recent Renovation blogs
our front doors…

our front doors…

...deserve a post of their very own. They are now the most beautiful doors, but it's taken a real labour of love, because when we bought the house, they definitely weren't beautiful. In fact, they looked so awful and dilapidated that the intention was to have them...

micro-cement kitchen design

micro-cement kitchen design

Our kitchens have always been a big part of our previous homes. Big in importance, but sadly, never big in size. Until we bought our Andalucian townhouse, and the footprint of the kitchen was huge, compared to what we had had previously. The kitchen we inherited...

crittal doors and crittal windows

crittal doors and crittal windows

I've long dreamed of crittal doors in our house, but it's never been a reality before. With hindsight, when we renovated our house in West Didsbury, we should have investigated these metal doors more thoroughly, because as much as we loved our hardwood French doors, I...

andalucian reno journey #3 : main bathroom

andalucian reno journey #3 : main bathroom

It's been a while since I've done a post about our renovation journey, because we've so busy since actually moving into the house - at long last! - on 26th August. The builders finally departed a week later (but will be returning to finish the kitchen), so we've been...

andalucian reno journey #3 : stairs

andalucian reno journey #3 : stairs

The stairs up to the roof terrace, from the first floor, were awful. Just awful. Steep, enclosed and dark. They were so awful in fact, that we gave our builders a bit of a head-scratcher and said we wanted to investigate accessing the roof terrace from the internal...

spanish tiles

spanish tiles

Our lovely Andalucian townhouse, when we bought it, was full of tiles. But unfortunately, most weren't those beautiful Spanish tiles that we all swoon over. They were mostly patterned, but arranged in the most migraine inducing way - a really terrible mix of colours...

andalucian reno journey #2 : main bathroom

andalucian reno journey #2 : main bathroom

Unlike previous renovations, when we've actually lived in the properties as they were being renovated, this time, we have lived in an apartment, by the sea, a good couple of hours drive away. Each trip over to the house, is over a four hour round trip, and so we...

andalucian reno journey #1

andalucian reno journey #1

The renovation - well, I say *renovation*, but what I really mean is demolition - started in earnest a few weeks ago. We are very lucky that we've bagged ourselves a gorgeous apartment to rent, in a lovely western coastal town called Sanlucar de Barrameda, meaning...

our initial advice when buying abroad

our initial advice when buying abroad

Finally, work has started in the house. We visited last week and arrived to the sound of chiselling and hammering as years of plaster was starting to be removed from the walls of the rooms on the first floor. The downstairs rooms were filling up with scaffolding and...

our renovation learning : #1

our renovation learning : #1

Although we have renovated houses before, this seems a very different renovation. In our very first house, we did change it a lot, but we did nothing structural. Mostly, it seemed to be constant decorating and moving things around, which we did ourselves. When we sold...