We had lost internet access from Wednesday on, and suddenly we find, today, that in our new home broadband is working. I would say that there is a god but I am still a hardcore agnostic, so instead I give you this: Coke would like to teach the world to sing, and it has worked with me.

The past two weeks have been, without question, the hardest work I have ever done in my life. Sleeping tabs have become a thing of the past as I don't really fall asleep, I pass clean out from the minute I hit the pillow. I once fell asleep standing up at the kitchen counter, I got your exhaustion baby.

But today we have the PC set up for the first time. We downloaded the pictures of the past few days and we can barely believe it ourselves. We are covered with cuts and bruises, some parts of our bodies are so sore we can't stand up, and sex didn't even occur to us until today, when we lay in the sunshine and made the best use of the light imaginable. The upstairs is done. The kitchen is (for now) done. We will rip out the kitchen and re-build it when we build on an extension, but we want to live in the place for a while to see what it is we want.

The before pictures amaze us.

Remember the kitchen?

Or the horrid guest room with the shag carpet?

This was the other guest room, with the dark green carpet and the terrible wallpaper.

But it wasn't as bad as our master bedroom, with the dark blue carpet and the 80's throwback wallpaper.

The house got worse before it got better.

Some days we were all too tired to go on.

And everything was covered with a fine layer of sawdust, as we exposed wood floors that haven't seen the light of day in decades.

And slowly it got there. The floors finished Thursday morning. The walls were stripped and re-plastered. Windows and skirting board re-painted.

We still hate the layout of the kitchen but we painted it to live with it. In the dark kitchen's place is a kitchen we think is full of character, with our Swedish street sign gracing the wall and reminding us of where we came from.

And then the walls were done. The horrible shag carpeting room has become the room Jeff will use when he stays with us. The closet doors still need to be painted, but above the window hangs the airplane we bought together in New Zealand, and the room is full of light.

And the guest room has become a room we can hardly recognize (this is not a great shot of it, but we need a wide-angle lens to get a great shot of it. All in good time.)

And our room has become a room that I completely adore.

Amazing what a new bed, new sheets, new lights, new wall paint, new floors, and a garden for a headboard can do for the soul.

The work is so far from done it's unbelievable. There is a study and a living room to do still, but Melissa and Jeff arrive tomorrow, so there will be a bit of peace in a home that we are all madly in love with.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:43 PM | Comments (32) | Add Comment
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