We have come this far in the Nest

I have had numerous requests from our friends and family about photos of our house. I thought that I would be able to do a lot of "before" and "after" posts, but nothing seems to be ready for the "after". On the other hand, we are now, at this moment, at the point where I feel that I can actually get to clean the house without having to ignore move a lot of stuff on my way. The house is not "done" and I have very little light here at the moment, so when something like a sun ray actually shows itself I have been running around the house with the camera to satisfy all the requests. This means that there is no time for posing aka putting away stuff, which just happens to be there. You won't get nice styled pictures, but a family album.

I might make a series of more oh-lala pictures later, when circumstances allow, but just now, this is the Nest, warts and all in dim winter light, which affects the picture quality:

Let's start upstairs. I have shown my work corner before, but here is a bit  more context to it. Before we started it was an ok room, but with carpet and I just don't like them!

We decided to paint the floorboards upstairs and this is the same place after the painting was done, although the door is now also painted white. Before the furniture went in, it felt as if we might need sun glasses to avoid snow blindness when the sun shone.

And with all the stuff:

On the left side of the bed is the husband's desk:

My old lady corner of the room (very brown in the midst of all white and colours).

There is still a view to show, but that will come later, as seeing anything to that direction is not possible, unless you are interested in piles of bags and stacks of artwork, which has not been hung as yet. I realise that non of the pictures show the magnificent floor space left around the furniture. That will come later.

The Elf Son's bedroom had the least work done; just the floor and the skirting boards. The one blue wall was there and he liked it. I think of the colour as "Cornish Blue on Speed". In real life it is not quite as eye poppingly bright as it looks in this picture taken with a flash. 

His bed is sticking out into the room, which has helped the bed-making efforts. I don't know why I took the picture from this odd angle and not from the door. Maybe to hide the shelves with unidentified stuff...If they were flying, I would have UFOs in my house.

This is his desk in normal state of mess. He would probably say in "mid-work".

The stairs to downstairs and the front entrance. Yes, mad to show, but this happens to be one of my favourite bits of the house. Even when we were just working on the house and everything was covered in dust and there was the ugly curtain and institutional vertical blinds you can see hanging here, this was a lovely spot. I used to sit on the stairs and have my cup of tea dreaming of the day when it would look even nicer.

 

 It is nicer now, although not finished.

See that weird UFO shape (is there a theme building up here?) behind the glass above the door. It is the most horrible house number plaque on the earth. It will go.

Under the stairs is one of the most crucial bits of the house; place to put our shoes into. The fact that we walk only that far with our shoes on, makes keeping of the house clean easier. And who hasn't had the problem of tumbling shoe mountains in the entrance? The shelf hasn't been painted as yet, but I'll show it to you anyway. I also managed to take a picture having some cable trunking standing in the corner etc.etc.

The living room is rather different looking from what it was. Here it is pre-purchase:

  

And this is how the same corner looks today:

 

Art above the sofa is still missing, I am working on it. The chest of drawers, which you can partly see in the picture is here (and all the hi-fi and telly stuff, ugh).

The opposite wall looked like this.

 It is amazing how much a coat of paint and a new handle can improve a cheap pine door. (You get just a peek at it)

This is the window wall/corner towards the hallway:

 

At the moment and as long as we don't have a mantle shelf, there is  very little place to have any trinkets, so the window sill has to work hard:

The kitchen has had the least work done together with the bathroom. At some point when our finances allow, we will re-do the kitchen, but until then we have opted to make it as functional as possible with what we had. It has led to a merry collection of different styles, but hey-ho, who cares. One thing is sure; I never dreamt of having a kitchen of this size. It is about 3.75mx6m, so reminds me of a farmhouse kitchen.

This is a picture gives you an idea of the kitchen when it was empty:

The wall behind my back had a loooong radiator and this cupboard in the corner. Total waste of space from the orientation point of view.(So we took it down and exchanged the radiator to a vertical one).

Now this wall is my "food wall"

No. I don't have jellyfish on my radiator, but do wash and re-use freezer bags we use for bread.

The window wall looks rather a lot like before. The odd placement of the picture has an explanation. Behind it lives the extractor fan.  When I am using it (the fan, not the picture), I take the picture down. There is something slightly wrong with the fan or it might just be a very old model, but in the winter time with certain wind there is a breeze through it in our kitchen. The picture functions as a wind shield. Aah, and there are the shelves, which form our coffee and tea station. Important in our household!

The last wall, which was essentially just a wall looks most like "us" as we used our old furniture on it.

So that was The Grand Tour of the Nest! With time there will be more, but at the moment we are looking forward to a Christmas break in a few weeks with doing nothing but eating good food, reading a lot, seeing films, meeting friends and being together. My crafting has been on the back burner as well, so I have decided to be merciful with myself allowing this to be a year without any Christmas gift making. I will be back in action though, my fingers itch!