Riding my workmate.

The cupboard in Hannah's sewing room had a missing shelf. This may have broken/been thrown out in the early days of the House of Love. Crazy times. Shit happened. Can't remember. We threw a lot of stuff out.

I inherited a Black & Decker Workmate from my dad's friend Neville - He had two! - so I decided to get my saw on and cut her a new shelf of an afternoon.

 Correct technique.

Plank.

Re-tooling in the studio.

I'm holding a drill like a gun!

 Pee-yow!

Brute force.

So, eagle-eyed readers/viewers will have spotted the bent drill bit. This has happened before. I think we've got a bent drill. They sometimes break off completely. It's obviously nothing to do with my technique. You will also have noticed NO keyboard on the very top shelf-rack arm things.

So, add these to your Xmas present ideas for Jon and Hannah;

a.) Drill

2.) Keyboard

Snowflakes

Now the advent calendar has started we can begin decorating our house! We started with these lovely snowflakes we got at the Chapel End Arts and Crafts Christmas fair.

Sorry about the flurry of non-diy posts. We will get back to proper posts shortly, this is not a lifestyle blog!

Advent greetings

This is going to be our second Christmas in the House of Love. And on the first day of advent, after 20 minutes of frenzied searching, we cracked open our trusted Playmobil advent calendar.

Windows. End. Of. (for now)

So, we got a bit cold with that massive hole in our sitting room, so we asked the nice men to put some more windows in (luckily they were still hanging around).

After getting rid of the window held together with loo roll we weren't sure about the squirty cream in the gaps, but they're the experts.

Houseface! Now all we need to do is paint the pebble-dash and get a new door.

Look how amazing and light-filled our sitting room looks!

I'm going to have to make some new bloody skirtains!

Thank you so much to @PamHutch for recommending Ian Foster and Sons. Without her recommendation one Friday night at the Hornbeam cafe we would have procrastinated forever!

Sorry for the overkill of windows posts but quite frankly it's cost us so much money we needed to get blog value out of it.

Springfield Road's Dickensian sweet shop closes for good

So after we got our top windows redone, we thought our sweetshop window was looking a bit shabby.

So we got rid of that too!

This window was so rotten/held together with loo roll it wasn't worth saving to make rustic garden propagation devices.

There's a ruddy great hole in my house!!!!

Another great houseface (closed eyes, big wide mouth)

What the hell are they doing now?

Making the hole even bigger!

Totally toothless houseface! (eyes half open, open mouth with lips covering teeth)

An expensive way to make a rustic coldframe

Just a reminder of what the house looked like before the upstairs windows disappeared.

This is why our windows disappeared. This man took them out!

Look! No window.

And the back.

Our new window about to go in.

Filling the gaps.

Eeeeek!! (Don't worry, they made good!)

We're keeping the old windows for a cold frame!

Spot the difference

p.s. sorry we haven't made the coldframe yet. Next job for Stephen?

Houseface.

Because of the great face it makes, we removed the window frames, and I think we'll just leave it like that. Look; not a cloud in the sky! I'm sure it will be a lovely warm night tonight!

You can do an impression of our house by exposing your gritted teeth and looking slightly upwards. Use your left hand, palm open, to simulate the small open door.

I knew it couldn't last

Remember when we had a keyboard corner in our living room in Acton? Remember how we moved to a house in Walthamstow so that Jon could have his own music room?

So explain to me, how has this happened?

Why is Jon in our bedroom with FOUR different synthesizers when he has a WHOLE ROOM for playing synthesizers?

Presents from Penrith are Perfect

Since we got our lovely new desk in place we've had one problem. The pink chair, that was the right height for our last desk, just wasn't tall enough for our new bureau. But help was at hand in the form of another present from Jane and Tim. Checking back over the blog I realise we've actually been very naughty and not written about our new piano stool yet but here it is! Initially we thought it would be good for the Hammond, and it has been, although it did make it look quite cluttered in that corner. Happily, it is also the perfect hight for our new desk, so here it will stay. 

Rather pleasingly, this means that our two lovely presents from my downsizing Auntie and Uncle in Penrith will stay together to keep each other company in the Big Smoke.

I also sometimes move it over to the sofa to use as a footstool/table for tv dinners!

We just made a decision!

Yes, the unbelievable has happened and we've made a decision about our windows! Cannot wait to show you the results in November.

We also found out our pebble dash is called 'Canterbury Spa' which sounds much grander, doesn't it!

Desk

Back in the springtime we had a trip up to Penrith for Auntie Jane's birthday party. There was lots of food, a massive cake and ceilidh dancing. We had a lot of fun. We also benefited from Jane and Tim's plans to downsize and desire to get rid of some of their furniture.  Now, several months later and thanks to the supreme generosity and driving lifting skills of Jane, Tim, Ian and Dad, we have a lovely new desk to replace that horrid green ikea number Jon's had since university.

A big job gets done

So I know we've been quiet recently but I've just started a new job and I am pooped! This post is very late, sorry. I've been saying recently how we've lost a bit of our momentum because all the jobs seem so much bigger now, well the other weekend we got one of the big jobs done!

 

Why am I unscrewing the mantlepiece?

Why is Jon unscrewing the funny wood around the fireplace?

Look how much rubbish is in our fireplace! This photo doesn't even do it justice. It's all sooty, concreaty rubishiness. It's stuck on the bricks and it's hanging down from the chimney.

And then it all fell out, before we'd put any dust sheets over our sitting room. oh dear. Look at that soot on the floor!

While Jon was making a mess in the sitting room I was painting the mantlepiece in the sun.

That's it, seal in the sooty dirt with paint!

We had a bit of an emergency with a downpour of rain, now the mantlepiece has finger and raindrop marks all over it.

A London Transport Museum bag stuffed with newspaper to try and stop some of the soot falling down

Jon even put some cementy type stuff down to try and even up and consolidate the hearth bit.

Ta da! Doesn't it look better than before