We bought a house!

Wow. I'll start by saying Mr B and I have been looking since I was 18, I'm now 24.

It's been a long, hard process with so many tears. We've fallen in love with so many houses over the years but due to many things such as costs, mortgage complications and life in general - it had never worked out.

February 2017, our luck was in!

I'll be honest with you, looking back now - we wonder why we ended up buying this one as there is SO much work to do before it is even close to live able. It's a tiny, 2 bed stone cottage in a small village in South Wales. It's a quaint village with lots of cottages but walking through the door of this one, I felt good vibes. 

When I say it's tiny, I really mean it. There was a huge, wide staircase that awkwardly divided the two downstairs rooms and a horrible, fake fireplace sitting in the living room. Behind this wall, I had a feeling there was going to be something pretty impressive and this is pretty much the reason I wanted it.


I don't write this with a huge amount of cash behind us or any knowledge in building at all but we ended up loving it, strangely and put in the offer. Our offer got accepted and luckily, we bought in South Wales so the price of the house is insanely cheap compared with if we'd bought it in the Cotswold's, for example. 

It's pretty grim (very) looking back, here are some photos of the seriously gross house before we got our hands on it...

This is the tiny, mirrored splash back kitchen that someone actually used! I can't get over this was advertised as a modern kitchen... in what century?!

We immediately ripped this out and realised how small it really was!

We then decided to knock down the stairs that took up so much space in between the two rooms. So much light flooded in once we finally got rid of the huge, horrid stairs. 

 




Ceilings were down and we inserted new joists as we decided to completely relocate the stairs. We decided on the corner the kitchen used to in to create a new space for the "dog-leg" stairs we will be having instead. Because the upstairs space was so small, we thought creating a vaulted ceiling was the best idea so you had more head space. We also inserted the small skylight over the stairs to bring more light into the living room/hall. (Ignore the horrid wallpaper!)

There was also a fully blue bathroom suite in the house but I was so horrified that I refrained from taking any photos! 

We really motored on with the house for the first few months and got so much done that I thought we'd be done in no time. I can tell you... I was very wrong. We're still trying to get the house finished ready to rent it out/holiday let but it's proving difficult when left in the hands of trades people! One thing I'm very proud of is that the reason I wanted to buy the house, came to fruition! We discovered an inglenook staircase hiding behind the awful, fake fireplace. 

It took Mr B and our stone mason a couple of weeks to get it to this point and we kindly got gifted the beautiful fireplace from an uncle. I love the fireplace, it's my favourite part of the cottage. We're going to leave all the stone exposed on this wall and add a small, rope handrail to the side stairs with a little light at the top!

I'll keep you posted on the next bit of hard work! Extension to come!

L xxx