Small home improvements

Hello! First of all, can I say thank you for all the lovely comments you leave me on this blog. It means so much and I really appreciate it.

I wanted to share a few small-ish home improvements that we have finished this winter and spring. Most of these have taken months and months to actually be completed but it is nice to tick some jobs off the list. (I love a list.) We have lived in this house for nine years now and still have not done much of the work we would like to do. Rooms constantly need to be decorated, leaks mended, plumbers and roofers phoned.

I'll start with the airing cupboard. This deep cupboard goes into the eaves from Angus's bedroom and goes back a surprisingly long way. It used to house a huge hot water tank which took up most of the space, and was really good for drying washing. However, a year ago, maybe longer, we replaced our very old boiler with a new combi-boiler, which was re-sited down in the garage. The upside to this was instantly improved water pressure, hotter radiators and cheaper gas bills, but the downside was no more hot water tank. When it was removed it left lots of holes in the walls and floorboards which we ignored for many, many months. 

We pulled up and threw out the scrap of carpet and John filled all the holes in the walls. My Dad repaired some of the broken and damaged floorboards and then Mum and I painted the whole space, walls, ceiling and woodwork, with white paint. 

John laid some ply boards on the floor, over the floorboards, and attached a plug-in wall light. Then my Dad built us some slatted (for air flow) shelves and put up a pole for hanging clothes. A team effort.

The storage is brilliant.

Shelves for towels on one side and bedding on the other, and everything clean and dust free. Handily, some hot water pipes still run through the cupboard helping to air everything. 

Next, the bathroom. Now, we had no intentions to do anything at all with the bathroom, We had a new shower, sink and toilet installed in December 2019 and as far as we were concerned, it was finished. However, we had been noticing damp appear in the bathroom and realised we had a slow leak which had been leaking into the wall between the bathroom and kitchen for a very long time.

John chiselled out the pipework, got a plumber in to fix the pipes and then left it to dry out. This is what our bathroom looked like from October to February. I stopped noticing it after a while.

Finally it was filled and sanded by John and then painted by my lovely mum and I. The final joy was the reinstallation of the towel rail - not more cold towels! 

While we were doing work, John added some more tiles to the foot of the shower - that wall gets much more splashed than we thought it would when we had the bathroom fitted - and we decided to change the paint colour since we were going to have to re-paint anyway.

The final step was to add a couple of shelves to the wall above the toilet for extra storage, something our bathroom is always lacking.

Next, the kitchen. I think I already showed you the wooden strips we added to the end panel in the kitchen.

(Can you see the water damage from the leak on the wooden floor? It will fade as it drys out.)

You can see where Ziggy chewed the panel when he was a puppy. We've looked at it like that for about seven years then finally, over February half term, I had the idea to cover it up with some strips of wood. We used pine (cheaper) which we stained with oak oil.

I liked it so much that I persuaded John to add some more to another corner of the kitchen.

We have had these shelves by the window for years. I thought they were going to solve all my storage problems but sadly they just became a dust trap and dumping ground, plus the veneer was going all yellow round the edge.

We took down the shelves, filled the holes and painted. Then, we set to work fixing more pine strips to this white, shiny end panel. We stained the pine strips beforehand, then cut them to size before attaching them. We used tile spacers to keep the spacing consistent. 

 

Finally I added a little lobster decoration from here. 

I love the warmth the wooden tones bring to the kitchen. When we had it fitted we wanted everything clean and white. I don't regret choosing the kitchen but would certainly choose something completely different (warmer, a softer colour, less clinical) today.

Books, flowers and bread.

Hello! It's trying so hard to be spring here. The clocks have gone forward, the days are longer, the garden is starting to wake up but it is still cold and grey. It's been a wet start to spring so far, and work has been intense this last month. However, it is now the Easter holidays and surely it will finally warm up?

The months of March got off to a flying start with a weekend away by the sea to celebrate my friend Katie's birthday. A group of us in a house with music, games, cocktails, a big walk on the West Witterings - lovely.

This was swiftly followed by Mothers Day. I chose my own present and was delighted with my choices; a new book, some chocolate (the fancy stuff that the kids and John won't steal) and some beautiful paper flowers from favourite shop Winter's Moon.

The children made me cards. I appreciated the contrast between Bella's card - calm, stylish, controlled......

....and Angus's. He bought the card and I very much enjoyed the message. Even if Mother's Day is "merely a corporate exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie."

Books are bringing me much joy at the moment. I completely rediscovered a love of reading during lockdown and it has remained. I have just finished Piglet, below, and have also been listening to None of This is True by Lisa Jewell. Both very different, both excellent.

The bedside table pile continues to teeter. There are novels that I may read a chapter of each night or, if I am between books, I have a few non-fiction books and magazines which I read instead. 

Books aside, life has been full little everyday niceties like new nails in spring colours. 

Sleeping dogs.

The first cut of the grass this year, and a whippet very excited to be out in the garden, sniffing everyone and barking at the neighbour's dogs. 

I feel like I have mostly eaten hot cross buns and bread, which is very much not a problem.

And the odd roast dinner cooked by John. This was roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. We had lamb with dauphinoise potatoes on Easter Sunday - it was delicious. I spent all day gardening while John cooked - we were both happy with this arrangement. 

 

I have exciting news on the sourdough front. I threw away my last starter some months ago as it had flies in it. I was fed up with loaves not rising well ( I don't think I looked after my starter enough) and just enjoyed baking regular loaves of bread instead. 

However, my clever niece, Eleanor, is a very confident cook (and gardener too actually) and she decided to make her own starter. She had lots so gave me a jar of the bubbliest, liveliest starter you've ever seen. 

Look how it grew after I fed it!

As soon as I got my loaf out of the fridge, after its overnight prove, I was excited. 

Look at that. Beautiful.

We are always walking. Everywhere is so muddy at the moment so we are sticking to places with paths, or the beach. 

This means we're often going to places which are busy. I miss our off the beaten track walks, across fields and through woods, but it's just too boggy everywhere. We need a couple of weeks of sunny weather so everything can dry out a bit.

Easter snuck up on me a bit this year. Suddenly it was end of term and Good Friday so I got the little box of Easter decorations out of the loft (it's really just a few wooden eggs) and found my pussy willow branches. 

It's the same thing I do every year but I like it. I also hung my egg garland. I made this so many years ago, pre blogging I think, certainly when he children were really small. If I were to make it now I would choose wool felt over the acrylic fabric I bought in Hobbycraft, I would choose softer, more muted colours rather than these brights, and I would not have covered them in buttons. But they are part of my Easter decorating and I am fond of them.

This little Easter corner of the mantel made me happy. Flowers, vases and pots I've collected from here and there (an antique shop in Petworth, a department store in Paris, a vintage shop on holiday in Rye), the colours, the toy car, a sweet card from a girl in my class - just a little corner of spring joy.

Decorating aside, the best part about Easter for me is always the cooking. Like Christmas it's about tradition and ritual, of course, and a lot of nostalgia, but I always appreciate the way it seems to mark the end of winter cooking and a shift into lighter, brighter food.

Emboldened by my recent sourdough success, I thought I would attempt sourdough hot cross buns. I have had mixed success with homemade buns in the past, and some recipes have been so complicated and fussy that you were tending to them all day long. However, I tried this one and it was brilliant. Easy to follow and I liked to way you could make the buns then leave them to prove overnight in the fridge, then just put them in the oven the next morning. They were the lightest, fluffiest hot cross buns I have made. Next time, however, I would increase the spice and zest for extra flavour.

Bella and I made cornflake nests. It was a lovely way to spend an hour with my girl.

And then we have....my lemon tart. Possibly the best thing I have ever made. I have peaked, culinarily speaking.

I am not a confident pastry maker and usually buy it ready rolled. However, we were all going to my parents' for a big Easter family get-together and I was bringing a dessert, so wanted to make an effort. I chose lemon tart because lemon always feels like an Easter flavour to me, I don't know why, and it's one of my favourite puddings. 

I followed this recipe to the absolute letter and my pastry rolled out without a single tear. I got it into the tart tin without wanting to throw it out of the window. 

I blind baked it, filled it, baked it again, and it was really delicious. Lemony, creamy, crisp.

I doubt I'll ever be able to replicate it.

And now we are almost half way through the Easter holidays. We are at home this year, pottering, doing DIY, gardening. John is off next week. I have a lot of school work to do, of course. The weather has been very mixed all week, sun one minute, torrential rain the next, but it's lovely to be at home so much, to spend time with the kids, to spend time in the kitchen and garden, to read, crochet. It's nice to have time to pause and appreciate spring.