejoined the ranks of the normal.

The WH will always be slightly different from the others in the road though, unless the right hand neighbours get shirty. Our front garden is wider than the others - although only by about 30 cm. All because the old lady who lived in it before us had a large shrubbery at the front, and when the then owner of the right hand house rebuilt the dividing wall between the gardens he very courteously built it in a slight curve around the foliage rather than asking her to chop it down. (Possibly not entirely selflessly - I suspect he wanted to keep the shrubbery to minimise his own view of the garage!)

No word from RH Lesley - I bet those photos are languishing in the bottom of the editor's bin! I imagine a sort of RH Anna Wintour figure snarling ' Too ordinary! And what's with the books - is this a library? White walls are so yesterday' as she hurls them back at a quivering minion. Never mind, I'll try and take some of the front gate's new F and B paint as a consolation prize!

Phew!

2009-09-10T09:35:00.002+01:00

The electrician has just been. He took less than five minutes to spot and sort the problem ( a loose wire going into the meter) so I got him to look at a few other little jobs while he was here. Such a relief - when we first moved into the WH every job was a major chin-scratching ' well it's going to cost you' exercise, with bad news about crumbling pipes and disintegrating wiring at every turn.

I don't make many recommendations but I did like the firm of electricians I used - they're called Harland & Voss, and they only work in London, but they seem to be the Waitrose of electricians - fair and honestly priced. They've got a nice website with a 'Do you really need an electrician?' checklist to go through before you call.

Thanks Amy - yes, the south of France was bliss. We went down on the Eurostar and TGV, which although it takes a day, is lovely because you can see the skies getting progressively bluer as you go further south! The only problem was that we were so enthusiastic about swimming in the Med that we managed to drop our camera in the sea, so I am back to mobile phone pictures for now.

Speaking of pictures I have updated our front door and gates with yummy Farrow and Ball exterior eggshell paint in Railings. I must post some photos for the verdict. I like it a lot, but my neighbour looked puzzled and said ' Your front door seems to be grey!'. We had originally done it in bog-standard black, but the paint wasn't up to much and kept peeling off. I am hoping F&B will live up to its reputation. I used it on our old house, and was always very pleased with its durability, but we were north facing there.

Thank you

2009-09-09T20:17:00.002+01:00

Thanks so much everyone for your kind words on my last post. It's been ages, for which I can only blame the extremely long summer holiday ( nine weeks for my daughter's nursery! Aggh!) and a general reluctance to write much after Sarah died. And then I had a further shock when another old friend died suddenly in July from a rare strain of pneumonia. He leaves a wife and a huge number of devastated family members, friends and former students. I'd hoped I wouldn't be going to another funeral for a young person for a long time, but I'll be going to his memorial service in October. It really makes you value life and want to make the most of it.

On a happier note we have been to the south of France, Wales and Dorset and had a great time at the Larmer Tree festival in July. I hope you've all had good summers too.

We have had a problem with the electricity in the Worst House for several weeks now - every time we switch something on the lights flicker and the electricity meter starts crackling and sparking ominously. I couldn't get anyone out in time to sort it before we went away, so we finally have an electrician coming out tomorrow. I haven't dared to use the oven since we got back from France, so we're back to the repertoire I perfected during the worst days of the worst house ( although to be fair I now have a splendid 5 burner gas hob rather than a half-melted bedsit-style baby belling!)

It's all a bit odd - we had the house rewired as part of the refurb in 2007-8, and the only change since then is the new shower room. There is a peculiar section upstairs which has not been rewired - my son's room, half the landing, and the sockets in our room. Don't ask me why, but they were missed off the original spec and we didn't notice, partly because we had considerable other pressing concerns. I'm hoping they're not the cause, as I can't face any more upheaval at the moment! Particularly not in my lovely new bedroom, which I am enjoying more and more.

We have Dawid coming back in next week to replace, finally, the glass panel in the kitchen roof which cracked soon after installation in early 2008. As our original builder declared himself bankrupt ( although he is in business now under a new name), it's been languishing on the defects list ever since!

A bit of a month

2009-06-30T22:10:00.002+01:00

Thanks for reading this month, and for your comments. I've appreciated them all, even though I haven't replied. It's been a very sad time, as a good friend of mine died suddenly in early June leaving her 3 small children and a devastated circle of family and friends. I've not felt much like writing. It was her funeral today, in a meadow on the South Downs, on one of the most beautiful summer days I've ever known. It really was a celebration of her life and the wonderful person she was.

The acetone worked a treat houseenvy - it was like magic. I actually enjoyed cleaning the stairs, seeing it all come off with an easy swipe. I felt like one of those women in the cleaning product ads - it nearly moved me to song after so many other failed attempts! So many thanks for the top tip!

I'm not sure about Real Homes, to be honest. I always have a furtive flick through it in the newsagent to see if we're in, but in some ways I'd be happier for the pictures never to appear. The 'story' about our house for me was always the removal of the monstrous garage and the restoration of the frontage to something that no longer offends the eye. The rest was a bonus. I love the way we've done it, especially having lived in it for a year before we even started - it feels light and spacious, and we've got our bookshelves everywhere and things that mean a lot to us. But it's not a 'designer' or stylist's house, it's just an ordinary family home furnished with random bits and bobs we've collected over the years. I'm not sure it's actually all that photogenic. ( And I'm certainly not!) So I wouldn't be surprised if the pictures never get used. On the other hand our architect uses a lovely photo of our kitchen extension in her adverts in the local monthly glossy property mag, so we are still sort of famous!

It's the third anniversary of our move to the Worst House on Tuesday. It feels like we've lived here forever - and I mean that in a good way!

Still waiting for a nice day...

2009-06-08T12:01:00.003+01:00

..but we have now got books on the shelves so that's something.

In the absence of sunshine I spent the weekend baking ( cherry clafoutis - yum) and sitting under an umbrella at a garden party at Trumpeters House in Richmond. Tea and cake in the rain is surprisingly cheery.

Thanks for the top tip on the acetone houseenvy - I'm going to try it later!

We haven't heard anything back from Real Homes, so I assume they're either not going to use them after all, or they'll be used when they're a bit more 'seasonally appropriate' - I can see how pictures taken in January might not be right for a summer issue.

If they haven't appeared by the end of the year I'll post the low -res examples the photographer sent to me on here anyway, so they do actually see the light of day!

Grey light, grey pictures

2009-06-06T22:03:00.007+01:00

I've been trying for a couple of days to take some nice pictures of the new boudoir, but it's been so cold, grey and rainy that they've all come out looking as though we live at the bottom of a well. Here is a really dreadful one that I tried to adjust on iphoto, so it looks very unnatural. But you get the general idea! I had my grandfather's writing desk renovated and restored recently, with the intention of using it as a dressing table as soon as I find a pretty dressing table mirror. Note the smmmoootthh ceiling..!

And here is one of the new shower room, with all the lights on in the middle of the day. It is really very bright and cheery, honest! Even my mum, who claims to have loved the avocado, will have to admit it's a better use of the space!

The new bookshelves, and the door to the shower room. We are still in the middle of hanging pictures and putting books on the shelves - my husband's main contribution to domestic harmony is deciding what books go where, and it takes him ages...

Not quite 26 miles but it's felt like a marathon...

2009-06-03T20:45:00.002+01:00

We finally waved goodbye to Dawid today, which makes it exactly 7 weeks since we started. We've actually been 'in' the bedroom for a week, but that was with various dangly wires and unfinished bits. Plus we were away in Dorset for some of that time. But tonight it is all done, bar putting books on the shelves and pictures on the walls.

I've tested my lovely new shower room and arranged a tasteful selection of clothes in my newly renovated wardrobes. (My husband gives it 2 weeks before it's the same old mess as it was before, but for now at least I have a colour coded underwear drawer and nothing hanging up that I don't wear regularly. I've taken bags and bags of stuff to the charity shop!)

It wouldn't be the Worst House without a complication or two, so here goes:

- the shower cubicle has a design fault that means it leaks slightly at the hinges whatever you do ( Dawid has been back several time to loook at it to no avail.) Luckily I chose sealed white travertine on a concrete sub floor rather than wood, so it should be all right. It's only a drop or two each time, but with loo seat gate that might be the end of my affair with Bathstore.

- the adhesive on the roll-on floor protector that Dawid put down to protect our ( stripped wood) stairs seems to have bonded with the varnish, making the whole thing extremely sticky. I've been scrubbing it for a week with various potions to no avail. D assures me it will wear off eventually. I am comforted by the thought that the stairs are probably a bit safer as a result!

Pictures to follow tomorrow, in daylight. Although I'm not sure how good it will look given that the windows are filthy still - you can't get a window cleaner for love nor money round here at the moment. I have managed to get an appointment for next Thursday, which will include ( blush) the first ever clean for the glass roof in the kitchen.

I know, it's just a ceiling...

2009-05-18T20:59:00.002+01:00

but I am really thrilled with it!

Progress has been a bit slow over the last couple of weeks. Not because the builders haven't turned up - they've been doing 10 hour days - but because progress has all been of the tedious prepping, filling and sanding variety. I sneaked up this evening to have a look and I'm quite encouraged, even though as you can see from the pictures they're still prepping the walls for painting, and only a thin coat of emulsion has gone up. Even that's transformed it in my view - farewell and good riddance muddy green ( sorry Farrow and Ball - it was great at the time but the flirtation's over - it's back to pure brilliant white for me!) It's so lovely to look up at my new smooth white crack -free ceiling with the new-but-authentic fibrous plaster cornice. My husband hasn't even looked upstairs for a fortnight, and he's away at the moment, but I am hoping the sight of it all coming together will make him realise it's all been worth it. The old saggy and craggy ceiling with the giant 'oh my God is that structural?' crack and the porridgy textured lining paper is ( almost) a distant memory.

I like the new shower room too. As yet ungrouted, and the splashback will go in as soon as I've bought some more mosaic tiles, but I love the way it makes the best use of what is, let's face it, an absolutely miniscule space. They've even squeezed an airing cupbard in for me by putting doors on the existing shelves.

Dawid reckons they should be finished this week, which will be great, as we're heartily sick of sleeping in the study with all our furniture piled up around us. I daren't let our much put-upon cleaner come in here as it's so disgusting, but the kids, with their unerring instinct for reliving 2007, have found a great game of crawling under the bed and emerging covered in dustballs!

And the sander goes on and on and on

2009-05-05T11:04:00.003+01:00

We had a lovely weekend, thanks - we stayed in a lovely place close to our old flat in Myddelton Square, and had a bit of a nostalgic wander round all our old haunts in Bloomsbury and Islington. We went to some galleries and even managed the cinema. Despite promising ourselves huge lie-ins neither of us managed to sleep past 8.30 though - that's what years of getting up for the kids does for you!

We came back to find all the neighbours hate us - the carpenter put in three 12 hour days over the bank holiday weekend sanding the bedroom floor. And he's still going today. It's very very noisy. As with everything in the Worst House it's been really difficult because the floorboards were about an inch thick in floor paint, very very wonky, and with lots of them too damaged to repair. The new ceiling is up, but as it had to be slightly lowered to even up the huge slope, the new cornicing now won't fit round the bay window without some major adjustments to the window architraves. It just wouldn't be the WH without complications along the way. The new room below it ( the old garage) is so geometrically perfect that it is something of a shock to realise quite how wonky our bedroom is - there isn't a straight line in the place.

Speaking of which I have fallen out of love with Bathstore somewhat. I have ordered 5 bathrooms from them since 2005 but they can find no trace of me on any of their records. This is very irritating because the streamlined wall hung loos we fitted in the WH last year have always had extremely wobbly seats. They're meant to be swanky soft close ones, not 'deposit you on the floor if you're not careful' ones. I have taken a while to sort it out because I just couldn't face it - I was still in 'never want to see a builder again' mode for quite a while. Dawid noticed them and offered to sort them out for me ( along with a few other issues left by the original builder.) And yet without the original order ( unfortunately placed by my bankrupt builder not me, but obviously delivered here) they can't sell me new attachment clips. Which means I have to buy whole new loo seats at £45 each. Not great when it's their product that's the issue. I did get quite shirty with them in the end - it's a couple of plastic clips for pete's sake!

Dust, glorious dust...

2009-04-29T22:00:00.002+01:00

The stuff is everywhere. Even in my lovely new miniature car, which has already been baptised with several trips to the tile shop (buying tiles, returning the ones my builder deemed unsuitable for the underfloor heating, and coming back with new white travertine ones that practically doubled the weight of the car.) Reduced load space aside, I am loving having a nippy little runabout. I can get into parking spaces I could formerly only dream of. Going out in it after 5 pm holds no fears for me now - I could never find a space for the Audi after 6 but now I can squeeze into the miniature gaps all my larger-vehicled neighbours have to reject! Plus it uses about 5 pence worth of petrol a week. Although Dawid the builder did look puzzled when he saw me in it today, and asked whether it was a courtesy car from the garage...

The very expensive fibrous plaster cornicing arrived last Thursday, and by Monday the shop owner was begging me to take it away as he couldn't store it any longer. 17 metres of the stuff takes up quite a lot of space when it comes in 3 m lengths. Luckily our ceilings downstairs are just over 3 m high so it's now stacked up waiting in our house instead. The builders have had to fit a metal frame to the joists to make them level enough to fit the new plasterboard to - there was a very visible to the naked eye 2 inch slope in the old one, which may well have contributed to the crack.

A new concrete sub floor has been laid in that which shall henceforth be known as the ensuite shower room, and most of the wall tiles are up, though not yet grouted. The joiner who built our shelves downstairs spent most of the day today constructing the new wall of bookshelves, and Dawid is talking about sanding the bedroom floor this weekend, which should please the neighbours no end. Oh, and my husband's parents, who are going to have to slum it in our miniature study bedroom, as they are looking after the kids for a couple of nights while we go away for a wedding anniversary/belated birthday break. Wonder if they'd notice if we stayed away for another week and came back when it was all finished?

Swinging from the rafters

2009-04-22T21:32:00.003+01:00

Well, not quite. I'm not actually quite sure what that phrase means...!

Anyway the ceiling is well and truly down, my nice clean house is an inch thick in black dust, the front garden is full of sacks of rubble and my husband and I are sleeping in a small room surrounded by most of our possessions. Sounds awfully familiar - only of course it's nothing like last time as despite the big black footprints everywhere and heartbreaking smudges on the white paintwork we do actually have heat, light and plenty of space and running water. Oh, and 2 flushing loos - unlike 2007-8 when we were flushing with buckets!

The rewiring's done, the radiators are in - four of them just to make sure - and the shower and basin are plumbed in. Bathstore delivered everything a mere five days after ordering, so I was very pleased with them. I know not everyone's a fan but it's always worked for me so far. ( Mind you Dawid hasn't unpacked the shower cubicle yet so we'll see how that goes!)

We have sold the Audi estate ( thanks Gumtree!) tonight and I collect the new miniature mobile tomorrow. It's going to be very odd not being able to just pop out and pick up a few radiators or a stack of tiles when I fancy it. The boot in the new car is no more than a glorified parcel shelf. Perhaps buying it is a deeply submerged psychological hint that I need to control my appetite for renovation! ( It's probably telling that our old car was bought by a builder, too!)

Farewell avocado

2009-04-15T22:49:00.003+01:00

It took us hours last night to move all our stuff out, find homes for everything and rebuild our bed in the study. It's nowhere near as bad as last year, obviously, but still very odd. The children are sharing a room again, as our son's room has been commandeered for storage.

Dawid and Darek turned up at 8 sharp this morning and started by forensically sealing the bedroom with polythene and tape to try and contain some of the dust. It was like an episode of CSI, without the gore. I almost shed a tear to see the avocado basin out in the skip - the times I've done the washing up in that! (A few before and during pictures here to remind me why I'm putting myself through this only a year after the last upheaval!)

Then it was off to drop the kids at their holiday clubs for the day while I ran round buying radiators and ordering a bathroom. This being a credit-crunch makeover I bought bog standard Wickes radiators at £100 for all 4, rather than the posh ones I had been eyeing up. But I know that the single rad in my daughter's room was £700 from Bisque and those balmy ( barmy?!) days are over for us for a while. I was intending to look at the designer range at B and Q, but in the end I couldn't be bothered to drive to New Malden or Chiswick. So bog standard it is, but hopefully they will be warm!

I went for Bathstore fittings in the end, partly because they could deliver on Monday. Have gone for the same basin we have in the bathroom and downstairs loo ( the Euro trio) with a corner shower cubicle that isn't the prettiest thing you've ever seen in the world but makes good use of the cupboard-like space. I did splash out on a posh shower though - the same one that we have in the main bathroom.

I came back to find the cornicing hacked off and the sagging lathe and plaster beginning to appear. I am planning to do very little tomorrow apart from choose a new plaster cornice from the catalogue at our corner paint shop - hopefully one that isn't too different from the original.

I'm wondering about tiles now - we have white glass sheets in the main bathroom and downstairs, but to be honest I'm not that thrilled with it because the fitting was so poor. Are brick shaped tiles completely dated now? I have a bit of a hankering for them, which I hardly dare admit to my husband because I pooh-poohed the idea when he suggested it for the bathroom. I think it's either that or 10cm square white ones. I'd quite like white mosaic but I can't help thinking of all that extra grout to clean!

Has it really been 7 weeks?!

2009-04-12T17:33:00.002+01:00

Oh dear, I really have been a bit rubbish lately. No excuses - except the usual stuff. Although I have been doing a creative writing course and actually got a short story published! We have also finally replaced our car - an 11 year old Audi estate that has failed us too many times and cost too much in repairs over the past year to keep running. Although of course I have signed on the dotted line for the new car ( a cheap and cheerful eco-friendly super-mini, although alas not an actual mini) just before the govt announces its £2k scrappage scheme for cars over 9 years old. Pah! And absolutely typical. Our son was born just a week too early for the £250 baby bond scheme - it's kind of a theme with us. No doubt next year there will be a 'convert your hideous garage to a room' grant of several squillion pounds.

Window-gate is still running, although the mountain ash is in and looking good, if titchy. My beloved magnolia survived the move to its new position and is thriving, which is a great comfort. I spend a lot of time shaking my fist (not quite but almost literally) at the man who cut down the trees next door, and planning my next move, which is a large palm tree and a strategically placed thicket of black bamboo. Hope it goes bananas and overruns his garden. Double pah!

The builders arrive on Wednesday to start the great master bedroom and ensuite bathroom renovation. On the one hand I am absolutely thrilled to be kissing goodbye to the inadequate single radiator, peeling paint, avocado basin, cracked and bumpy anaglypta ceiling and brown painted floorboards. On the other hand I am still fairly traumatised from the events of 2007-8 and dreading the three weeks ( optimistic estimate!) of disruption to come. We are going to spend Easter Monday distributing the contents of our bedroom round the house and deciding whether to move our bed down to the small sitting room or put the kids into together and move into our son's room for the duration. Either way it's going to be horrible! But, as I keep reminding myself, a mere bagatelle compared with what I've weathered in the past.

I have always got my bathrooms from Bathstore in the past, but a friend really rates B&Q for bathrooms and radiators so I am thinking of giving them a whirl. Certainly looks cheaper, at a quick glance.

We are having another bank of floor to ceiling bookshelves in the bedroom. Seriously, we are running out of wall space. If I send my husband out for a pint of milk he comes back with three books under his arm. There are three or four charity shops at the end of our road, all with very good book sections, and he just can't resist it. Whenever I suggest a purge he goes through the shelves and comes up with a paltry selection, usually all mine anyway, consisting of three cookery books and a theatre programme from 1985. Perhaps I should send him to Bibliophiles Anonymous.

denuded...the new view from my daughter's window

2009-02-22T22:28:00.003Z

....where all used to be lush and sylvan.

Thanks for all the support on Hedgegate. It's so upsetting when someone else does something to spoil your little home and there's nothing you can do about it - I can well imagine how you felt about the 9 foot fence Amy! I am still seething - it has absolutely ruined the aspect from the back of our house and has been done so badly that there is even a forlorn little lollipop of holly left stranded at the top of the once beautiful tree. It might grow back but the elder that used to be behind it has been razed to the ground. I asked my nice friendly gardening guy to come and have a look the other day and he winced. And despite the window being frosted it still feels like I am being observed doing the washing up.

Hey ho...I should probably just get over myself. I'll await the mountain ash next week and make the best of it. In my 'obsessed with being overlooked' state I was slightly comforted this afternoon by looking around at other houses in the area. I took my daughter to a children's party in Twickenham, and walking through the very expensive little enclave of St Margarets I couldn't help noticing there that a lot of the houses there have even titchier gardens than us and 'through' reception rooms that look straight out onto the back windows of the houses behind them. And the houses on one side of the next road to us back onto shops and flats which completely overlook and bear down onto them, complete with air conditioners and industrial fans. So I guess it's just a London thang and I'll get used to it eventually. It has had one good effect, in that I have taken up running again after a child-birth related exercise gap of seven years. I can only manage a very gentle round-the-block saunter so far but the therapeutic effects are amazing! I am preparing to astonish the populace tomorrow morning by turning up at nursery in my very untrendy bought-in-the-1990s running shoes.

grrr!

2009-02-14T22:29:00.005Z

Thanks for the comments Amy and Kaybar - I didn't see the GD episode but I can well imagine! The liquidator thing is still going on; the only crumb of comfort is that we definitely won't have to pay them unless the defects are made good...! (I didn't know you were in Wimbledon Amy - I drove through Wimbledon today to take the kids to a party at Deen City Farm - I'd never heard of it before we got the invitation but it was great - the kids loved it!)

More property stress this week. Like lots of houses round here, the Worst House is very hemmed in by other houses, as we have neighbours either side and our garden backs straight onto the side of another house, the first one in another row of houses at right angles to ours. I have never minded this as we had plenty of privacy from the mature trees in the gardens either side. However this morning the neighbours who rent the slightly grotty ground floor flat on our right have suddenly for some inexplicable reason hacked down two beautiful trees at the end of their garden - a mature elderflower and a lovely holly tree. They provided us with shade, privacy and beautiful flowers and berries. Instead we now have a view of a brick wall, our other neighbour's first floor bathroom window ( thankfully frosted, although it still makes us feel overlooked) and some sorry hacked off stumps that yesterday were beautiful trees. I could weep. I just don't know why they've done it - they never use the garden, and as a rubbish 1970s flat conversion means only their loo looks out onto it they can't exactly claim they were spoiling their view or light. It also means the magnolia tree I planted 18 months ago to shield the one gap that was left is now in the wrong place.

It was only on Friday that I was congratulating myself on not having to spend any money on the garden this year, having had it all professionally sorted out last summer. I must have jinxed it...!

I have gone online tonight ( very romantic on Valentine's Day!) to order a mountain ash to plant strategically - they are supposed to be good for small urban gardens, pollution resistant and not too invasive, and as this one will arrive 10 feet high it should provide us with a bit of instant privacy. We'll probably have to move the magnolia to fit it in, which is a potential disaster as they don't always transplant very well. Aggh. London living. Makes me want to sell up and move to the country!

The garden last May, complete with the elderflower in next door's garden shielding us from the end wall. All now hacked down ( and to add insult to injury half the branches have ended up in my garden!) Tomorrow I'll try to bring myself to take a picture of the grim view we now have of a brick wall and a loo window.

Snowing on my parade

2009-02-04T22:31:00.005Z

It's been an interesting week, with some of the old emotional highs and lows I remember from our party wall dispute last year. I didn't put any of that down on the blog at the time in case it was used against us in court or something, but believe me, it caused me sleepless nights in our eyrie propped up on scaffolding when one of our (remaining strictly nameless) neighbours threatened to get the work stopped.

Anyway I got back from dropping my son off at school last Thursday and innocently picked the post off the mat to find a horrible snooty letter from our builder's liquidators demanding we pay them £3k plus vat within 21 days or they would be taking legal action. They wrote to us in similar terms last year but I thought our architect had seen them off, pointing out that as the builder had gone bust our contract ( and therefore the £3k defects retention) no longer applied. I wouldn't mind, but we still have a massive crack in the glass roof and a number of other minor but irritating faults that need fixing.

I think it's OK now. A few panicked emails later and our trusty architect stepped in again and very efficiently re-sent them her original letter with a politely coded but pretty firm message to xxxx off. I could do without receiving any more of that sort of letter when I get back from the school run - I am 38 in March and getting a bit elderly for that sort of shock. Also I'm just not very good at dealing with property-related strife. I very unsuccessfully rented out a flat for a year back in the 90s ( I couldn't sell at the time and really needed to move) and my heart used to plummet to my boots every time the phone rang with more tales of complaining neighbours, defaulting tenants, flooded bathrooms and broken boilers. Aggh. Even hearing the ringtone I had at the time brings me out in a rash....!

And calm..

On the other hand, the kids have loved the snow. I'd love to say Anna made her snowman all by herself but I have to confess the parental hand was heavily involved - no wonder she looks so surprised!

Hope you've all been enjoying it too ( although after 2 days of mine and several neighbours' kids careering through the house I was mighty relieved when the schools went back today!)

Rainy sunday

2009-01-25T12:40:00.003Z

My mum is very excited about our recent antics with RH magazine, but I bet her pals are going to be a bit puzzled when it comes out - a bit bare, no curtains or carpets, and white plastic chairs in the dining room. You can't move in her house for velvet curtains, dried flowers and bits of strange tat she's picked up from car boot sales. In fact the wooden shoe lasts on our hearth were a gift from her - I quite like them but my husband thinks they are yet another example of the chintz and clobber (eg cushions) I am ruining the house with...!

What is interesting about my mum's taste for chintz is that my grandfather was an architect and built his own house in the 1950s. It was demolished before I was born to make way for a housing estate but in the very few family photos that survive it looks fantastic - bare brick internal walls and plain wooden fittings. Their taste was very austere - that Ercol and G-plan furniture that is very covetable now but most of which which my gran got rid of when she downsized after his death in the 1990s. I've asked my mum to dig some photos out for me. I'm wondering if her own taste for Victoriana is a reaction to her childhood, in the same way that I can't bear anything reminiscent of 1980s brown-and-cream Laura Ashley...and does that mean that our children will be putting back all that 'original' swirly carpet and flocked wallpaper when they move into their 'terribly dated and noughties' first flats? I can see it now"

'' It was awful!' remembers Anna, " It had last been decorated in 2009 and the owners hadn't done a thing since. It was painted a dull white throughout, with boring wooden floors and no curtains to hide the huge bare windows. I have worked hard to bring back some original 1980s intimacy to the place, with richly textured contrasting curtains and carpet, and beautiful ruched patterned curtains, with lacy nets to block out some of the overpowering light. We also lowered the ceilings to create a cosier feel..."

Sneak peek

2009-01-21T15:56:00.009Z

Carl Pendle very kindly sent me some sample low res jpegs from the shoot for Real Homes today. What amazes me most is that Monday was a really cold, grey and overcast day, with hail in some parts of London, and yet he's managed to make it look as if it was a sunny summer day with the place flooded with light! He's also managed to make the master bedroom look more like an 'after' than a 'before'! The magic of professsional photography...

There are some lovely ones with Anna in that I haven't posted here, and some rather less lovely ones with your truly in that I am definitely not posting - we'll have to wait and see whether any of those make it into the magazine!

The sitting room - complete with that John Lewis rug!

The study

The master bedroom

The dining room

15 months later....

2009-01-19T15:34:00.003Z

Carl and Janet, the photographer and writer who are working together on the Real Homes article, have just left. It was great fun, they were both lovely, and talking through what we've done to the house prompted me to look back at some of my early blog entries. I had forgotten what a long haul it was getting to the point we are now - and that this used to be the famous local eyesore of a house with a garage as a sitting room, an outside loo, a condemned gas cooker and a dead dog under the floorboards. I take being able to switch the oven on, or do the laundry inside the house, or look out of my front sitting room windows so much for granted now that I had almost forgotten how we lived for the first two years of my daughter's life. Thankfully I don't think she'll remember any of it, although my son says he still has very clear memories of 'the gloomy house', as he called it. We'll have been in the house three years in July, and it feels so much like home that I can't believe we haven't been here longer.

Rock around the clock

2009-01-16T15:50:00.003Z

I have gone a bit mad this week buying stuff - after months of holding back it's as if the credit crunch is on hold for a few days. Dawid the builder is here at this very minute replacing the nasty 1970s 'piece of 2 by 4 masquerading as a picture rail' in the dining room with an authentic one to match the others in the house. And on Wednesday afternoon, in an 'Oh my god Real Homes are coming' moment I picked up the phone and ordered an Eames rocking chair from the wondrously swift, efficient and friendly James at Swivel, where we got our Eames dining chairs last summer. We've wanted to get one for ages but somehow never have. And now it's arrived, a mere 48 hours later, I wish we'd bought it years ago - it's lovely. Or at least I think so! ( Felty cushion a recent stealth purchase - don't tell my husband...!)

What do you think of this rug?

2009-01-14T12:42:00.005Z

I have a very serious question for you. I was in John Lewis this morning, ostensibly to buy a new blind for the bathroom, when I caught sight of a spotty rug and kind of impulse bought it. ( It was on offer and I couldn't resist it!) The thing is, do you think it's grown up enough for the sitting room or is it more suited to a bedroom - or even a child's room? I can't decide, mainly because I am blinded by my love of spots, but I need to make up my mind so that if it's going back I can get it packed up before the children roll round on it with jammy fingers. (Although if it's not right for the sitting room I might keep it anyway for our bedroom when it's finally revamped...!) I have just rushed home with it in the back of the car and flung it onto the floor for a look before nursery pick-up time.. you know how it is!

All opinions gratefully received. (And thank you for all the lovely comments on my last post, which always make my day!)

7pm update - My husband really likes it so it looks like we're keeping it. I'm amazed but very pleased!

PS I love you

2009-01-09T15:51:00.006Z

Happy New Year everyone - hope you had a lovely Christmas! The Worst House was full of Christmas cheer this year, a very happy contrast to Christmas 2007, when we had to decamp to my neighbour's house while she took a very handily timed holiday in Australia.

2009 has got off to a flying start for us. On 6 January I had Dawid the builder in again to price for a very long list of jobs upstairs, starting of course with the crack in the master bedroom ceiling and including getting rid of the nasty woodchip in my son's bedroom. I don't think we can afford most of it but it feels positive just to have invited him in.

Then I discovered that IKEA deliver! Result! Although my husband misses the meatballs and my son loves the creche ( they have Playstation) I am thrilled - no more battling through the crowds to find they don't have what you want, and still managing to spend £100 on a load of kitchenware and cushions you definitely didn't need when you set out that morning...

I have always hated the huge pile of toys, books, chewed pencils and odd broken bits of Power Ranger and mangled dinosaur leg that live at the end of our kitchen, so I took a deep breath and tried out the new online ordering thang. The marvellous white metal IKEA PS cabinet, which has been on my wishlist for ages, arrived painlessly a few days later. After the usual evening of struggling and swearing with the instructions we now have a tidy toy cupboard. Let's see how long that lasts...!

And then photographer Carl Pendlebury contacted me to say that Real Homes magazine would like to do a feature on our house! I am very excited indeed - Carl and a writer commissioned by the magazine will be visiting on 19 Jan, so the Worst House could make it into print in the next few month. (Carl is a freelance photographer who is always looking for houses which might be suitable for featuring in interiors magazines, so if you're interested why not get in touch?)

Tis the season to be cleaning...

2008-12-23T15:24:00.003Z

Having a viakal moment today with the parents in law due to arrive any second. Just had time to ice the cake yesterday in a clumsily Nigella-inspired sort of way, and make some peppermint creams with the kids. We're all really looking forward to our first Christmas in this house WITH WINDOWS!

Merry Christmas everyone, and a happy and peaceful New Year!

Georgie xx

sunny Copenhagen

2008-11-24T21:45:00.002Z

Don't worry, and thanks for the support - I survived pianogate! Despite saying he was going to buy a ceramic white elephant to sit on top of it and remind me of my folly, I think he secretly quite likes it. And the PILs were delighted when they visited to babysit this weekend, having had to give theirs away when they downsized a few years ago.

We've just come back from a weekend in Copenhagen, which my husband chose as his 40th birthday treat, without the kids. We went mainly for the chairs, as he's obsessed with Danish design and all things mid-century modern. None of which we can actually afford to own unless you count our Penguin Donkey and the new Eames chairs. He was v pleased to see our hall lights in the Danish design museum though. I'd highly recommend it for a weekend away - v Christmassy at this time of year but in a very restrained and tasteful sort of way. Think beautiful white stars to hang in your window, rather than red and green tinsel! All the shops seem to have design classics as part of their shopfittings too - you can't move for Arne J. Egg chairs! My favourite places were the Kunstindustrimuseet, which is set in beautiful grounds with a very stylish and understated cafe, and was practically empty when we visited. I also liked the Danish Design Centre, whcih was full of slightly bonkers inventions . Best for coffee and fabulous chocolate cake was a window seat at the gorgeous Cafe Norden on Stroget, and best shop ever ( my supposedly shop-hating husband was in a sort of retail-heaven induced daze) was the Illum department store close by, where this year's white-on white Christmas display and floor after floor of design classics have rather spoiled me for my local Dickens and Jones in Richmond.

Chintzorama?

2008-11-17T20:51:00.003Z

Oh dear. I have done a very bad thing. I am going to be in so much trouble when my husband gets home. I have made a very large impulse purchase. I have bought a piano - and none of us can really play!

In my defence my son is about to start lessons and my husband and mother in law can play a bit. It wasn't very expensive, practically free in fact apart from delivery, as it's a very old upright that any knowledgeable musical people would know was fit only for the bonfire. Which is where it may end up if my husband is as cross as I think he's going to be.

We discussed the idea of having a piano vaguely in theory a while ago, and he wasn't entirely enthused, but neither did he veto the idea. We had one when I was a child and although I never did much more than play Chopsticks on it I still like the idea of having one around when you've got children in the house.

Anyway it's too late now because I've bought it. It arrived tonight while the kids were getting ready for bed and they certainly seemed delighted by it - but I suppose they would, being 6 and 2! I shall be trembling in my boots when my husband gets home - he's out at a work do. Perhaps if I switch all the lights out and go to bed he won't notice until the morning, and then he'll have to rush off to work before he can shout at me? Wish me luck...!

Gogos a go-go

2008-11-13T13:59:00.003Z

Thanks to everyone who commented on my last post, and particularly to Juddie, whose comment this lunchtime made me realise it's been quite a while!

I nipped out with a friend to the Cath Kidston branch in Chiswick recently and couldn't resist buying this to hang on the side door from the laundry room leading out to our bike shed and bin store. ( The old tradesman's entrance!)

Cue usual chintz protest from my husband, but I'm justifying it as minimalist eco-purchase, keeping my carrier bags tidy and ready to re-use!

Meanwhile go-go mania has hit my son's school big-time. Think yourself very lucky if it hasn't hit your area yet - if it has you'll know what I mean, if not, you're probably mystified. They hurt your feet almost as badly as chunks of Lego when you step on them in a child's darkened bedroom in the middle of the night, but I was quite impressed that my son had lined them up so neatly!

We had a fab half-term break in Paris with the kids, where we rented an extremely tiny but extremely tasteful mini-flat in the Marais, right in the middle of all the elegant little shops and cafes that make you want to stay there forever. Luckily the kids are still a bit too young to make noises about going to EuroDisney, although I'm sure that will happen soon, so we spent the time pottering round museums and parks. I was left a bit cold by the sculptures at the Rodin museum ( what a philistine!) but I loved the house and gardens. Plus the sandwiches in the cafe are fab - and there's a tree growing up through the walls - what more could you ask for?!

Spots and stripes

2008-10-16T10:34:00.000+01:00

Like lots of unfortunate women out there I am afflicted with a husband who has opinions on interior decor.

This means we don't have a scrap of carpet anywhere in the house, and a kitchen that John Pawson would be proud of. Every time I try to soften the look ( see my spotty cushion) or a flowery tea towel I am accused of filling the house with chintz. I do like minimalism ( much easier to keep clean!) but I've also got a hankering for pretty things. There's a wonderful shop round the corner from us called Maison , which stocks white painted bedroom furniture and old French mirrors. I used to wander round there in the middle of our horrendous building work eyeing up gorgeous armoires and chandeliers and promising myself that I would have some beautiful things when the house was finished. Needless to say that hasn't really happened, but I've made up for it a bit in my daughter's room, which is the kind of room I'd have loved as a child. ( I had to share with my brother for years and then when I did get my own room my parents' taste and budget were more MFI than shabby chic!

She's still in her cot bed for now but I have a lovely white painted iron bed ready for when she turns three. The white painted wardrobe came from an antiques market in Kingston. I have gone a bit mad with her bedding but it's so nice to have some patterns!

The spotty blinds were from John Lewis and the funny old wicker chair is one I've had for years - I bought it in Greenwich market for £10 when I bought my first little flat in Brockley.

Signs and titles

2008-10-14T09:50:00.004+01:00

I think my Penguin mugs collection is getting slightly out of hand, but I do love them. They seem to bring out a few more titles every couple of years. The only colour we haven't got is the classic orange - I'll have to put one on my Christmas list.

I've found a more permanent home for the garage sign I prised off the front of the house before the builders arrived - above the door in the downstairs loo (which was, like the small sitting room, carved out of the former garage.) I did have it in a frame above my desk but it was too heavy for it and going wonky!

Thanks for all the lovely comments everyone! Good luck with the roof MaryPoppins - let's hope the Indian summer lasts a bit longer. I'd love to make my own curtains Lavender but I am a complete butter fingers with a needle and thread. I was always the girl in needlework at school who somehow managed to wrap both sewing machine and self in a big tangle of thread. I did manage to make a skirt once ( from one of those Simple patterns) but by that point the rest of the girls in my class had moved on to designing couture or something...

Alas poor blog

2008-10-07T20:17:00.003+01:00

I feel guilty every time I switch on the computer. My excuse is that this started as a house renovation blog and there isn't much renovating going on at the moment. I did manage to paint the sheds and garden gate the other day but as I did them in colourless wood preserver I haven't got much to show for it!

I did manage to spend the Habitat gift vouchers I won from Living Etc though. I bought a beautiful Palermo floor lamp and a ginormous tweedy shade. Ever credit-crunch conscious I got a 20% off voucher from Martin Lewis's money saving expert website, which is definitely worth a look at. I was having palpitations as I handed the voucher over in case they refused to honour it but the sales staff didn't bat an eyelid.

I also bought a new cushion in TK Max ( more credit-crunchery!) I am in love with spots at the moment but my dear husband says I can't have many more as I am 'filling the house' with them.

Our six month defect period is up soon, which means we will need to give the builder his £3k plus vat in retention. Touch wood, I haven't noticed any major defects, apart from the crack in the glass roof which has not yet been fixed. The situation is slightly complicated by the fact that he declared himself bankrupt over the summer, so we've been getting demand letters from the liquidators. I will have to get in touch with our architect soon to see how the thing can be managed, but I'm not exactly falling over myself to start the process!

My new spotty cushion, and the Penguin Donkey, which my husband loves only slightly less than his Isokon Loop coffee table. I think they're the only two pieces of 'real' furniture that we own.

You can see the big Lewisham mirror in this one. I'm wondering whether it's time to hang some curtains up now that the nights are drawing in. I'm not a big fan of curtains on the whole, and finding them long enough for the French window is a pain. The Chinese wall hanging was a gift from the father of one of my students when I taught English in China 15 years ago.

The new Habitat Palermo floor lamp. We're in discussion about whether to replace the tatty tweed sofa. It's incredibly old and not very trendy any more ( though my husband assures me it was quite the in-thing when he bought it!) I'm a bit fed up with it but have been persuaded that we should think about replacing it when the kids are slightly less prone to leaping on the furniture. Perhaps I should liven it up with some more spotty cushions and consign the Nepali ones ( gifts from a globe trotting friend) to the sofa upstairs for now!

arty schmarty

2008-09-18T22:46:00.007+01:00

I have been trying to take some better pictures now that normal life has resumed in the WH, but I'm just not very good at it. I am extremely pleased with my new teapot though- only Marks and Spencer, but unlike my Heals one I don't feel too frightened to use it.

The rescued dresser. I think I'm probably hankering after a country kitchen at heart, despite my glass and corian actual kitchen! We need yet more bookshelves so I can display more of our china.

I love roses - they're so retro, somehow, and unlike lots of flowers they seem to grow old gracefully - no pollen ( lilies) or incredibly stinky water ( glads) to deal with. Here they are in our hall with the gilt mirror I bought in Lewisham in 1996 and to which I am strangely attached, to my husband's bemusement. I've got an even bigger one which sits over the fireplace and which I think he's equally unkeen on!

A mini home from home

2008-09-14T22:00:00.004+01:00

Wow, thanks for all the lovely comments - it's true, I think, that books furnish a room. My husband had his 40th birthday recently and one of the presents I bought for him was a book I've been eyeing up for myself for years - Living with Books by Alan Powers. Full of gorgeous book-lined interiors!

It's been a while, mainly because of the summer holidays. We've been away (to the same gite in northern France as last year) and the kids have kept me extremely busy. It was fantastic coming home from our holiday to the Worst House this year - it couldn't have been more different. Last year we came home to find the place half demolished and the staircase boxed in with hardboard to try and keep some of the dust away from our mini flatlette upstairs. I hardly knew myself this year - able to unpack and have a shower and cook supper and everything! It's telling that our gite seemed quaint and rickety this year, in a charming but rather Heath Robinsonish sort of way, whereas last year I found the hot running water and constant electrical supply overwhelmingly swish.

We've just got back from a fantastic weekend at the End of the Road festival at the Larmer Tree Gardens in Dorset. First festival for the kids, and the first one I've been to since 2000. I'm not a camping kind of a gal ( although my tolerance for it has vastly increased since our eight months upstairs!) so we hired a vintage Volkswagon camper complete with Cath Kidston-style upholstery from South Coast Campers in Bournemouth. It was fabulous, and I was v reluctant to give up the festival lifestyle and come home, even to the rejuvenated Worst House. After the storms and torrential downpours of Friday the sun shone for the rest of the weekend. I even bumped into a friend I hadn't seen for eight years, there with her two children as well. Definitely going again next year. My top tip: Klorane Dry Shampoo!

books, glorious books

2008-08-03T16:53:00.003+01:00

Ok so I know not everyone is with me on this one, but we are very pleased indeed with the new bookshelves. Although I accept they make the place look like a bit like public library, to us it means the Worst House feels like home. (I can recommend a very good Polish builder/joiner if anyone is interested - he covers most of West London...!)

We've had some sunny days in the garden too, and the place is starting to settle down. It's a lovely feeling coming home to a place you love - I don't think I've had that since my first little flat in Brockley in 1996!

We have regretfully ( in my case) or relievedly ( in my husband's case) decided we will have to leave the master bedroom and ensuite for at least a year, until we've got the money to do it properly. Frustrating though it is, I think it's the right decision. I actually found having the shelves built quite stressful, even though they were brilliant and it only took them four days from start to finish. I'd forgotten how disruptive and dirty noise and dust can be. Just shows you - it is like childbirth - you do forget! We are hanging the last few pictures, and I am hoping to take a few final photos of the WH next week when our new digi camera arrives. I have been using my phone camera all this time but I think it's time to upgrade...!

very mini layout picture

2008-07-20T23:10:00.002+01:00

So many people have expressed themselves puzzled about the layout of the Worst House that I've found a very tiny plan of the ground floor that I hope will make things a bit clearer - if you've got a magnifying glass! I think it gets bigger if you click on it. (Thanks Lesley for the latest prompt on this!)

The house when we moved in had a dining room, rear reception with French windows to the garden and galley kitchen with outside loo. There was also a tradesman's entrance at the side of the house that led to the dining room and into the garage at the front via a small lobby.

As we all know the garage has thankfully now been converted back to a reception room - the one with bay windows! We took a slice out of it ( making it 14 feet long instead of 18) to make a utility room and downstairs loo. The utility has the old tradesman's entrance as an external door to the side return where we keep the bins and our bikes.

The dining room is still a dining room, but it has now been knocked through into the rear reception room, which is the one with the bookshelves, chandelier and French windows onto the decking. We kept the kitchen more or less where it was in the rear side return extension but opened it up to the dining room and extended it by about 12 feet ( the glass box!) to make it into a kitchen/breakfast room. The only bone of contention about the design was whether to take down the wall between the rear sitting room and the kitchen, and in the end we opted not to, so I have a sort of high tech cooking 'pod' which is semi open plan to the other rooms. I still wonder about it sometimes but it would have meant losing the grand marble fireplace and lovely cornicing etc in the sitting room.

Oh dear - still clear as mud! It is definitely an unusual layout as most people with this type of v typical London terrace have our rear sitting room as the kitchen and knock the dining room and front sitting room together. Instead, we have four separate living spaces downstairs rather than just two, which we find suits us better. ( We had the more usual arrangement in our previous house...)

hurrah!

2008-07-18T16:16:00.004+01:00

All four maple chairs now safely delivered and the walnut one on its way to its rightful home. I am so pleased with them - they make the dining room feel lighter and bigger somehow. The kids love them too. So - Swiveluk, and James in particular, heartily recommended - will put their link on to this page when I remember how to do it! (Maraka - I am so impressed that you have a dining table big enough for eight of them! Also have my eye on the rocking chair...I like the furry sheepskin thingy you can get for it too.)

Now, on to the next thing ( rubs hands with glee!) Shelves for the small sitting room are being started tomorrow. Am going to post a few before pictures as I've been a bit evasive about that room - the main reason being that there's nothing much in it at the moment apart from a heap of books we haven't got shelves for!

Definitely more comfortable than when it was a garage

but needs something on that bare wall!

Chair saga nearly over!

2008-07-17T20:56:00.002+01:00

Well we have three beautiful fibreglass Eames DSW chairs in white and maple - and one in walnut, still in its box and awaiting collection tomorrow! James at Swiveluk was suitably abashed when I phoned him to query the odd one out - apparently someone somewhere else has got a set of five walnuts with one maple cuckoo in the nest. Assuming all goes well and we get our missing chair without mishap from Swivel tomorrow I have to say I heartily recommend them. Lovely stuff delivered v speedily and efficiently with friendly, knowledgeable service. Photos to follow...when all four are reunited!

An end to the chair saga?

2008-07-11T09:53:00.002+01:00

Was just about to order the Vitra DSWs on Griffo's German site when I noticed to my horror that the price had gone up to £239 in the three weeks I've been dithering. Doh!

I was v taken with the Air Chairs and they do look truly fab in Helen's house. Husband also liked them, which is quite an achievement. Was just about to order them instead ( in sky blue or white) and planning alternative destinations for the large amount of cash it would be saving when I came across another supplier for the DSWs. Vitra have stopped making fibreglass DSWs, so they are now made only in plastic. This is apparently authentic, as Eames wanted the chairs to be low-cost. However I have to say I do prefer the fibreglass look a la SCP. The supplier I found is in Stoke Newington, and they do the Modernica version, which are made in fibreglass - and are quite a bit cheaper at £129 plus £20 delivery. So having spoken to a real person at Swiveluk twice, who assures me he not only has them in stock but can get them to me by Wednesday next week, I have bitten the bullet and ordered some chairs. Sound of trumpets...

I am sure I have deliberated more and done more research about four dining chairs than I did about buying the Worst House in the first place!

Fingers crossed for next week. Can hardly bear to look at my horrid brown limbo dancing John Lewis ones in the meantime. My mother in law ( despite FIL's accident at their hands) is going to take a couple of them off me, and I'll be glad to take the others to the tip. (I could Freecycle them as I usually do but would have to attach a health warning!)

More cracks, more chairs...

2008-07-10T11:19:00.002+01:00

Well, the crack in the glass should be ok. It's on the internal layer of laminated glass to the roof so definitely can't have been caused by anyone tramping about up there. I knew no-one had been, but it would have been difficult to prove. To his credit, the builder sent three guys round straight away to look at it and I am keeping my fingers crossed that they will sort it out reasonably soon. I've now stopped noticing it, which is a good thing as the first couple of days my head jerked up automatically every time I went into the kitchen - not good for my posture or my sanity...

I've had a quote for repairing the other major crack - bedroom ceiling, which was only a couple of hundred quid cheaper than replacing the whole thing, though of course the mess and disruption factor will be much less. Even as the guy was explaining what would be involved (black dust all over the house...) I started having a minor ( fortunately v tiny and private) panic attack. I think I am more scarred by renovating the WH than I thought!

Also had a quote for some bookshelves in the front sitting room. A mere £4.5 k! Am still reeling! Rino, the lovely Italian builder who I used in our last house is popping over on Friday and will I hope be able to come up with something slightly more affordable.

And I've just been over the look at the Eames chairs in the Couch Potato Company. They're lovely, but will take 4 weeks to arrive - in which case we might as well go with the much cheaper German ones recommended by Griffo. Also quite keen on the Jasper Morrison Air Chairs, not least because they're only £49 each , but I don't know if they're too much like garden chairs for inside.

My husband works in housing, which is why every time I get a quote for something he recoils in credit-crunch induced horror. Hence lack of recent posting. Can't blame him really -at least he hasn't insisted I go back to work, which he's perfectly within his rights to do. As our daughter is now nearly 2 and a half I have probably had the longest maternity leave in history, although to be fair it hasn't been all that relaxing!

big prizes!

2008-06-27T21:37:00.004+01:00

We haven't quite won the lottery but there is much excitement at Worst House towers as we have won £150 in Habitat vouchers from Living Etc. Thank you Living Etc and Habitat ( and also Griffo who I think must have some unspecified role behind the LE scenes...!) It's lovely that the poor old WH has been both a covergirl and a prize winner in the same month - makes up for 40 years of being the house no-one wanted to date!

Feverishly trying to work out what to spend it on - I think some nice bedlinen to replace our IKEA circa 1998 stuff that isn't quite the right shape and size for our duvet. Although of course we need to sort the rest of the room out first - see previous pages..

Chairgate continues anon. I half feel like just ordering them and to hell with the consequences...

I was having supper with the children this evening, which is always eventful to say the least ( the little one tried out every chair round the table in the course of the meal) when I noticed a whopping great crack in the glass roof on the extension. It must have appeared overnight as it certainly wasn't there yesterday. I am staying very very calm about this, and waited a whole 3 minutes before dashing off to email the architect. Fingers crossed it's covered by the 6 months defects liability clause. Being determinedly cheery about it. I must admit that of all the faults I thought might develop, that one never even crossed my mind.

I have a new picture

I unscrewed the old sign the day before they started demolishing the garage. I'm not sure where to put it so it's propped up on my desk at the moment.

So many chairs...

2008-06-23T21:11:00.003+01:00

Well, we had a lovely day in Notting Hill, lunching at Julie's Bar and pretending to be off-duty millionaires, but the trip to SCP was a bit of a disappointment. The Eames DSW chairs were £325 each in there. Luckily the till wasn't working due to a power failure so we were able to make our excuses and leave without looking too idiotic. We popped into Pedlars instead and had a good old look at all those lovely things you see in Living Etc and wonder where they came from. V tempted by a London Underground poster but our need for chairs must take precedence.

Thanks for the tip about The Couch Potato Company Maraka - I must drive past that shop in Twickenham two or three times a week and it never occurred to me that they might stock Eames stuff! They are absolutely lovely people and are holding some for me at £230 each while we make up our minds...which we almost had until Griffo's top tip about the German place. Even with shipping they're going to work out at about £170 each for the real thing, which is extremely tempting. Just slightly nervous about possibly having to do business in German, not having done any since O-level in 1987. My husband spent two years living in Vienna and can still only just about order two beers. Mind you he does have very businesslike Austrian friends who could be called upon to ring them up and demand justice on my behalf if things went wrong.

Will mull it over for a few days.

In the meantime, we had the Building Control Officer round today to do the final sign off. Everything passed, which was great news as obviously I had spent the night before worrying that he was going to make us replace all the beautiful Victorian internal doors with fire doors, amongst other horrors. He actually spent less than 5 minutes going round with the builder, who he knows well. The only fly in the ointment is the structural engineer's calculations, which have gone AWOL, so we won't get our certificate until that's been sorted.

Thanks for the top tips everyone!

2008-06-21T21:43:00.004+01:00

It has occurred to me that if the ceiling did accidentally on purpose fall down because the children were pole-vaulting off the bed towards it then we could claim it on the insurance - thus two problems solved! Perhaps I should go up into the loft and stomp about a lot 'looking for the suitcases'...

Debating new dining chairs at the moment. We have wanted the Eames DSW chairs for ages but they're quite expensive. You can get what seem to be fairly good 'inspired by' copies for £70 - £125 each on various websites but I'm a bit nervous in case they don't turn up or appear to be made of matchsticks when they do. I don't want to make the mistake I did with the horrid ones we've got now. They're brown leather rip off ant chair style from John Lewis. I got them in a panic when pregnant and anticipating holding the first ever family Christmas at ours. After about six months the legs starting splaying, then after another six months one collapsed under my FIL. When I eventually complained to JL they said ' But you've had them more than a year madam!'. So you heard it here first - if you buy a chair from John Lewis its expected working life is precisely one year. Grrr. Anyway, we don't want to make the same mistake again. Husband wants to go to SCP tomorrow and check them out there, but I suspect he will fall over with shock when he sees the price. ( I can't get the SCP website to work but I suspect there wouldn't be much change from £280 each...)

It's been a while..

2008-06-17T21:16:00.004+01:00

mainly because husband has dug his heels in about the bedroom, the nice Polish guy I asked to quote for bookshelves has gone AWOL and the parents in law have been to stay for an extended FIL's birthday/Fathers' Day jamboree. We let them have our bedroom ( how kind!) and slept downstairs in the new ex garage, which I have to say was a sight more pleasant, even on those funny flop out folding beds we got for the kids to have sleepovers. I do love a plain white room - it was bliss waking up to white light filtering through the blinds rather than the crack and several layers of peeling plaster. I keep explaining that the bedroom too could be similarly gorgeous but he is strangely resistant. Part reluctance to have any more builders in the house and part very sensible but v tedious financial caution. Also, as he keeps saying, it's only about a month since the bathroom was finished - can't I take a short break?

Ho hum. People keep telling me how thrilled I must be to have it all finished, and of course I am - but I do like to have a little project on the go!

Anyway, more excitingly, the Worst House was immortalised yesterday on the Living Etc forum. Forum member Griffo68 rather marvellously creates a spoof magazine cover every month and the WH's kitchen extension is on the latest one! I have been beside myself with excitement over it, sending it to all and sundry. Except my mum, of course, who wouldn't get it at all...

That crack...

2008-06-05T21:04:00.001+01:00

Oh no - don't say that Lesley - it will give my husband the ammunition he needs to say we don't need to do the bedroom at all! I think those photos were a bit too flattering. Mind you we did throw out the green shag pile and paint the floorboards when we first moved in, so I agree it's not as bad as it could be.

Actually the postman has just brought a stack of eye-watering invoices for all the lovely things we've had done to the garden recently so I might have to confine myself to getting quotes and undertaking lengthy 'research' for the time being.

Meanwhile a close up of that crack for your delectation. If anyone knows someone in the SW London area who can fix old lathe and plaster ceilings which have lost their 'key' without ripping the whole thing down I'd be eternally grateful.

Definitely not the nicest bedroom in London

2008-06-04T20:48:00.008+01:00

Right, I think we've all had enough of the garden. Very nice and everything - but finished. Boorrrring, as my son would say. On to the next big project. I have been extremely coy about the master bedroom in the WH, mainly because

a) it's hideous
b) see above
c) we lived in it for eight months and it's definitely the worse for wear (although I freecycled our old fridge freezer recently so it no longer has quite the same Rising Damp ambience. I used to expect Rigsby to emerge from the wardrobe looking for Miss Jones..)

The biggest problem is the huge jagged crack in the ceiling, which looks as if the whole thing might crash down on our heads one night. Other problems include:

Damp stains and peeling by the windows
Rattling, single glazed, rotten windows ( they'll be staying unless my husband gets promoted to king of the world or something - have you seen the price of new wooden sash windows?!!!)
One tiny radiator in exactly the place you might put some bookshelves rather than under the windows where it might warm the place up to a fraction above freezing
Hideous avocado ensuite washroom
Our books ( sorry kaybar!) have spilled over into this room too and there is absolutely nowhere to put them..
Dominated by the huge leather bed we bought for our much bigger loft room in our old house
Repository for unsightly furniture from student days not remotely usable elsewhere in the house ( rather a lot of wicker...)
Needs rewiring - and still has very strange mixture of pendant and wall lights that were there when we moved in

Good points:

It's big ( about 15 by 18 not including the ensuite)
It has a natural ensuite with window ( our v quirky houses had them in 1900 - very avant-garde)
There is a wall of really well organised and not completely monstrous (though not Living Etc modern) wardrobes.)
My husband likes the Oliver Bonas bedside lamps ( there is one at the end of our road and he is a frequent visitor..)

I feel slightly Marie Antoinette ish complaining about all this as it is all perfectly functional. But walking through the door after the rest of the house is a real blast from the past and quite depressing. We recently had a weekend away in Goring on Thames ( belated birthday treat). We stayed in a gastro pub with rooms called the Miller of Mansfield, which I highly recommend. Our room ( mumber 8) was pink and rather groovy - even my husband liked it, so I am hoping I can persuade him to bring forward the bedroom renovation and let me have something marginally more feminine than he usually permits.

We have what is probably the classic gender divide in our household. If I buy a Cath Kidston tea towel (although actually I prefer Millie Mac at the moment) I am accused of drowning the house in chintz, and my daughter's spotty blinds are about as far as I've been allowed to go on more permanent features.

Believe it or not we have painted the walls since we moved in (see phase one). It's F&B Old White, which we used to cover up the ghostly imprint of the former owner's bedhead in exactly the same place. As ours was a probate sale it felt a bit too much like stepping into her shoes...! I would like to do something with some of the 1950s and 60s copies of Vogue she left behind though - none of them are worth anything as she was a real fashionista and just archived the pages from each issue that she wanted to keep. Not a complete edition amongst them - shame. Am thinking of getting a couple of the covers framed - some of them are truly fabulous.

You can just see the crack in this picture, which was taken this evening; believe me it's huge and scary.

That avocado basin. My mum bought me the gilt mirror for £4 from the charity shop at the end of our road ( there's an amazing array of shops down there!) and I am thinking of using it as the basis for the new scheme. Much to my husband's dismay...

The garden

2008-05-28T22:09:00.004+01:00

I have been struggling to get some pictures of the garden uploaded for days. They keep appearing upside down and sideways for some reason! First let me remind you what it was like:

David the gardener and his son Sam plus a couple of other helpers worked solidly for a couple of weeks to bring about the transformation. (Shame about the rain and v soggy parasol!)

There's a scrap of lawn, somewhere to eat, somewhere for the kids' horrible plastic slides etc and somewhere to sit. We are waiting for the fencing to be neatened up and an absolutely miniature shed to arrive - it's more like a wardrobe or a sentry box than a shed!

In the rain again. Lets face it, that's how it's going to be seen most of the time...

back at last

2008-05-23T11:48:00.002+01:00

I've had a frustrating couple of weeks where all my electrical and mechanical goods conspired against me. The car broke down again minutes after I'd picked it up - I was on my way to take the broken computer back to Apple as it too broke down minutes after being collected from repair! Sight of husband pushing the car in the rain almost made up for it... Just got back with the computer for the the third time. The car didn't break down this time so let's hope the Mac holds out...! More photos later - the garden's been done since I was last online...

The tile men cometh

2008-05-03T17:06:00.006+01:00

What a couple of weeks. First the iMac developed a terminal fault costing much headscratching, a trip to the Apple Store in Kingston and £475 to fix. Then the car broke down on a rainy evening with husband at work and both kids on board - my son was thrilled to be brought home on the recovery truck , me less so. And then the gardener due to do the back cancelled to boot. So no posting for a while, and as the car is still at the garage having its fuel sensors tweaked, I have just brought the computer home on the bus. And the back garden is still a rubble strewn dustbowl, although now with vigorous weeds after all the lovely rain we've been having recently.

But also, what a couple of weeks! In a good way!

We have an all singing all dancing standy uppy showery shiny shiny bathroom. It was finally finished on Thursday, after six very long, weary months and almost two years without a shower if you take the psychedelic year into account.

Behind the mirrors is enough storage for approximately 2 million loo rolls...

Makka pakka gives it the thumbs up...

We even have have a front garden path and slate gravelly stuff like all the more respectable houses in the road. Bike shed and gate promised next week ( fingers crossed!)

And in answer to Maraka's question from long long ago before the computer died - our Corian worktop was from Counter Production (Tel: 01491 615470 sales@counterproduction.co.uk) - they are a Dupont distributor and seem very good - it's guaranteed for ten years.

high excitement ( sort of..)

2008-04-16T20:01:00.007+01:00

We hung some pictures last night, having had the usual debate about whether it was ok for me to get my hammer out (my view) or whether we should defer it indefinitely ( my husband). To be fair to him he did attach the loo roll holders to the walls, which turned out to be a substantial undertaking involving the drill. Despite the fact that the builder has gone AWOL again and we still don't have a proper bathroom it's starting to feel like we really are almost back to normal.

The trusty Keep Calm poster. We had it hanging in our bedsit throughout the building work as a necessary reminder so had to scrape an inch of dirt off it before re-hanging.

The hall. All new and completely replastered except for the cornicing, which is original, and the tiled floor.

The hall 'before', taken in May 2006 when we were considering buying. Note the orange dining room wallpaper ( which some of our friends still lament!), damp stains, sagging anaglypta and faux Victorian lamp. No wonder we didn't hesitate to snap the place up...

href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NlRuAx3G0kg/SAZN0Z_46_I/AAAAAAAAAJ4/o3RS1mZk5qA/s1600-h/new+doors.jpg">

The hall from above showing doors into the new downstairs loo and 'grown up' sitting room ( ex-garage!) Both doorway openings are completely new as the garage was inaccessible from the hall.

Another view of the dining room/family sitting room, showing the new knock-through

urban eden

2008-04-15T17:22:00.005+01:00

The houses in our road all have titchy gardens ( a massive 36 feet by 20 so I'm told..) but ours looks even titchier than most now it is bald. I don't think dustbowl chic is going to catch on. We have just come back from lunch at Petersham Nurseries*, which is sort of how I want our garden to be, although in miniature, naturally.

*broke the eating out embargo!

A bit tricky to negotiate with the kids' bikes. We are hoping the tile men come back soon...

normal life resumes...almost

2008-04-14T21:33:00.004+01:00

I've had such a lovely week - lots of people have posted on the Living Etc forum or on the blog saying how much they like the house. And one of our neighbours ( who is a minor TV personality dontcha know) stopped me in the street to tell me the house was looking great too. 'It looks so clean...and white...and..' 'Not grey?' I finished, literal and helpful as ever. Thanks again to all - it really makes my day.

I have turned into a complete homebody. I don't think we've had a meal out since we moved downstairs on 14 March, which must be causing some consternation at every cafe within a mile radius of the house. I'm pretty sure I was singlehandedly keeping the Miso noodle bar on Petersham Road in business. We haven't been out in the evening either, except once when the parents in law stayed and my husband forced me out to the cinema ( all of 500 yards away..) The trouble is that now that we have a house fit for babysitters to enter I don't actually want to leave it.

Two very nice blokes turned up on Thursday to lay the tiled path to the front garden. First though they had to dig out layers of reinforced concrete and a superannuated flower bed full of slugs. Oh how the sound of the pneumatic drill took me back to last year. My daughter and I had to climb over the wall to get to the corner shop when I finally ran out of milk and gingernut biscuits. The next day they came back and poured a new layer of concrete over it and built a complicated bridge out of bits of board and old plank so that we could reach the street. Then they left again, with strict instructions not to walk on it until they came back. Naturally we have had torrential rain ever since and they can't come back and lay the actual tiles until it stops. Ahh well, it wouldn't be the Worst House without massive delays.

Speaking of which, at some point I am going to have to get the builder on the phone and try and make him come back and finish the bathroom and sort out the dog's breakfast they've made of putting the bath taps on. At the moment I just can't be bothered. It's so lovely to have the house to ourselves, and it's the school holidays so I want to be able to come and go to the park etc without coming home to find dirty footprints everywhere and some new problem created by the partial solution of the existing one.

We had a playdate here this afternoon and I made the mistake of letting the boys out into the garden to play Swingball. Note to self: wait until garden no longer resembles bowl of chocolate mousse strewn with boulders before letting two five year olds run amok therein. Locked them out on the decking to eat their Penguins and then spent 20 minutes sluicing the mud back with a yard broom and a watering can. All with a two year old pressed up against the glass doors clamouring to join them.

We do have a man coming to landscape the garden in a couple of weeks. I'm not entirely sure what he plans to do as it was all a bit vague, but his quote was half the price of the first one. As long as it includes reversing the greenery to mud ratio I'll be happy. (Am steeling myself to post some pictures of the semi-dereliction currently visible from our lovely new windows, rather than the nice careful ones excluding the garden....)

more of the kitchen

2008-04-10T20:38:00.005+01:00

A few people have asked to see more of the kitchen extension.I'm embarrassed to say that it looks v minimalist from the outside but the inside is a bit of a scooter/dolls pram park, with a great big shelf unit full of toys, games and unidentifiable bits of plastic that might once have been a Power Ranger. However it's a family house and that's what we designed it for so look away now John Pawson...

From the outside, at night - often the only chance I get to take photos without a 2 year old grabbing the phone...The glass roof means we are successfully growing an orange tree and some basil! The kids tend to eat and draw/paint/throw playdough around at the small table by the window or perched up at the counter. We have most of our family meals there too, unless we have guests, when it's easier to use the bigger table in the dining room, which the kitchen opens into at the other end.

The 'functional' bit of the kitchen with my beloved twin corian sinks. When you've washed up in an avocado vanity unit for six months you develop an unnatural passion for your shiny new sinks. Or maybe that's just me...

and a few more

2008-04-08T21:10:00.005+01:00

I still haven't got any proper photos, but I've had such kind and positive comments from everyone about the mobile phone specials that I am feeling brave enough to put a few more up.

The hall and stairs - no mum, we're not having stair carpet! It's surprisingly un-slippery as it was finished in matte rather than 'shiny' varnish, and my history with stair carpets is such that it's a relief not to worry about the trail of drops of tea up the stairs or the five year old in football boots. You can just see the walnut parcel shelf which was another one of those 'original to the house' items I got in a sufficient strop about to prevent my husband consigning to the skip. I would eventually like to change the hideous radiator but I am hoping that when we put some pictures up it will distract the eye from it in the meantime.

The back of the house, showing the new glass and larch box, aka the kitchen extension. The kids love perching up at the counter - in fact you can just see my son taking the air in his dressing gown! We will get the garden sorted out when we can scrape some more money together - at the moment the decking leads on to a sort of dustbowl rather than the lush urban paradise of my fond imaginings.

Inside the former garage at the front of the house. You can tell I'm not a professional - I should have plumped up those cushions first! The front garden needs a bit of work too...This will eventually be a 'grown up' sitting room, when we've hung some pictures and got the builder to put the remaining bits of the bathroom actually into the bathroom rather than stacking them up by the coffee table. Still, it's a lovely sunny room without that practical but not very transparent garage door!

A few photos

2008-04-07T19:18:00.007+01:00

Thanks for all the kind and positive comments, it is much appreciated. Makes a change from both parents and parents in law, who are all keen to know when we are getting the carpets in...

I must admit I've been luxuriating in unaccustomed home comforts a bit recently, and the house has always been too knee deep in scooters and In the Night Garden soft toys to take any photos. Also the architect said she was going to organise some professional photos so I thought I'd wait for those and be all swanky. However I have a few not very good ones taken on my mobile phone so they will have to do for now!

Outside - a specialist company arrives this week ( fingers crossed) to recreate the original black and white tiled path.

the 'family' sitting room. We miscalculated on bookshelves so we'll be saving up for a few more once we've recovered from the financial ruin we've already inflicted on ourselves...

the dining room through the new knocked-through opening. The dresser is original to the house and I had to defend it from the builders and from my husband, who all thought it should reside in the skip.

the sitting room fireplace - it still works! Despite spending most of the last six months hanging four feet above ground level while the builders excavated round it and used it as a giant ash tray

from the dining room into the kitchen - (that poor old ikea bookshelf has spent most of the last 8 months in the garden but has cleaned up fairly well considering!)

Home

2008-03-18T19:26:00.002Z

Well. It was my 37th birthday yesterday. I have a distinct memory of sitting upstairs in my daughter's bedroom in early February, then being used as a kitchen, and wailing ' I just xxxxing well know I'm going to turn 37 sitting up here with no back on the house!'. It's lovely to be proved wrong.

It's not finished, by quite a long stretch, but we moved the furniture back in on the 14th ( I recommend OIS 'Green/Eco' Removals in Herne Hill by the way - cheap, polite and uncomplaining about the millions of boxes of books.) We had a brilliant weekend unpacking stuff we hadn't seen since July 2006, luxuriating in the underfloor heating and well and truly christening the brand new kitchen. Saturday 15th was incredibly serene - three of the builders were plastering in around the new sliding folding doors ( open in the sunshine), finishing off the Siberian larch cladding and drinking coffee with us while I unpacked the kitchen stuff. Marvellous. I wish I could bottle that feeling - you need to have lived four to one room for nearly eight months with no proper facilities to really appreciate the joy.

We still can't stand up in the shower - the white glass splashback that has been on order for months arrived on Thursday to great excitement. Much muttering in Polish ensued, always a bad sign - it turns out the suppliers have drilled the holes in the wrong place. Doh.

Our house seems to be on a local sightseeing tour - every time we go to put the rubbish out there seems to be at least one congratulatory onlooker. It's very affirming - I feel like we've made a positive contribution to the London streetscape, if nothing else! We certainly haven't made any money on the deal - I think we've ended up paying more than if we'd just bought a proper house like normal people, but it's been a real labour of love. The magnolia I planted the week the builders started has flowered brilliantly and amazingly - I can't quite believe it as it was under a layer of assorted insulation boards and lumber for most of the winter.

Loads more to do over the next few years - we need to do something about the master bedroom's horribly cracked ceiling, damp patches and avocado ensuite for a start, and the garden is a rubbish-strewn moonscape, but as we're not planning to move until the kids have grown up I'm hoping that means this house will satisfy my renovation urges for the next fifteen years or so.

I need to go and drive past our old house. For nearly two years I haven't been able to, as just getting the photos of it out was enough to fill me with dismay. Maybe in April after the front garden's been tidied up...

I'll put some photos up in the next few days. Thanks to everyone who sent me cheery and encouraging comments - it really helped!

no longer the worst house?

2008-03-05T19:04:00.004Z

They're still painting it and there's a snagging list as long as my arm but after 8 months we're nearly there!

Standing on its own two feet...

2008-03-01T22:53:00.006Z

figuratively speaking of course. Yes, the supports actually came down today and the bay windows are almost finished. The builders made the window sills on site this morning. They simply made the moulds out of some left over floorboards and poured concrete into them in situ. Who'd've thunk it? The supports, which are twiddly and Victorian to match the others in the street, arrived from the same supplier as the window arches in exactly the same way - in the back of a car at a totally unexpected time. I was just coming back from lunch with my neighbour when I saw the man I nearly kissed going into the house again with a big pile of them. He looked a bit wary when he saw me and scuttled straight back off to Arundel.

I have started returning people's keys - at one point I had the keys to three houses in our road, another friend's in central Twickenham , and the rental house - and the offer of about six more from Tooting to New Malden. We're not quite out of the woods yet but we will have to have a party or something to say thanks to everyone.

My kitchen is sort of half installed - here is the kitchen sink. Never used by me yet although the builders make tea in there- I'm still washing up in the avocado ensuite upstairs. After what we had before I'm a bit too scared to use something so shiny and white..!

before

and from roughly the same angle

I actually booked a removal van to get our stuff out of storage in a fortnight's time, only to realise later that the day I'd booked was the day of the six nations England/Ireland match with 82,000 expected in Twickenham. The self storage place is right next to the stadium. Doh. Am trying to re-arrange it. It will be so strange to see our belongings. Most of them have been in boxes since July 2006.

My son's room - before and before

2008-02-29T18:53:00.004Z

Although we haven't done anything to it, my son has declared himself miffed that there isn't a photo of his room on here. In the interests of sibling fairness, here it is.... Again, we should probably have tidied it up a bit first! Note the charming woodchip.

They bricked in the last arch today - hurrah! We are still supported with steels but I'm assuming that's just until the mortar dries out rather than a permanent feature. Note the top half of the house has already been painted and is starting to look rather nice, I think. We'd have liked to have the whole lot sandblasted back to bare brick but there's a considerable risk the top and bottom halves won't match so it's safer to repaint. Plenty of others in the road have been painted so it won't look amiss. (Especially given what it's replacing!) Good to see the last of the battleship grey, especially for my son, who was three when we moved in and has always called the WH 'the gloomy house'.

How I nearly kissed a delivery man

2008-02-25T20:08:00.004Z

The house in December - more or less as it has been for months - now with windows but minus arches.

We're trying to restore an accurate Victorian frontage to the Worst House. Some of that has been relatively straightforward - the wooden sash windows have been easy to get hold of, for example, and went in months ago without any trouble. We have really struggled with the stone arches above the windows though, as they're not used very often any more and have had to be specially made. We've had them on special order since at least Sepember/October 2007, and Thursday has become a sort of red letter day in the Worst House, as it's the only day of the week the supplier delivers. For literally months we've been told they'll be arriving this week, only for them not to arrive and to brusquely be told on the phone that it will, after all, be next week. Believe me the novelty palls after the third or fourth month.

There have been various explanations for their non-arrival, one of which was that they had actually been made three times but had been broken each time they tried to get them out of the moulds. Beats me how those Victorians managed to make thousands of them then... It had got to the point where my husband and I refused to believe that they actually existed, and I had emailed the architect last week to insist we cut our losses and find a new supplier. (All this time the front of our house has been held up on metal posts - not a pretty sight, not very safe-feeling and not great when the house painters have more or less finished everywhere else!)

I had to rush out to the car mid toddler nappy change this evening to grab some baby wipes, and noticed a black Vauxhall Zafira had pulled up. A very unassuming looking middle aged man got out and walked into my house - I'm so used to this these days that I didn't even question him. I found him again in the hall and he said, very casually, 'Oh, I've got some window heads for you.' And there they were, wrapped in a dust sheet in the boot of his car. I'd been expecting them to arrive on a great big truck. I could have kissed him, and told him so there and then. ( He backed away a trifle nervously and I don't blame him!) So all is tra la la happiness in the Worst House tonight - even my five year old tore himself away from the CBBC website to come down and inspect them, and one of the neighbours going past got treated to an early preview. If they're the wrong size or get broken while they try to brick them in I fear there will be violence...or at least very strong language. This does actually mean that the front of the Worst House could be completed this very week!

While I'm on I'll squeeze in a couple of extra photos. The glass splashbacks arrived for the bathroom today so it could be finished this week too. Here's a 'before and nearly finished' set:

Notice the lack of loo

Now with the thankfully working loo and a controversial white rubber floor but without shower, glass splashbacks or radiator. (Controversial in that my husband really wanted it and everyone else told me it woud be a nightmare..!)

I know I'm not exactly striking a blow for feminism with one, but I am so thrilled with what I rather grandly call my laundry room. Actually it is a cubby hall by the old tradesman's entrance, with a washer and dryer and a few cupboards, but after what I've been through it's currently my favourite room in the house!

before and after

2008-02-19T19:47:00.005Z

Should probably have tidied the toys up a bit first. Still, I think they make good before and after pictures - our very first ones!

Valentine's Day treats

2008-02-15T23:32:00.003Z

I had the best Valentine's day I've had for years. On Thursday morning I mentioned to the builders that we'd like to move the fridge out of my daughter's room so that we could give the children their rooms back. I thought I'd get the ball rolling so that in a week or so's time they'd have done it. I was absolutely staggered to find the fridge in our bedroom when I got back with the kids from the school Valentine's disco that afternoon. ( Yes, most people would be staggered to have a fridge in their bedroom at all, but I was simply pleased and amazed that it had been done so quickly!) We spent the rest of the evening moving furniture between our three rooms upstairs with the result that

- my daughter has a lovely, light, white painted, wooden floored bedroom containing just her own furniture and toys
- my son ditto ( apart from a statue of buddha destined eventually for the garden which we bought on impulse in Chiswick last weekend. And unfortunately he still has woodchip wallpaper, which we will deal with at some point in the future when we have the money and energy even to contemplate more work on the house. Probably when he is about 18.)

After 6 months of sharing a room with each other, several inches of dust, two lots of furniture and a whole heap of junk from all over the house, they can't believe their luck. We got up this morning to find my son had been up for hours, reclining on his sofa reading Horrid Henry in glorious isolation. And my daughter slept through the night, which has been an unheard of event practically since she was born. Getting them dressed was a breeze - no need to negotiate an obstacle course of junk before I could get to their clothes!

Unfortunately all the junk that had been in the kids' rooms is now in our bedroom or stacked up on the landing. We also have the aforementioned fridge, a dining table and four chairs, together with all our kitchen stuff and the microwave. We have to wash up in our avocado ensuite. Still, you really can make a cup of tea without getting out of bed! I have rather belatedly discovered the posh ready meals range at Waitrose. Who knew you could buy ready made mashed potato? Goes very nicely with the chicken in tarragon and white wine sauce. About time too - I think we were about to get scurvy from our diet of bread and cheese!

Downstairs is starting to look much nicer now. The wood floors are down and the skirting is about to go in. I am really pleased with the new plaster cornicing we have used in the ex-garage and the dining room (where the ceiling had to be replaced.)It doesn't exactly match the cornicing elsewhere in the house but it's good enough to be convincing. My new washer and dryer arrived yesterday and I hope they'll be installed before the washing mountain actually reaches the ceiling...

Just realised we need to think about a new name for the ex-garage. It's supposed to be a grown-up sitting room but we can't call it that either. Maybe the folly....

Washday blues...

2008-02-09T11:30:00.000Z

Progress report: the house still looks like hell. Quelle surprise. I had an odd experience the other day though - as I was wheeling the buggy over the perilous boards that currently form our front path one of our neighbours called out 'How's it going?'. I started on my usual rant about it being two months overdue and the blardy stonework for the front windows STILL not arriving and the wretched sliding folding doors presumably still growing in a Norwegian pine forest, when she said ' You must be thrilled - it's looking fantastic!'. I was gobsmacked - it so does not look fantastic. But I am going to try the glass half full rather than half empty approach from now on...!

Having said that I had a rant at the builders yesterday morning. I was getting the kids ready for school, which means that once dressed they must not touch the floor as it's knee deep in dust. Bit of a shame that their favourite game seems to be rolling from one end of the room to the other. Went to the brand new wall hung loo and the bloody thing is still broken - just flushes continuously, despite having been 'fixed' three times. Why can't I just have a loo that works like normal people! Anyway I cut my finger trying to stop the flushing,with my two year old screaming for me outside the door the whole time, then stomped downstairs to shout at the two builders unfortunate enough to have arrived early. Bet they were scared..not!

Anyway, it's Saturday morning, the kids are out with their dad and I'm at home supposedly sorting out some of the mess. The trouble is

*the builders are in almost every room fitting flooring, skirting and architraving and/or painting so I can't get anywhere
*everything I sort out for the charity shop is covered in plaster dust so I can't seem them taking it. ( Prize for most useless article goes to a 20 year old pie maker my mother in law donated when she moved.)
*none of the rooms are finished so I can't even have one 'normal' room to put everything in to stay clean
*I'd rather be at the computer drinking black coffee ( we've run out of milk and I can't be bothered to go out and get any!)

Honestly - what would you do faced with a builders' sack full of odd shoes, sun parasols and children's tennis rackets? Almost makes me want to take up smoking for a diversion. Plus I had four drinks at the fundraising disco at the kids' school last night, which for me is a massive binge drink these days. So have hangover to boot.

Speaking of drink, I spent a hilarious hour at the launderette the other night. I decided I couldn't bear it any longer and took a huge load of washing and a book. Beats bedtime with a very screamy and reluctant two year old any day. As I haven't been to a launderette since I was a student I had forgotten that they are not terribly peaceful places and are quite often full of drunk people keeping warm. Or at least the one at the end of my road is. Apparently my husband is very lucky to have such a beautiful lady washing his smalls - I must tell him! Oh and the lights in this particular launderette are timed to go out automatically at 7.45, even if the owner is staying open till 8. Ever tried folding your washing in the dark? I don't recommend it! I have just ordered a shiny new washer and dryer but I might go back again just for the entertainment value!

2008-02-03T23:32:00.000Z

This is the first time we've had internet access for weeks, hence the lack of updating. We're back in the house, back in two rooms, the front of the house still isn't finished and neither is anything else. We've had to have a showdown with the builder and invoke the damages clause in our contract. He is now on special measures and in generally bad disgrace as it turned out he hadn't been paying any of his workers for weeks despite regular payments from us. On the plus side we've got a separate painter and decorator in who has made the hall and stairs look lovely, and work has speeded up slightly since the showdown. We now have central heating, hot water, a flushing loo and power to most of the rooms, even if they are all full of dust and rubble. The worktop is going on my kitchen tomorrow ( again under a separate contract), and we are promised that we will have our lives back by the end of February. I'm not holding my breath....

At least another month...

2008-01-09T22:38:00.000Z

so the architect thinks. Oh well. Hope that doesn't mean three more months!

I'm 37 in March , and my daughter's two. Please be finished in time for me to make a cake for her this year!

Have put some more photos on flickr, as they take so long to upload onto blogger.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/worsthouse/

my designer bathroom

2008-01-04T23:24:00.001Z

Ahem. Well, it now has a loo in it, a bath without forty years of dirt etched on it and a boiler that doesn't leak carbon monoxide. It's sort of getting there. Imagine it with a glass splashback, some mirrors and white paint, and some brume on the the windows.

My daughter's bedroom. Still nowhere near finished but look back to the last photo, when the toilet was still in place, and you can see why I'm quite pleased!

Friday 4 January 2008

2008-01-04T22:39:00.000Z

Happy New Year!

Guess what - we're back in the rental house despite the crippling cost. We managed one night at home and I put my foot down. It's just not possible to create any sort of normal family life in a house where you can only use two rooms, already crammed full of all your possessions, where there is no electricity and no heating and an inch of plaster dust over every surface. Not in January anyway! The kids have been very cheerful throughout but the thought of a month living like that was too much for me. How do you feed children properly if you can't cook or wash up ( except in the bathroom basin!) A couple of nights, maybe, but weeks on end? In the summer it'd be fine, we'd have picnics in the park and stay out all day. But not in January. As it is they were delighted - they dined on M and S sandwiches, satsumas and Pringles before brushing their teeth in the dark and going to bed with socks and fleeces over their pyjamas.

Tonight there was still no electricity except via an extension lead from downstairs but the heating was on at last. It felt loads better just being warm ( I slept in two jumpers over my pyjamas last night too!) but still not viable for more than a night. My husband was keen to tough it out but then he'll be escaping to a nice clean warm office on Monday so his vote doesn't count!

On the up side there's been some progress - the heating's in, plastering's quite advanced, glass in most places where glass should be and a flushing toilet for the first time since October. The to do list is still massive - plenty more plastering, second fix on the electrics, redecorating the whole of the inside of the house, painting the whole of the outside, relaying the garden paving, cladding the extension, building the decking, getting the sliding folding doors installed, installing the kitchen, laying all the wood floors...still, the end might be in sight!

Still not finished!

2007-12-29T21:41:00.000Z

Be prepared for a moanathon - things have not been going well at the Worst House. If this was a property programme it would definitely be time for the mournful twangy music and long shots of rubble and semi-derelict bathrooms.

I'm forcing myself to update this so that it will be there for us to look back on and laugh. Maybe in about 20 years. I think today has been one of the worst yet. We've had nearly a month in super comfy rented accommodation and in my friend's beautiful house, where we spent Christmas while she handily had a holiday in Australia. Christmas was wonderful and I have really enjoyed the luxury, but I am now completely spoilt and we have to move back to the WH next week. It's still NOWHERE near finished. I mean not even close!

I went to have a look today and came away feeling pretty depressed. The stone eyebrows and sills for the front bay window finally arrived after a 12 week wait - and guess what, they'd got broken in the lorry in transit. Back to the drawing board on that one. Until the replacements arrive (March?!) the brickwork at the front can't be finished off, so the house can't be painted, so the place still looks like the crazy people's house. Aggh. Inside, we still, a month after it arrived, have no boiler. The megaflo has been installed though, which means there is some hot water. However, there is still no bathroom. All the bits are there but except for the basin they're not plumbed in. No kitchen, washing machine or downstairs loo, naturally. The underfloor heating pipes have been screeded in, but as they're not connected to anything they might as well not be. (Between them the builders, plumber underfloor heating company and architect managed to get their wires so completely crossed that my utility room had no space for the washer and dryer it was designed for, but plenty for a tangle of wires and heating manifolds proudly mounted right in the way. I gather this is not uncommon.) No floors or ceilings in some of the rooms. No glass in the window in my daughter's room, which has no floor either. The glass roof is on the extension but there is still no glass in the French windows in the sitting room so it is open to the elements. No freezer or fridge ( the builders broke that.) Oh and the garden path has been dug up to replace a water main so I have to wheel the buggy through the mud to get in. Oh joy. Really not looking forward to next week - but we can't afford to rent any more at £100 a day.

The kitchen, which we ordered in a fit of enthusiasm in September, arrives on 7 Jan - we can't put them off any longer.I hope white corian is weatherproof...

I could cope with it slightly better I think if I knew that the '3 or 4 weeks' they've said they need to finish ( which would mean they are only six or seven weeks over schedule) was in any way accurate. My feeling is that my daughter's second birthday at the end of March could well be spent on a building site.

We need some good news soon - it's all getting a bit much. I've got to spend New Year's Day trying to make two filthy and cramped rooms at least clean and habitable for the family.On the plus side there are four builders on site most days, which is pretty heroic between Christmas and New Year.

some photos

2007-12-09T18:10:00.000Z

The loo ( unfortunately you can't see the ashtray) just before the wall came down

and knocked into our daughter's room. The loo now looks like 'the worst toilet in Scotland' ( if you've seen Trainspotting you'll know what I mean!) I think the builders must still be using it as the new bathroom hasn't gone it yet. Yerchh. See also teeny tiny replacement window - duh.

Inside the new front sitting room ( which used to be the garage.) If you ignore the bare brick and holes in the walls where the lintels haven't gone it yet it almost looks like a normal room!

Initial deadline has passed

2007-12-08T10:02:00.001Z

Well, according to the schedule we should be back in and basking in our new underfloor heating by now. But as we never thought that would happen I'm not too worried. The kids' bedroom has been cleaned up, thank goodness, although we haven't got to the bottom of who trashed the fridge.

The ashtray/loo combo has gone forever now but will live on in all our memories. The back bedroom and loo have finally been knocked together. Imagine my husband's dismay when he went back to have a look the other night to find that the shiny new replacement wooden sash window the builders have put in there is exactly the same size as the old one, ie teeny tiny so it fits above the loo. With the loo gone we were rather hoping to have a larger window in there so our daughter can actually see out of her bedroom...Cue more agitated emails and phone calls to the builder. Luckily our case is solid as the larger window is in the spec and as we had to get planning permission for it our intentions have been pretty clear all along!

The pyschedelic bathroom wallpaper has gone too, which is a bit of a shame. I actually quite liked it, but I think I'm going to like the new glass splashback and power shower more.

Still no eyebrows for the front windows but the glass is in now and it's looking great, especially from the inside. The new front living room is unrecognisable - you'd never believe it was a garage a few months ago. I've been in a couple of times just to peer down the street - we've never actually seen out of the front of the house before ( well not at ground level anyway!) and it's a joy to behold. Never have next door's dustbins looked so glorious.

One more week in our lovely rented house. Although would you believe it, the oven has gone. I think my frenzied week of baking and roasting to make up for lost time killed the poor thing off. But hey, I have four rings and a microwave - there's nothing I can't do with that after 18 months of practice and ingenuity!

Tuesday

2007-12-04T21:11:00.001Z

Just had a horrible shock. The builders have generally been quite considerate and reasonably respectful of our property so far. However I went back tonight to collect some toys for the children and was very perturbed to see their bedroom being used to eat, store filthy boots and work clothing, smoke - and, unbelievably, spit on the floor! The room is still full of the kids' clothes, books, bedding and toys and as it is relatively unaffected by the building work I was really shocked and surprised to see what they'd done. The sight of my daughter's little cot and grobag with a pair of filthy overalls thrown over it really upset me, as did the thick pall of cigarette smoke and litter of fag ash and filthy boots.

My Siemens fridge freezer has also been damaged - one of the freezer drawer fronts has been wrenched off, smashed and thrown into the rubbish, along with some of the freezer contents. The fridge also now no longer appears to be working - it certainly worked perfectly yesterday morning after it had been moved. As it happens we are buying a new fridge but had planned to sell the Siemens or donate it to a charity - it's now next to worthless. I will also now have three weeks or so in the house without a fridge, as we'll be moving back in before the new kitchen is installed.

I have rung them to complain - to me it's an unacceptable treatment of a client's property. I think we all have a filth and disruption limit and I have definitely reached mine tonight! The irony is that this builder was far from the cheapest - we chose him because he came with high recommendations of quality. Agggh.

Rant over. Not going to think about it again or I will go completely mad. And not in a good way.

Monday

2007-12-03T12:41:00.000Z

We're in our lovely holiday let and I can hardly bear to go out. After months of roaming the streets all day it s such bliss to be somewhere spacious, clean, warm and quiet. My daughter can't believe her luck and has spent the morning charging up and down with her doll's buggy - the acres of shiny laminate floor are too much to resist!

Back at the WH the builders were dragging the old boiler out and ripping out the bathroom and temporary kitchen at 8.30 this morning. Gratifying and highly uncharacteristic alacrity - let's hope it lasts!

December

2007-12-01T13:03:00.000Z

It's a Saturday and the downstairs is full of builders, the sun is shining and I have managed to rent us a two bedroom house two streets away for the next fortnight. I am feeling about a thousand times better than last night, when the builder rang me as I trudged home with the kids in the pouring rain (from a very wet Christmas light switching on event in Twickenham) to say that he wouldn't after all be able to fit the new boiler, central heating system and bathroom next week. For the first time ever in this whole sorry saga I lost my temper slightly, as I had prearranged the B and B weeks ago at his request so that he'd have a clear run. Spent most of last night on the web trying to find somewhere that could fit us in for a fortnight, and then by some miracle found the house at 10 this morning. It's usually a holiday let but has ( drum roll) flushing loos, central heating, fully equipped kitchen and TV that works! Hurrah - the kids won't know themselves. I have gone a bit mad inviting friends to lunch and even thinking about having a babysitter; the Worst House has been too horrid to inflict on them so we haven't been out for nearly four months.

Bay window - waiting for the last few bricks - and stone 'eyebrows! - plus glass in the windows and a coat of paint of course!

The final furlong (2)

2007-11-26T19:39:00.000Z

I had long conversations with the architect and the kitchen people today whilst in the queue at Waitrose. My daughter had a complete meltdown involving tearing off her shoes and lying on the floor, but this started well before the phone went so I don't feel too guilty. Am I the only one who can't get round the supermarket without all foods remotely palatable to a one year old being ripped open for immediate consumption just to keep the peace? Hence the satsumas bumping over the floor as the long-suffering staff lift the bag to scan them..

Anyway the upshot is that no, we wouldn't like our kitchen delivered a week earlier than scheduled just in case the building work isn't quite finished and we're not quite ready for them. Cue hollow laughter. But it has occurred to me that our limbo life might be moving on to the next phase, one which might even involve flushing loos and central heating. The builder and architect reckon they'll be finished by 17 Dec, in time for all the Polish guys on site to get away for their three weeks at home. I don't believe them for a moment, and neither would you if you could see our house ( photos tomorrow) but stranger things have happened. I feel like the gormless goofs on Property Ladder who assure Sarah Beany they'll be on the market by Tuesday despite the lack of roof, floors or ceiling. But I suppose it's possible.

We are moving out (into a B&B) next week so that they can get started on the upstairs and install the new boiler and bathroom. On the one hand I am dreading having to go to sleep at 7.30 in the same room as a one year old and a five year old, but on the other a) I could do with some sleep b) there will be central heating - yay! c) I'm pretty sure there will be a flushing loo and a stand up shower - we've been flushing with buckets and crouching under a feeble shower head for so long I've almost forgotten what modern life can be like.

A few people have asked how we cope with two small children in a building site. The answer is that we spend as little time at home as possible. Luckily the older one is at school, and I have arranged lots of after school activities so that he spends as little time as possible in the Worst House. It's embarassing not to be able to return playdates but people have been very understanding about it. (It's pretty much going to be wall to wall five year olds once we do get round to fulfilling our obligations!) The little one is a different story. We spend a lot of time in Cafe Nero, the library, drop in toddler groups, friends' houses, music groups and the supermarket, and she takes her naps in the car. The car has pretty much become a home from home for me too - today I sat in it for three hours parked outside the house while the builders drilled, she slept and I dashed from time to time in to use the loo, make a sandwich and grab something to read.

The final furlong?

2007-11-26T18:56:00.000Z

I have found it very hard to add anything to this blog recently, not because I am short of things to say, but because they're all so overwhelmingly negative. The weather's been awful and progress on the house has been very disappointing.

Two weekends ago we went to stay with some lovely friends of ours in Suffolk. About the same time that we bought the Worst House, they bought a similarly dilapidated 16th century house in a small village. It was, if possible, even scarier than ours, partly because it's listed and they can barely open a tin of paint without the conservation officer approving the brand. We stayed with them last winter, and had a great ( wine, food and company) if somewhat English and stiff upper lip style weekend ( smallish Aga heating the whole house, heads constantly thumping on Lilliputian sixteenth century doorways, charming but very uninsulated wattle and daub walls.) They have spent the entire year working on the place themselves, and we were comfortably expecting to spend last weekend revelling in the last word in Tudor meets 21st century chic. Not so. My first few minutes after arrival were spent incredulously checking that there was in fact no discernible difference in temperature between outside and in. All the work they have done is the dull, structural sort that involves replacing acres of broken tiles or authentic cow dung based render. The inside is pretty much as it was and they've got a timescale of three to five years to finish it. All of which put ours in perspective ( but at least they've got flushing toilets!) Once they'd cranked up the open fires I managed to take my coat off and we had a great time.

At the other end of the scale we spent last weekend staying with my husband's parents in their detached new build in the Midlands. Normally the kind of thing I'd run a mile from, but this time I could sort of see the point of the cavity wall insulation, three bathrooms and acres of very clean, warm, pale carpet. I spent the whole weekend cooking - it's so long since I've used a proper oven and hob that I was shocked when pasta water came to the boil in a few minutes rather than the 20 or so my electric ring takes. And don't get me started on the bliss of a dishwasher...

There is a theme here - we're spending as little time at home as possible.

nine days later...

2007-11-13T21:02:00.000Z

Excruciatingly slow progress on the bay window

I haven't had anything much to report for a couple of weeks now. Our neighbours continue to be lovely and fortunately the offer of a house for Christmas ( well , for two weeks anyway - not alas as an actual gift) is still on. The building work is taking shape, but at truly glacial speed. The latest position is:

-Flushing loos - none. We still have to flush with a bucket. Nice.
-Electric rings working on my Baby Belling - one out of a possible two ( my husband managed to actually melt the other one whilst doing a very rare bit of cooking for the children. Much to his ill-concealed delight he is now banned from cooking for the foreseeable future.)
-Bay windows at the front of the house - about 60%, brickwork only.
-Roof on the extension at the back - about 10% - wooden rafters only, but there is a lovely big orange tarpaulin
-French window in the sitting room - about 20% - frame only, no glass
-Heating downstairs - none
-Lighting downstairs - none
-Electricity downstairs - none
-Plumbing downstairs - none.
-Rooms suspended in mid air supported only by a couple of metal poles - 1 ( our bed/sitting/everything room).
-Tearful and frustrated women who have no-one to blame but themselves - 1

The builders have somewhat belatedly agreed that they won't, actually, be meeting the 10 December deadline. The kitchen is being delivered on 7 January so it would be nice if they were ready for that.

On a lighter note ( ahem) I have realised I haven't mentioned the dead dog. When the floorboards in the main sitting room were lifted the perfectly mummified corpse of a small dog was discovered in the foundations. ( Not literally mummified in the ancient Egyptian manner, of course. But skin etc intact rather than just a skeleton.) The builders were completely unperturbed - apparently it's not that unusual. I had heard that dead cats were occasionally entombed to ward off evil spirits when old houses were built, but I've never heard of it happening with dogs. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been possible for it to crawl in there on its own so it must have been put there deliberately after it had died. I do feel a bit guilty about making some of my friends (and my parents in law!) bed down for the night in that room last Christmas and Easter.

Even slower progress on the extension

It's been three months now

2007-11-04T20:05:00.001Z

and we still have no walls downstairs, no heating, no kitchen and no windows. Getting a bit fed up actually. We had a meeting on Thursday with the builder, architect and kitchen people. The former were trying to insist that the kitchen be installed before Xmas, which would be great except that as far as I can see almost no progress has been made on erecting the actual room it will be in. Call me cynical but I can't believe we're going to be finished in 5 weeks - despite the builders' assertions that they're on schedule! Opted to have the kitchen installed in January instead, as I can see it getting damaged if it has to be delivered to the building site that is currently our home.

Bricks and mortar

2007-10-26T20:12:00.000+01:00

Thank goodness, the builders are back, which has lifted my mood considerably. I can just about cope with living like this if there are lots of people about working on providing us with a sitting room and a flushing loo ( we have to flush with buckets at the moment.)

Bricks were actually laid today at the front of the house, in a lovely bay window shape. I could have cried, it was so beautiful. Joists have been put in through most of the downstairs too, which means that in some of the rooms there are actual floors rather than muddy holes under the house. I am not very reliably informed that the sash windows will be arriving next week. I can't quite believe the garage has gone.

Where is everyone?

2007-10-23T19:43:00.000+01:00

Hmm..the garage has been down for a couple of weeks, I've paid the builders bills with alacrity, and yet yesterday we had one builder in who managed to lay two courses of bricks all day, and today the whole site was desolate and empty. Still no front on the house, and no back either. The frame for the French windows at the back was delivered on Saturday, to great excitement, (although I am reserving my judgement for the moment as it doesn't look quite what I was expecting). Hard to stay optimistic under the circumstances - a day of lovely weather wasted and it's getting colder all the time. Both kids at home all day too as it's half term. Have signed my son up for football camp tomorrow - much better for him to be out than cooped up here.

Went round to feed my neighbour's cat this evening - it reminded me of why we bought our ( well not quite!) identical house as it really is lovely. However, I'm getting a bit fed up with waiting for mine to be even half way presentable, let alone lovely!

Building - I hope!

2007-10-17T12:40:00.000+01:00

The building inspector has just signed off the excavation at the front which means the builders can start filling the foundations with concrete and (please!) start bricklaying soon. A huge order of bricks arrived from Jewsons this lunchtime which I am taking as an indication that we might have some walls soon. Knocking down the garage has opened up a view from the front door which hasn't been seen for 40 years - instead of looking down a long dark tunnel you can actually see the rather attractive houses opposite. I am trying not to get too wildly excited about the prospect of having windows at the front of the house but it's been a long time...!

living arrangements

2007-10-15T17:06:00.000+01:00

Our daughter's room as it was

her room as a 'camp kitchen'

and I'm leaving a slot for the 'after' picture, when it will have been knocked through into the horrible little loo next door and made into a decent sized room overlooking the garden...!

Gone!

2007-10-15T16:51:00.000+01:00

Now for yet more digging ( new foundations) and hopefully some walls and windows before winter sets in.

We have no walls at the back of the house either as progress seems to be rather slow on getting the walls of the extension up. It's a bit drafty in our flat on stilts so I'm hoping they make colossal progress this week and next. We're in week 11 now of a proposed 18 week build and it seems very unlikely that we'll be in for Christmas at this rate...

Going, going....

2007-10-10T13:38:00.000+01:00

It's taking ages to demolish the garage as it seems to be reinforced with concrete inside the brick skin. The builders have been at it for three days now, mostly in driving rain, and they're still only about halfway down. Still, nothing can contain my glee to see the thing coming down!

Digging...

2007-10-08T19:48:00.000+01:00

And here we are, ten weeks in. Enough earth to re-pot most of Kew Gardens seems to have come out of the front door, and still they seem to keep digging. Drainage has been laid for the new downstairs loo and utility room, a manhole has been relocated in the garden and a big metal frame has gone up for the extension. We have no floorboards at all downstairs and no central heating, although by some miracle we still have hot water. The kids have got used to sharing a tiny room stuffed to the gills with all their possessions and nowhere to play ( they run up and down the landing). My husband and I have got rather less used to receiving guests in our bedroom, which has a tiny 2 seater sofa and portable TV in the corner on which we can get a selection of Freeview channels but none of the good ones. The kitchen in the back bedroom is great actually, with a birds eye view of the concrete mixer in the back garden but so snug that you can make a cup of tea and microwave yourself a snack without rising from your chair.

I can see the outside world through the cracks in the floorboards in our bedroom, and the whole of the downstairs is more or less open to the elements. Last night a fox or a cat got in, rampaged round for a bit, chewed one of my leather sandals to pieces and then crept up the stairs to poo on our bathroom floor. I sent my husband downstairs with a torch to scare it away but it was long gone, no doubt making plans to come back with ten of its mates for a real poo-fest. If this blog goes unwritten for a few days it'll be because some creature has chewed through the wires hanging out of the wall downstairs - I'm amazed our broadbamd connection is still up as the phone line is literally hanging by a thread.

I don't want this to sound too grim. I have long moments of panic and regret, when I wish we were back in our nice safe comfortable old house. On the other hand it's a bit of an adventure and our neighbours have been incredibly kind. One has given me her keys in case I need to escape for a cup of tea and a bit of peace and quiet - this was particularly welcome during the week when they were digging up the garage floor with those drills they normally use to dig up roads. Another has offered us the use of her house over Christmas, as she's planning to be away. So far the (Polish) builders have been unfailingly polite and charming, and ( fingers crossed!) have turned up every day, even working some Saturdays. It's quite exciting to come back every day and see what they've done, even though for most of the last ten weeks this excitement seems to have been of the 'Hmm, so you've done some more digging...' variety.

Today is a very special day (October 8th) because today they actually started to demolish the garage. It's a standing joke amongst the builders that I don't care about anything else much except the removal of the grey monstrosity, and even the one who doesn't speak English was beaming from ear to ear when he saw me today. Photos to come - I didn't get a chance earlier today as I had to keep the kids away from home until the brick dust had died down a bit!

At last!

2007-10-05T23:31:00.001+01:00

We spent a gruelling weekend at the end of July with a rented van putting all our furniture from downstairs into self storage. The builders we had chosen built us a temporary kitchen upstairs by moving the old units upstairs into my daughter's bedroom and plumbing in the kitchen sink and our washing machine. I can't described the joy I felt the first time I did a load of washing inside the house rather than in the shed in the garden. Pure luxury! We went on holiday at the beginning of August, leaving the keys with our builders so that they could get on with the demolition while we were away.

We had a terrible crossing back from France, on one of the wettest days of a memorably wet summer, and didn't arrive home until the small hours, covered in vomit from my sea sick daughter. I'll never forget driving slowly down our road in the dark not knowing what to expect when we got to our house. It was a massive anticlimax to see the garage still standing, even though logically I knew it was unrealistic to expect it to have been spirited away in a fortnight! The next morning we could see that the builders had managed to demolish the entire rear extension and carry it out wheelbarrow load by wheelbarrow load through the house. There is no rear access to the garden, although we do have a side door, which is apparently the original tradesmen's entrance. (Most of the houses in the road have had these doors bricked up but we're keeping ours so we can direct undesirable visitors to it...)

Waiting

2007-10-05T23:02:00.000+01:00

Once we'd got planning permission I naively assumed that we'd be able to start building in the next few months, take advantage of the summer weather to get loads done and more or less be sorted out by Christmas. What I didn't expect was that we would wait, and wait, and wait.

The date the architect had fixed for issuing the tender to builders (end of March) came and went, and I'm not very proud of the heated exchange of views that we had when I rang her to ask why. The thermal insulation regulations on glass changed in April and our plans for the glass box had to be updated (at further cost) to reflect them. In May it started raining almost continuously (you may remember) and all the electricity went downstairs. We cooked and watched TV for several months on extension leads running from the only working plug sockets, which happened to be in the hall. We did finally go out to tender in June, by which time water had drenched the dining room from a couple of leaking pipes and we'd had to have them replaced, at further vast expense. By the time we'd actually chosen a builder I had ceased to find the rain or the garage even faintly amusing. Lots had happened since we moved in. My son had started school, learned to ride a bike without stabilisers and got his five metre swimming badge. My daughter had had her first birthday, started eating real food rather than mashed up carrots and had even said a few words (teddy and no!) The previous owners' decor is preserved in glorious technicolour in a whole swathe of important family photographs. Even our architect's circumstances had changed - she unexpectedly announced in March that she was having a baby, her third, due in July ( the new projected start date for our build!)

I think what made it worse that was that a family we knew from my son's nursery had bought a house to do up several months after us, had gutted it, built a 2 story side extension, converted the loft and refurbished throughout and were ready to move in, when we hadn't so much as laid a brick.

I'm sure veterans of the renovation game will be laughingly knowingly at this point and shaking their heads, but I really had no idea that the thing would take such an incredibly long time to get off the ground. I'm hoping that in time our year (16 months if you count the build time) without a cooker or any windows at the front of the house will be a hilarious bit of family lore to chuckle over when the kids are older. Fingers crossed...

Getting planning permission

2007-10-05T22:36:00.000+01:00

The council had granted planning permission to convert the sitting room into a garage in 1969, when the couple who owned the house for forty years carried out most of their home improvements. I can't think why more people didn't follow their lead. In fact, if anyone is thinking of carrying out a similar modification to their own home I have the original plans here:

Unfortunately for us the fact that permission had been granted meant that we had to apply for permission to convert it back. It seemed to take ages to get all the bits together, but we finally sent our application in at the end of November 2006. To be fair to the council, they did seem to realise their earlier mistake, and the planning officer who came round to look at it was very kind. 'Well, it's a lovely area!' she exclaimed brightly. Luckily for us the neighbours next door have an enormous and not very architecturally distinguished extension at the back so she saw no problem with the glass box. We got planning permission for the whole caboodle at the end of January 2007, with the proviso that we paid for the parking space to be reinstated outside our house as we were removing a parking amenity from the street by demolishing the garage. I wanted to argue that nothing had been parked in it except a large family of spiders since about 1975 but I didn't want to push our luck. I had been wondering ( and having nightmares about) what we might do with the place if permission was refused. Delight the neighbours by opening an MOT centre perhaps. Or make a bit of money on the side by charging shoppers to to park there on a Saturday.

Phase 2 - most of 2006 and 2007!

2007-10-04T20:19:00.000+01:00

After a bit of cleaning and painting we decided that the house was habitable - just - as it had central heating in most of the rooms, a fitted 1960s kitchen ( although the gas cooker had been condemned so I was limited to 2 electric rings and a microwave) and a working bathroom. There were even two loos, although one of them was just outside the back door, next to the shed housing the washing machine. Funny how that seemed quite charming in July and much less so in February!

I got in touch with three architects recommended by RIBA and talked to them all about what we wanted. They all seemed to think converting the nasty front back to the original Edwardian appearance would be trouble-free, and were much more interested in what we wanted to do with the back. We eventually chose a local architect who had done lots of the kind of thing my husband likes - glass boxes attached to period houses, basically! We had the usual tussle in our discussions with her as she and my husband wanted to sacrifice the fireplace and cornicing and replace it with a streamlined modern pivot window, pebble fire and John Pawson like worksurface stretching through the house to the back garden. Needless to say I wanted to keep said original features, and as I'm the one who got into the biggest strop about it I got my way.

We eventually agreed on a plan which gave both of us what we wanted - a modern glass box for my husband and original features for me. Controversially, we chose to keep the kitchen where it was, in the relatively narrow side return extension, rather than knocking through into one huge open plan space. It's still relatively open plan, in that it's open to the dining room, which is open to the sitting room, but I like to be able to shut myself away to cook in peace, I don't want to look at the washing up when we've got guests and I want to be able to play music or listen to the radio ( or use the mixer!) without my children yelling at me to turn it off because I'm drowning out Cbeebies. I'm still a bit worried about our decision though, as I know smaller kitchens are deeply unfashionable. Here's the planned rear elevation:

and here's what it looked like before work started

Phase one- summer 2006

2007-10-02T21:39:00.000+01:00

We moved in during the hottest July on record. The removal men laughed long and hard when they saw what we'd bought. I'd moved without any help from family and friends and with a three month old baby in a bouncy chair for most of the day, so they thought we were a bit odd anyway. (My husband had to go to work, as we'd exchanged on holiday and got back having to move five days later - he didn't have any leave left. So he says.) Luckily our three year old was at nursery and the baby was still at the sleeping all day stage...

The place hadn't been lived in for over a year so I was amazed to find a working washing machine and tumble dryer plumbed in inside the shed in the garden, and that the boiler worked. Crazy as it seems, these were really happy days despite that violent orange wallpaper and the sudden lack of mod cons. Hot weather really helps!

Of special note to first-time visitors were

-the ashtray in the upstairs loo, handily screwed to the wall so you could have a fag and admire the violently floral wallpaper in private

-the amazing bespoke fitted wooden stereo corner unit in the sitting room (quite nice actually, I was sad when the builders ripped it out and threw it away.)

-the unique psychedelic wallpaper in the bathroom and dining room, teamed with an array of groovy sixties light fittings. (We kept most of them but toned down the dining room paper to one wall - even the ceiling was orange when we moved in.)

-the secret room - a hidden ensuite to the master bedroom, complete with avocado basin and vanity unit. (This has grown on me...)

- the sixties fitted kitchen complete with rather funky but sadly non working old gas cooker ( we tried to get it fixed and or taken away by an enthusiast but no takers I'm afraid)

-and naturally, the garage, complete with electronic door and remote control, plus a stash of vintage car mags, calendars and trophies. Very handy for storage - I've no idea what we're going to do with our bikes when it's gone.

We did some quick fixing over the next few weeks with the help of some white paint and a lot of bags of rubbish. We threw out endless motheaten old carpets, dust caked venetian blinds, disgusting cracked loo seats, spiders webs and ancient hideous curtains. A fox had got into the house while it had been empty and had peed on the carpets ( and worse) in the children's bedrooms, so we got someone in to sand the boards and make it bearable for them. Even though all our visitors could barely disguise their horror when they visited, we were delighted with the place and had more people over than we had ever managed in the old house!

The jungle aka garden in July

and the following spring

The kitchen/diner in July 2006 and after a (very) quick paint job and tidy up

Why did we do it?!

2007-10-02T21:08:00.001+01:00

Well there were some good things about the house. The location is where we really wanted to be and where we can see ourselves settling and bringing up the kids. And there are some original features left, despite the garage horror. I love old houses and despite what's been done to it it still has a lovely friendly feel. We'd done up our first flat in Islington together pretty successfully and were pleased with what we'd done to our last house too, but we wanted the chance to do something a bit more radical. My husband in particular was very keen to use an architect and try to design something that would really suit our family for at least ten years. I like modern architecture too, but there aren't many cool modern houses round here ( or not in our price range anyway!) and I was keen to see if we could have a period house with a successful modern update. And we thought that at least with a house in this state we couldn't make it worse!

There's quite a nice fireplace in the sitting room ( the other one - not the garage!) and some nice cornicing and ceiling roses.

Oh, and the front door's quite nice, despite the lurid colour, and the original hall tiles have survived.

On the other hand, apart from the obvious garage problem it needs replumbing, rewiring, a new central heating system, a new roof, replastering in parts, a new extension, new kitchen and bathrooms and 'general reorganisation and modernisation' as our survey kindly pointed out.

How did we end up here?

2007-10-02T14:13:00.000+01:00

So how did we end up living in quite possibly the ugliest house in London?

We'd just had our second baby and were living in a lovely Victorian house in Twickenham which we'd spent three years doing up. It had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, huge kitchen, a big garden and original features galore. With the benefit of hindsight I can see that it was a perfect family home, located a few hundred yards from the station and from the school our son was due to start attending that September. We had a small mortgage and money in the bank.

Here's a couple of pictures of our old house (sob)...

And then I saw an advert for a house in the local property mag in May 2006. It was over £100,000 cheaper than houses normally were in that road. The road is one I've always loved, moments from the Thames and Marble Hill park, and a few minutes from all the shiny shops in Richmond. However, it hadn't been touched since 1969 when the previous owners decided to paint it grey and got planning permission to convert the sitting room into a garage. Hence the 'bargain' price. I think the post-natal hormones made me take leave of my senses. I strolled past a couple of times with my pram. I had a viewing with an estate agent who clearly thought I was mad. 'Hey, it's not too bad!' I said, eyes on the black and white tiled hall floor, cornicing and ceiling rose and marble fireplace, and firmly averted from the damp stains, tiny kitchen, holes in the roof, outside loo and weeny garden. Oh, and that garage.

My husband had a look too. Personally I blame him - if he'd put his foot down then we might not be in this mess now.

Naturally our lovely, sound, freshly decorated Twickenham house sold instantly, even before the sign had gone up. As luck would have it our buyers had no chain, and as the owner of our new house had died it was possibly the fastest sale ever, with no chance for us to reconsider. So we found ourselves moving into the garage house before we'd really realised what we were doing, in July 2006.