Bloody heck, how has ANOTHER year gone by?! Someone hit the pause button pleaaaase! Every year I write these ‘what we’ve achieved’ blog posts, but I have to say, I feel like this year has been a pure disaster when it comes to the number of renovations we’ve achieved in 2019. It’s been pretty minimal, to say the least.
I guess the main reason is due to the fact that we’ve been renovating at another house, rather than our own. But, I’ll get to that in a bit. Then, of course, there’s money. Or, the lack of it, should I say. This year really has been harsh financially and so, we just haven’t had the resources to keep going.
If you want to read our renovation round-ups for previous years, you can find them below, right here:
What we achieved in 2018
What we achieved in 2017
What we achieved in 2016
What we achieved in 2015
So anyway – what HAVE we achieved this year?
A Full Kitchen Renovation!
Yep, another kitchen renovation! This time, at Grants parents house. It was a bloody slog and took around 6 months, starting before Christmas 2018 and finishing in June 2019.
We had some delays with deliveries (I thought the lead time on the kitchen was much shorter than it actually was – oops!), and we also went travelling in that time, so it wasn’t quite six months non-stop, but six months nonetheless.
We did absolutely everything from DIY plastering, to tiling the floor and of course, installing the kitchen. I’m really pleased with the end result, but I definitely won’t be doing any more DIY at Grants parents for a looooong time, I can tell you that! Just moving the tools back and forth between our house and their house was a logistical nightmare all on its own.
Glad this one’s over, that’s for sure! See the full reveal here.
New Sash Windows!
The other big DIY renovation project this year was our new DIY sash windows! At just over £1000, this ate pretty much our entire renovation fund for 2019. We installed the first window in May and the following two in August and September. We like to drag things out, don’t we?!
They look SO much better than the old windows, they’re in-keeping with the period age of our house, there are no more draughts and I’m super proud we managed to do this ourselves. Yes, it wasn’t cheap. But you know what? I think it was worth it. You can see the full reveal here!
Garden Fencing and Pergola
Continuing from last years garden DIYs, we installed some more pallet wood fencing and even a little DIY pergola over the gate. It wasn’t a huge project, but it’s definitely made the garden looked vastly more tidy and coherent in style!
DIY: House Shelving Unit
I think this is one of the very few DIY projects I managed to get stuck into this year. A little DIY house-shaped shelving unit for the conservatory, which was built as a sponsored project with Bosch. I love its quirkiness and it also provides a great additional space for more plants! You can see the full tutorial here if you want to recreate your own!
So that’s it for 2019! This really was a darn short blog post, wasn’t it?! I’m hoping for a much better 2020 now we’ve paid off our windows, we should be able to get back into action very soon! I’ll be sharing all our plans for 2020 in a blog post on Wednesday, so stay tuned for that!
2 Comments
I think you should be immensely proud of what you’ve achieved in 2019. Okay, so it may not have been all in your own house, but the kitchen renovation at Grant’s parents house was a-mazing! I’ve attempted tiling and put a few kitchen carcasses together before but I would never have the guts to do an entire reno of a dated kitchen without professional help. The finished result was top notch and looked so professionally done. As much as it wasn’t yours at the end, think of it as a good learning curve for future projects.
With regards to your own projects, the other one I was super impressed with was installing your own windows. I would not have the skills to do that either, so hats off to you both!
I know money is tight for lots of us, but I love how you make use of inexpensive objects (ie pallets) and turn them into something very cool. Your fencing looks lovely and very contemporary. Plus Grants knack for finding absolute BARGAINS on ebay continues to impress me! There are so many influencers out there that are gifted so many things that their feeds just feel like one continuous advert, but I do love how yours is authentic and honest, one thing I really enjoy about it. I hope next year brings you lots of nice projects. Keep up the amazing work and Happy New year! x
Oh thank you so much, this was a really lovely message to read!
I know exactly what you mean about the continuous AD/Gifted content – it’s something I’m fairly conscious about and try to only work with brands I already know/love or can support the content I make – although I certainly haven’t always got it right. It’s all a learning curve, much like you said with the DIY!
And I definitely hope last years projects help us to be better with DIY for this year!
Happy New Year to you too – I hope 2020 is a great one for both of us! Thank you for always being so supportive. I really do appreciate it!