Renovation Progress: One Year On. 19.05.12

Here's a shot looking pretty much striaght down the middle of the garden on the 19th of May 2011. You can just about make out the back wall directly above DC's head. The patch of muddy ground where his football is sitting was a bed full of large shrubs that we got the builders to remove when they had the digger at the house to dig out the foundations for the extension. Good move on our part; it would have taken an age to dig those blighters up by hand. And the reason we wanted them removed was twofold: firstly, they blocked so much of the lovely view down the garden to the Victorian kitchen garden wall at the back, and secondly they took up a large part of the lawn which we predicted DC would want to be kicking a football around on.

And here's the view from the same(ish) spot, taken today, the 19th of May 2012.

 You can see all of the lovely brick wall, no huge shrubs/overgrown trees/weeds are obscuring the view; you can also see the grass where the large bed was removed as it's a slightly different shade from the grass around it. As well as hacking back the undergrowth, we (hubby) have laid gravel paths in and around the vegetable beds and also cut down one of the seven apple trees we had (it was very tall, unwiedly and not looking too good.) Still on the list of things to do: paint the dark green door in the back wall a nicer shade (Farrow & Ball are sure to have something suitable...), do something with the bed/couch grass directly in front of the espaliered apple tree which is right in the middle of the photo (you can see the blossom, if not the tree itself), and possibly relocate the compost bins which are to the left of the photo next to the woodshed (the wheelbarrow is leaning against them in this photo.) Oh, and we're also going to plant some fruit trees and bushes in the chicken run, but you can't really see that in this photo.

Now, on to the house. Here's the back view on the 19th of May 2011. The insulation blocks have been attached to the lower storey of the extension to help keep us snug and warm (and they do the job surprisingly well.)

 And here it is today, 19th of May 2012. Looking a little tidier, don't you think?!

 And internally; here's a shot from the 19th of May 2011. Scary, eh?

And here it is today, the 19th of May 2012.

 

Not a very good shot due to the light coming in the window/doors and me being too lazy to get a camera and just using my iPhone to take the photo. Not to mention the fact that I didn't bother tidying up before I took the shot... To the left, out of view is the kitchen area, to the right is the living area, and behind me is the dining area. It's all one big open-plan space which seems to suit us well (so far.)