Now we have to crack on with the bungalow so that we will actually have somewhere to live if things carry on at this pace.
Sue xx
Added - Saturday 3pm. I was just setting this post up for going live on Sunday ... and we have just had a full asking price offer from a family that needed the annexe for a very genuine reason, and we've accepted it!!
So our house will be off the market less than 24 hours after it went on.
Seemingly these days when you are having photos taken for a house sale, you don't just hide the clutter, you have to hide the everyday!!
The house was valued yesterday, I'll tell you the result when I share the estate agents details with you, but don't worry you won't have to wait long, things are moving at the speed of a hungry leopard.
As soon as the estate agent left our phones started pinging with forms to fill in, instructions of what paperwork we needed and instructions from the photographer, videographer and social media wizard on what we should do to prepare for the photos being taken later on today.
You are advised to put away anything but the main component parts of each room, so that any viewers can imagine their things and themselves in your space. I am now of the opinion that some people have very little imagination. 😄
We got up early and started almost immediately, now I can't find anything!!
Happily you are 'allowed' to leave a kettle out.
It did spur me on to finally remove the two Winter jackets that were still hanging by the front door though. 😁
Pet food bowls and all traces of animals are to be removed, but we won't do that until ten minutes before they are due to arrive ... we don't want to upset Ginger. Cars have to be off the driveway or off-road parking area, but we won't do that until just before they come ... we don't want to annoy the neighbours.
All the paraphernalia off my desk and from the bathroom is in the boot of my car along with a myriad of other things. Happily I know where my glasses and my current book are, but I am not sure what to have for my lunch, it will have to be something very simple, as all the bits and bobs from the kitchen have been stashed away into the drawers, so no pans are accessible.
It will be nice to get back to normal, still tidy ready for viewings but just more normal.
Have you moved home recently and were you instructed to do all this?
It's been a bit chaotic here over the last few days.
Ever since we got back off our little weekend away we have been sorting out, cleaning up and generally getting our current house ready to go on the market. Some corners like this one at my front door were an easy clean and an easy fix. Alan pulled my big SMEG fridge freezer away from the wall, and I cleaned behind it and quickly put it back in place, the rest of this area just needed a little clean, so it was a satisfying job to do.
At the opposite side a bit more was needed as my little 'desk' area will be shown as more of a breakfast bar for the estate agents photos. It's been satisfying to do, but bitty and tiring.
We have managed to find quite a few things to add to Facebook Market place, including my printer as we will only need one when we move, and Alan's large Vax carpet cleaner ... once he had finished cleaning all his carpets of course. 😄
Of course as is usually the way with things, Alan's middle floor toilet decided to start leaking and he needed a washer. Only these days you can't generally buy just a washer, you have to buy a whole new set of innards for the toilet. So what used to be a 20p fix turns into a £16 set of new component parts.
That's just one of the reasons I tried so hard to keep the original toilet from the bungalow. 😒
The estate agent is coming round tomorrow to look everything over and give us a valuation, that should be very interesting ... I wonder how much we are worth?
I'm just into a lovely cool, slow Sunday morning start.
It's currently 8.45am as I am typing this, the first load of washing is out on the line and the machine is just finishing the second. The doors are all open and a lovely cool breeze is gently taking the heat of the night out of the annexe.
It's easy to understand the oft repeated phrase 'deliciously cool' when it's like this.
After pegging out the first bit of washing, I took time to look at the garden. It's a bit rag taggle at the moment. Nothing perfect or Instagram worthy, but then it doesn't need to be.
We have enough vegetables to add to our meals, there are so many Spring Onions in this little bed, a few Romaine lettuces, some chives and some thyme. Everything else went to seed during the hot dry spell and while we were away.
We have two cucumbers that are crying out to be picked, and two of the courgette plants are finally starting to produce sweet little courgettes,
We seem to be in our 'shades of yellow' period in the garden at the moment.
The Crocosmia are really overcrowded this year, so I will be putting some in a pot to take with us.
A little Aldi purchase that is waiting to go into the raised bed to fill a gap.
The water for the birds ... and Ginger ... is so clear after Alan spent half a day pressure washing everything that you can't even tell it's there. 😊
Well the machine has finished so it's time to fill up the washing line, have my second breakfast and then we will be hitting the road to go and visit Mum.
I hope you are having a gloriously warm, or deliciously cool day wherever you are.
It was just a normal, simple day ... but I photographed it.
Starting with breakfast of what I already had on the go, some orange juice and a Weetabix with the last of the stewed apple from the freezer. I must do some more, stewed apple and Weetabix goes so well together. It's good to start the day with two of my five a day, and yes these measurements of orange juice and apple were the exact amount needed to qualify.
Don't worry about it being dry I did add a good splash of soya milk after I took the photo. 😄
The while the washing was whizzing around in the machine I got out the pegs and put the line across the garden. I never take the washing machine for granted after washing everything by hand for many, many years. Some things are worth appreciating.
All pegged out.
It wasn't terribly sunny but the breeze kept everything moving and it was all dry for late afternoon and put away by bedtime,
While the washing was drying, I did a bit of tidying, a run through with the hoover and had a bit of a top up of the spice tin.
It's always good to check what I have and what I might need to buy soon. I have just about enough of everything at the moment, and spares of the things that are almost running out. The onion granules ... the tub with the spoon in ... are running low, but they are a bit stuck together so I need to chop at them with the little spoon for a while whenever I need some. I will persevere until they are all gone and then I have a new pack waiting to be broken into..
Lunch was a nice simple affair of scrambled eggs on toast with my usual coffee.
It was eaten in front of the television while I watched a 'new to me' YouTube channel called The Hidden House. It's a lovely relaxing watch, especially over some tasty food and a coffee.
Later I sat outside and read a bit more of my book. I do want to get this one finished so I can take a nice new read away with me for the weekend. I'm nearly there.
For my tea I had decided on some pasta, so I had a bit of a pasta cookathon so that I would have some more for later in the week. It just makes sense to make three times what you actually need, if I don't use it all it can go into the freezer before we go away.
I had found half a tins worth of tuna in a little tub in the fridge, so I had a simple tea of pasta, peas and tuna liberally sprinkled with grated cheese. It was very tasty, again eaten in front of the television this time watching The Chase.
I am really looking forward to having a dining table when we move into the bungalow!
I was feeling peckish halfway through the evening, so I raided the fridge and had half a tub of my recently stewed rhubarb with the last of a tub of yoghurt. Swiftly followed by another black coffee.
Yes, I can drink black caffeinated coffee just before bedtime and still fall asleep within minutes. 😁
Just an average sort of day in my life, but photographed as I lived it.
This is the post I was going to do on Monday, but I simply did not have the energy and needed to decompress after Sunday ... and then I needed to get it all out of my system yesterday.
We called to Aldi on the way home from visiting Mum, and I think you can tell that I needed some treats as well as a few necessary bits. Two bottles of wine, chocolate, two packs of cheese and pasta, two of so many of the items in my trolley. I think I just get in the habit of picking up twos when I am running out of something, which is no bad thing really.
I did limit myself to one block of chocolate ... but only because I already had some at home. 😁
The receipt for posterity.
The wine and fish definitely bumped the cost of this shopping up, but I was still happily surprised that this was all I spent, I was expecting it to be more.
When I got home I realised that I had taken the photo of the shopping in the trolley before I had added the eggs to it. So I laid it all out again for your perusal.
I really could have gotten way with not shopping this week, but sometimes your sanity tells you that it needs some wine and chocolate.
I did sort of need more pasta though, as I had tipped the last of my smaller sized bags of penne into my large pasta jar on Friday. It used to come in 500g bags, now it seems to be only available in 1kg size. I seem to have lots of spaghetti in my store cupboard but I was down to no replacements of penne, which is obviously my favourite.
So, that's the rice jar and the pasta jar freshly filled, and the shelf is looking very healthy at the moment.
I called round to the bungalow with Alan's lunch on Monday, to find that he had been busy filling up the space in my bedroom with the stud walls for the en-suite. It completely changes the look of the room now.
It actually feels smaller than it appears in this photo and will feel smaller still once the plasterboard goes up and the whole bungalow is plastered in a couple of weeks.
As a reader mentioned the other day, we are shrinking by the week. At the beginning the bungalow was 880sq ft or 83 square metres, I think we will have to have a re-measure once all the walls are completed as all the exterior walls will have come inwards by around 4" due to the insulation.
After having a lunch break with Alan, I headed for home to do some more filling of space.
I managed to get some roasted vegetables, pasta and peas and some stewed apple in orange juice, made up to fill that empty shelf in the fridge. I also took a tub of grated Christmas cheese out of the freezer and opened a jar of pesto to have with some of the pasta for my tea.
It's nice to see it looking a bit healthier in there again with things to give me inspiration for this weeks meals.
I seem to have a plethora of little cut in half tubes of various things around the place at the moment. But as you can see from this photo of the mini travel sized hand cream, originally picked up from a hotel stay, there is always a lot more in tubes than you can possibly squeeze out in the proper way.
I wonder how many years of throwing away nearly a quarter of my products I had!!
I know so many of my readers already do this, so I really am pointing out the obvious, but if it helps one person to see the light and save some money in these price rising times then it worth a bit of repetition.
This particular one looks so cute now that I have popped it's 'top' on. 😄
There's an even tinier one in the bathroom.
My lips really suffer in the Winter months, and even more so when I am constantly blowing my nose when I'm not well. So having a few tubes of this in the bathroom cabinet has been a godsend. But I'm not wasting even a drop of it.
There was a tube of toothpaste also chopped near the bottom, after I had scrapped all the contents down, but that is now all used up and it was the dropping of it into the bin that inspired this blog post.
Yep, I get my ideas from everywhere. 😁
Alan asked me the other day if I had bought any kitchen paper yet.
As you can see here from the kitchen roll holder under my wall cupboard the answer is still no. I think the last time I purchased a new roll was probably in either November or December of 2024, so I am doing well with my paper napkin saving from cafés etc.
I do have to admit to carefully retrieving Alan's thrown away cardboard roll from the paper recycling bin yesterday ... he had thrown away the cardboard roll off his kitchen paper with two pieces of paper still attached. 😧
I will make sure to use them for peelings or wiping up and not for anything to do with fresh food making, although they were sat quite neatly on top of an empty box of assorted chocolate biscuits that Alan had for Christmas.
Where once there was a garage and a garden there is now a hole and two mountains, one of soil and one of blocks.
Things have to get worse before they have a chance of getting better, and now perhaps we can all see why this is going to take us at least a year of taking down and rebuilding.
The bathroom is now mostly out, just the toilet waiting to be removed.
And to keep everything nicely up to date here is a quick walk through that I did yesterday, while we were waiting for the builder to come and have a look at the hole that will be the new garage foundations.
Alan planned to have the garage rebuilt first so that we will have secure storage for any of the building materials and tools needed on site. The old garage was unsalvageable as it's concrete pad had cracked and the walls were in a terrible state, in fact Alan said that once the roof was taken off the lefthand wall came down all by itself. While we don't actually need a garage to put a car in, as we will have off road parking for at least three vehicles, we do need it for the storage it will offer us as there will not be much in the bungalow.
I tried to take a couple of photos of the inside of the food cupboard yesterday, but it was so gloomy that this one was actually the best of a bad bunch.
It shows in a small way that I have been pretty successful in eating my way through the mass of out of date tins of food that I had in there. In another week or so I will spend a few hours sorting out the food from the bottom cupboard and moving most of it up to where I can see it properly. Reacquainting myself with the food that I have had for quite a while, but that was moved down to the lower cupboard so that I could keep my eyes, and my mind, on what needed using up first.
Virtually everything in my cupboards now has the date that it is supposed to expire written in black marker pen, which will save me a lot of time looking for dates and putting my reading glasses on and off.
Moneywise, I think I mentioned the other day that I would talk about my little cash stashes that are going to be a bit of a back up for my miniscule £10 a week (plus an extra £10 a month large purchase) shopping budget.
I think most of you know all about my little change box. It's not got a huge amount in it, just odds and sods of small change, and in fact since the other day when I shopped for a bottle of San Pellegrino water at the services and had to borrow 19p off Alan as I had already reached this weeks £10 limit, it has gone down ... by 19p.
To the right of it is my little drawer of FB Marketplace sales money. Somehow, just selling my French bedside table and some little odds and sods before Christmas I managed to accumulate £73. I was pleasantly surprised when I counted it up. It's a handy amount to have for an emergency back up.
On top of that is the £50 a month for the next three months, January's cash was photographed as you can see below and is now in my purse.
It's no longer Christmas although our homes are full of good food, decorations and gifts that have not found a home yet. We don't quite know what day it is, let alone which of the leftovers to have for our lunch today.
The world seems to have tilted and left us slightly discombobulated, made all the worse if you are also feeling the after effects of illness of any kind.
We went out for a coffee and a bacon butty for Alan, and a coffee and a couple of crumpets for me at Booths this morning in at attempt to claim back some normality ... and drop off the misappropriated shopping basket. We finished it with a detour to the bungalow to see if my befuddled workings out at fitting ensuites into both bedrooms is a viable plan.
Somehow having a few days away from the bungalow has ended up saving us quite a lot of money, as we have found a way of not having to build a porch on the side of the house or knocking part of one exterior wall down to fit new double doors. This is the plan as it was before I planned the ensuites, less wasted space and a lot less doors. It's all starting to come together.
I knew there would be some benefit to my brain taking a few days off. 😄
I've been feeling guilty that when so many of you asked about wanting to follow the progress of the renovations of our new home, I was very uncertain if this was what I wanted to do on my blog. Years ago you were let into all the nitty, gritty of our day to day lives, with maybe more access than I would dream of now.
But I have had a rethink, and maybe I mellowed slightly to the idea, after all it would also give me a record of things as they happen. Then last week Alan asked me to video the bungalow as it is now, and then at regular intervals as the work progresses so that we have a record.
So why not share it with you, although for obvious safety reasons on the internet I will not be sharing the front of our property at all.
I thought I should start by sharing some photos of the kitchen, as rather weirdly I forgot to turn right after I came in through the front door. We usually use the side door for access so coming through the front door for the first time I instinctively turned left and then didn't go back that way. The front door is in between the living room and the kitchen.
So these first three photos show the kitchen.
Already it has changed massively, and Alan has managed to get all the wall cabinets and the tiles off the walls this week. We are trying our best not to send too much of what we rip out to landfill, so wherever possible we are selling things really cheaply on Facebook Marketplace. For instance someone is coming to pick up the fully working, but really needing a clean electric cooker for £10 tomorrow.
The kitchen while looking very good both in person, and in photos is actually not worth us keeping. It has more years of life left in it, but not enough to see us out, and this bungalow is all about us future-proofing our lives. So once it has all been removed, I will be photographing it and offering it for sale as well.
Below is my video of the rest of the bungalow, I notice that some of you have already found it on YouTube and left comments, thank you for those. If you have any questions about anything you see please ask them on here, as I am terrible at responding on YouTube, I only use it as a tool to get films off my phone and don't even think to check back ... oops!! 😄
Now I know that I am sharing any videos on here I will talk my way around next time, but this was just going to be for our use. I know how much you all love my dulcet tones with my Mancunian accent. 😆
'Mother', the Christmas cacti is in full bloom and looking amazing.
She's a very old lady, originally owned by Alan's great-great-great Scottish Grannie, but every now and then she really surprises us, and this 'almost on time' blooming has done just that. She is obviously loving being sat in Alan's hallway window and getting so much light on her old leaves.
She spent many days over the course of the Summer sat outside on the patio drinking up the sun's rays, and then enjoying cooling showers from the hosepipe before returning to her happy place. Maybe that has helped rejuvenate her even more than usual.
Happiness can be as simple as enjoying the pretty flowers on a treasured plant.
Ginger has been a little bit baffled by the time change over the past week.
While the mornings have been slightly lighter, it only seemed to last a day or so because of all the rain clouds that we have had. Ginger comes over every morning for his 'squidgy', a tube of paste-like cat treat that he seems addicted to. I like him having it even though I think it is basically pussycat junk food, because it seems to trigger his appetite, which until recently had been waning. After emptying the dish and then having a little cat milk, he goes out the front door of mine, through next doors garden and reappears in our back garden where he makes straight for his cat flap which is on Alan's back door to see if Alan has surfaced yet.
If he hasn't Ginger comes straight back to mine and waits in anticipation of Alan's curtains opening, and the promise of breakfast.
While all this is going on I am simply drinking coffee and watching some YouTube, I have no inclination to be climbing garden fences before breakfast. 😄
Gosh, it even seemed gloomy in the fridge this morning. Maybe I should stop putting things so neatly in front of the lights!!
I have to say, I am loving the long dark evenings ... I always do. There's something very relaxing about settling down nice and early, with good food, a good book and then some really good television.
