House Renovation | Two Years On

So tomorrow marks two years since we got the keys to our house. I'm not quite sure what was going through our heads when we bought this house - after six months of viewing houses and turning heaps down because 'it needs a new bathroom' or 'it was a bit tatty' we ended up buying one that was borderline unliveable in and needed absolutely everything doing to it. Aren't we silly? It's been extremely rewarding though and I would recommend renovating a house to anyone - not only does it mean you can put completely your own stamp on it but it also saves a lot of money (to put it into perspective, what we paid for our house and the renovations put together is still roughly £40k less than buying a house in the same area done up to the standard we're doing ours to). *Smug face*

When we moved in our goal was to have it finished within the two year mark. I'm sad to say we didn't achieve that, but when we're doing the majority of the work ourselves while both working full time and also trying to stay sane that was probably an unrealistic goal in the first place. Naturally we've slowed down, both for financial reasons and because we've got enough rooms finished now that there isn't the same urgency as when we first moved in to make spaces liveable. If you're interested in reading any of the transformation posts I did along the way I'll link them below in the order we did the rooms along with some current pictures of each one.

Bedroom | Transformation post here

We decided to work from the upstairs down for the simple practical reason that we didn't want to have to carry rubble or trample dust through downstairs if it was done nicely. We obviously chose to start with the bedroom so we'd have somewhere nice to sleep, which if you're a fellow DIY-er you'll know is an extremely important thing at the end of a long day's renovating. Because it was the first room we did we were still learning as we went along so it took us a good few months. We even started off stripping the four layers of wallpaper with hot water and a cloth until we realised it would probably be worth paying £20 for a steamer just so it didn't take a whole month to strip the walls. We also wasted some time stripping wallpaper off a wall that we then decided to take down to make it one big room instead of a bedroom and dressing room (forever bitter that I didn't get my dressing room, but it was 100% the right thing to do). Anyway I won't speak about it too much because all the nitty gritty detail is in the original post, but at some point soon I might do a post on my favourite parts of our bedroom and just generally an update - it's a lot more cluttered now than in the original photos!

Bathroom | Transformation post here

We kind of did the bathroom alongside the bedroom as most of the work in there was done by a plumber and tiler so they worked on the bathroom while we worked on the bedroom (although if we knew what we do now we would definitely do this ourselves). The bathroom was the main room that needed doing because there wasn't a shower and I felt a little weird about having a bath in a tub that had obviously been there since the 70s. Although the bathroom was pretty much done within a couple of months we had to wait what seemed like forever to paint it because we discovered a damp patch and we had to wait for it to dry out in what is the wettest room in the whole house. Although the bathroom is small I love it, plus it's my least favourite room to clean so the smaller the better.

Office | Transformation post here

Technically this is a little bedroom at the back of the house, but it's one of those awkward rooms that doesn't really have any logical place for a bed in it so we made it into a little office/study. Shockingly for a blogger, I didn't want to go all white and instead we went for a kind of 'old library' feel (just with absolutely no books whatsoever) so the walls are a browney beige colour and the rug and other accents in the room are all red. It's made it a really cosy room so it's very nice to light a candle and blog from (which is actually my current situation).

Temporary living room/spare bedroom | Transformation post here

This is the main reason we're taking so long to do anything to the actual living room - we have a temporary one with TV, sofa and all. It doubles up as a spare bedroom because our sofa is a sofa bed so technically we don't ever need to do up the living room right? This is actually possibly my favourite room in the house, to the point where when we change it into a full time spare bedroom I might want to sleep in it.

Kitchen | Transformation post here

And most recently of course, we finished our kitchen. I'll say pretty much nothing about this because I've spoken about it a fair amount on here already, but what I will say is that this room is proof that renovations always take longer than you think they will. 

So, watch this space for the living room transformation, but don't hold your breath for it anytime soon!

Would you ever renovate a house?

Amy x