Home Renovation

 We built our current house 14 years ago after much time spent planning and making decisions about how it would look. The build took over a year for various reasons and the choices we made meant much of our money went into the structure and and not much was left over for the finishing. We moved in with it completely unpainted, 3 lights in the whole house, 2 power points, half a kitchen and 3 young children aged 7, 5 and 3 and a half. 

It has been a labour of love finishing it around raising children, living life, working to pay for it and more recently dealing with my husband having brain cancer. We have managed to get most of it done over the years but the large number of windows in our main living area have never been top-coated as it is a big job and as it is the main room where we live it is always filled with the detritus of daily life. 

Today we emptied it of as much as possible and draped the rest of the furniture so we could sand the primer paint on the window surrounds in preparation for the top coat. Having it stripped back like this made it feel so much like it did when we moved in years ago - without half the kitchen missing or large numbers of wires hanging from the ceiling!

While we had everything cleared my husband also took the opportunity to sand back and recoat the top of the dining table he made for my birthday several years ago. With everything looking like this and the smell of the varnish and the anticipation of newly painted windows it almost made it feel like a new house all over again!