I suppose the first thing to say about this fifth renovation for us both is that we are noticing that we are older. I should add to that reluctantly noticing! But notice we are, and two weeks after the first phase of our renovations we were both still absolutely knackered.

As always we kept going until this particular very dusty job was done, and the door from our old back kitchen into the bedroom is now back in situ. It makes the bedroom so much lighter and gives us much more of a feeling of space in both the bedroom and the living room. Who would have thought that one door could have done so much?!

The back part of our kitchen is now mainly my office with a fridge and our pantry cupboard in it (or should I call it a ‘press’ now that I am living in Ireland?

The pantry cupboard was a charity shop find. It was a real, ‘life showing us the way’ , moment. We went to a local town in the North and sized up a wardrobe we could use as a pantry cupboard, but RD was not sure, so we popped into the town because At thesame time we wanted lamb chops, and we thought it would give us time to think about it. But not one of the butcher shops in the town had any lamb chops. I took that as a sign, and said to RD that we should go to our own town for the lamb chops and see what was in the charity shop there. In fact on the way I said that I just knew what we needed would be there and it was…….

It will be painted (of course!) this year.

So now the kitchen/ office looks bigger, the bedroom feels bigger, and our living room is bigger, because, finally, we are able to de-commission the door into our bedroom. You know the one we always had to squeeze into from the living-room, because it hit a wall. It isn’t finished, but it is a start.

Our phase two was going to be to knock the wall down from the kitchen into the annoying corridor, known as the hall. This initial stage has made us realise that we are trying to squeeze too many jobs in too short a space of time. We have learned from our last venture that we do have to take our age into account. That we need to plan more.

During phase one we realised we needed more storage, and had to stop what we were doing to buy shelving units. They look good….

Living in a small house you have to think outside the box. These are in fact bookshelves; so they are not as deep as normal shelving units, giving us storage without taking up much needed space, but they do an excellent job.

So phase two has been phased down for the end of the month, another old doorway will be re-opened into the hall, which means our cooker can finally be turned flat against the wall, why they ever put it at this stupid, natty little angle I will never know in such a small house! Doing this will give us more floor space, and hopefully my little mobile island can finally be utilised and rescued from the garage. And don’t even get me started on the garage!

Add into the mix two escape artist puppies (more fencing will be going up this week), that it is that time of year for flowers to be planted, a paddock that needs to be mowed before we get a tractor involved, and both working full time, we knew we were just pushing ourselves too far.

As we have learned all things are subject to change, and we are listening to life and letting the renovations evolve. We have time off in July for RD’s big 60 and we will decide then. Small steps…But more to come….

Rosie