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...
Although we have a lot of space in our renovated house, one thing we are short on, is actual storage space. Apart from what is now a rather lovely pantry - another thing ticked off the wishlist - there is no original storage, and so we have had to be creative with...
It's not a secret that we're selling our renovated stone house in northern Istria. We are now ready for our next big adventure. We feel that Istria is very much home at the moment, and we haven't regretted doing what we did when we put our West Didsbury house up for...
With Spring knocking on the door and a house to get back on the market, we've been beavering away at the interior of our home since New Year. Now that we are also seriously looking at other properties to buy, we're seeing things slightly differently and have realised...
Although we've largely finished the renovations of our stone house, I can always find something else that needs to be done. So, effectively, it always "unfinished". But not on the scale of these properties, which have been designed to be deliberately "unfinished"....
In a previous post I wrote about our desire to eradicate the parts of internal walls which have not been plastered and are still the original Istrian stone. Some people would love the walls, but as the years have gone on, I have to say my love of exposed stone -...
Over the summer, when we were averaging two or three house viewings a week and had some very serious interest in the house, if someone had told me that by October, we'd have taken it off the market, given up on The Printworks (and in the process, lost a lot of money)...
When we viewed our stone house in 2016, we found a very sorry looking room - a cellar, of kinds - down the stairs from the living room. The stairs were treacherous to say the least. Very thin pine treads, on a steep vertical with no handrail. These hinted at what we...
So, we've finally made a proper start. The old industrial unit, which has sat unloved and empty for as long as we've lived in Istria, is being internally dismantled in preparation for the major renovations. A scaffold unit, an extendable ladder and a demolition drill...
It’s always great having friends in-the-know when you travel abroad, as they often give you top tips that you don’t find in guide-books or through internet searches. Because usually you don’t know about these places and so don’t search on them. One of these gems...