We’ve just finished paving our outdoor spaces, adding 70+ sqm of new outdoor living to the home. Both spaces are designed as an integral part of the house — making the most of orientation, shelter and connection to the rooms inside. One is a morning and afternoon space, linked to the kitchen and children’s rooms. …
Christmas arrived early this year in our home with the missing piece of the puzzle finally installed. It’s hard to beat the warmth and drama of a real fire. The ritual, company and focal point. It’s the anchor that was always intended and we already feel inseparable from it. A fire is a living thing …
My favourite month is May and this month has delivered in spades, waking up to gorgeous skies is such a treat, especially since we have done more work on the garden, we can now enjoy some of the fruits of our labour. To be honest, it feels like more labour than fruit at the beginning, …
Blinds are the eyelids of our home, integrated and essential for rest. We thought about hidden blinds at the outset of the project. Our timber frame company stepped up the structure to allow space for the blind, we built out the recess for blinds in timber battens, slabbed around recess with plasterboard and then skimmed …
Living in our new home is a very different experience to building it, the activity of making and finishing a home is constantly in progress. I’ve fallen out of the practice of writing and sharing about the build as the challenges have evolved. The human messiness of life has taken over, from rearing small kids, …
Living is a very different process to building, the activity of making and finishing the home is constantly in progress. I’ve fallen out of the practice of writing and sharing about our home as the challenges have evolved. The human messiness of living day to day life of rearing small kids, work and keeping everyone …
What a treat to experience the northern lights on this clear beautiful night, after the hottest day of the year! I couldn’t believe my eyes!! Thankfully nobody drove by to see me taking pictures of our house in the darkness at midnight! 😆🙈. Get outside and check it out if you’re still up! Apparently the …
As we stay indoors to watch #StormKathleen pass through, I can take a moment to share some finished parts of our home. It’s so true what people say that once you move into a new home, progress becomes significantly slower and you also just want to hibernate. Now that spring is here and the clocks have …
As we approach the end of Winter according to the Gaelic calendar of Imbolc or Brigid’s day, the days are definitely getting longer, but still not warm enough to shed the thermal layers and down jacket yet. I’m itching to get back out to work on the garden, but it still feels a bit daunting, …
I wanted our bathroom to be a retreat, a little sanctuary in a busy family home. This small room delivers volumes of light, nature and calm. It’s private, yet connected to the elements, a perfect lookout to the stars and moon from the ‘sky’ window. The high ceilings also help the bathroom feel more spacious …
Although I have a million things to do, I had to stop this morning and take moment in our calm kitchen. I’ve been running and racing to get to site for the past 2 years, I can now exhale and appreciate all the hard graft. I love our kitchen, it’s the hardest working space and …
We are inching towards the finish line, some days gallop forward, then quiet down waiting for a trade to come back to site. The painting is never ending, it’s said it’s all in the prep, it really is. Once the skirting is fixed down, there is so much work to get the final finish from …
After nearly 2 years on site, we finally get to sleep and live in our new home. The first morning waking up was like the first morning with a new born, just love at first sight and a sense of disbelief that it and we have arrived. We’ve gradually getting to know our home, it’s …
Another minefield on the building journey is picking tiles, when is the right time to look? what size, colour, finish, should each bathroom be different? how will it work with the sanitary ware? what do you pick first? There is no exact science to designing a bathroom, sometimes I wish there was to remove the …
I finally picked up a tool after a year and half on site, even if it’s just a paintbrush. Dad was back in action on site to install the skirting board and I’ve took up the role of painting and filling them. We chose a simple flat skirting of red deal wood 70mm high, we …