The house is almost ours

Well, just a few hours to go, well, about half a day actually, until we pick up the keys to the new house. We've been planning like mad and found the IKEA kitchen design tool very good for showing us what we're going to have, making an order list and showing us the prices.

I am also using Google SketchUp to make a 3D model of the house and the way will have it renovated and changed in design.

Here's a pic of the porch, kitchen, utility and toilet in SketchUp as it stands so far. I think the kitchen is going to be quite a spacious and capacious room.


I'm off to Sheffield and Derby all day tomorrow so Smee will have to pick up the keys. Maybe we can go up at the weekend and do some work!

Does my bum look big in this?

Ellie has been wearing her fluffy re-useable nappies today. She looks really cute in them but they do make her bum massive! I had to put her in a vest and babygro that were the next size up, just to fit her bum into them! We can now start to use up the rest of the disposables, just saving a few for trips out. I'll feel a bit less guilty too. We've used far too many disposables for my liking, but the cloth ones were too big for her until now.

Here's a photo of her looking all cute and fluffy!

Ikea madness!

We went to Ikea yesterday to have a look at their kitchens and get an idea of cost. We planned out all the kitchen, taps, sink and all, and even added some appliances. It still came in at £2K below the next cheapest quote we'd had, and they do a 25 year guarantee too! Looks like the kitchen will be coming from Ikea then! Should be nice and straightforward to build and fix too.

Tomorrow I need to go up to the house to get some alternative quotes from plumbers and electricians. Hopefully these will be pleasantly surprising too!

Work begins on the house we don't own yet!

I got a call from John Price, the guy who owns all the property at Cantlop Grove yesterday. He's digging some footings for the barn and needed to make some access for the concrete pour. We discussed a few things but the long and the short of it is that he's 'diggered down' to the sub base where we want our drive, laid some stone and flattened it.

The top soil is ready and waiting to be spread back out to extend the front garden out to the new fence line and the drive looks pretty good. The work doesn't come free though, I have to get him a laser distance meter from work worth about £175. So, here it is, the first paid for job on the site and we haven't even exchanged contracts yet, although that will be early next week!




We went to Wickes and another kitchen shop today. Got some more ideas and another quote. We'll probably go to Wickes for a killer deal, unless we get an amazing discout for the kit from Howdens, suppliers to MFI.

We've now got two plumbers and an electrician going on Tuesday for quote purposes and one of the plumbers is confident of being much cheaper than the one quote we already have. Here's hoping.


We haven't put a picture of the house up here yet so here it is...

Back in the saddle!

I went riding again for the first time since I was 13 weeks pregnant. It was really nice to get back in the saddle again - even if it did feel like I was wetting myself when I trotted! Thankfully it was just a feeling - I didn't actually wet myself!!!

It didn't take me long to get back in the swing of things - I only had half an hour as I didn't want to overdo things but I bet I'm one enormous ache tomorrow or the next day!!!

I arranged some more quotes today too, following the enormous quotes we'd received for the heating/plumbing and electrics. Hopefully these ones will be a little more within our budget. We've also managed to negotiate with the seller that we'll pay him the £2K for the land option as and when we actually buy the 2 acres, rather than now. This means that we should hopefully be able to afford the kitchen that we wanted or at least not be as over budget as we first thought.

Now there's almost no going back

Our house was officially put on the market today. We saw it in the paper and it should be all over the internet by now. We still have time to pull out but if we do, we'll lose many thousands so that's that really. See you later Castlefields, say hello to real fields.

6 weeks old today

Hello. Today was quite a good day all told. Ellie is six weeks old and behaved pretty well despite a night full of crying and general disobedience. Smee and I went to the solicitors to sign our contracts, which we did, but came away with a few questions to dwell on regarding the contract to buy the 2 acres. I'm sure it'll all be fine but we've been told to sleep on it by the solicitor, which we will.

We got the quote in from the electrician, 400 quid over budget! Looks like we're going to have to readdress the way we do our spend when renovating the house. We think we may well have to spend what we have to on essentials like the roof, heating, windows, damp proofing, bathroom and electrician and then see what’s left. Tony Fox, our builder can then get what’s left and do the jobs in order of priority until we have spent our lot! This way we'll not overstretch ourselves and should end up with somewhere livablinable.

The pictures, as you can probably guess, are some hand and foot prints that we did to celebrate her 6th week day...

They were quite tricky to get and it was a good job she was due for her bath right afterwards!

Week 5 photos

Just a quick post of some photos of Ellie in week 5. Theres more to come from her 6th week birthday in a mo...

6 weeks old today

Hello. Today was quite a good day all told. Ellie is six weeks old and behaved pretty well despite a night full of crying and general disobedience. Smee and I went to the solicitors to sign our contracts, which we did, but came away with a few questions to dwell on regarding the contract to buy the 2 acres. I'm sure it'll all be fine but we've been told to sleep on it by the solicitor, which we will.

We got the quote in from the electrician, 400 quid over budget! Looks like we're going to have to readdress the way we do our spend when renovating the house. We think we may well have to spend what we have to on essentials like the roof, heating, windows, damp proofing, bathroom and electrician and then see whats left. Tony Fox, our builder can then get what's left and do the jobs in order of priority until we have spent our lot! This way we'll not overstretch ourselves and should end up with somewhere livablinable.

Gulp!

We had the quote from the heating engineers today - eek! It was almost £6K more than we'd budgeted for - so with the kitchen costing much more too, we are now well over our original budget. Obviously we will be getting more quotes but still...blimey!

Ellie and I went to the clinic to be weighed today (well, she did - I didn't fit on their scales!!). She's only put on 1.5oz in the last week, instead of the 6-8oz she should have put on. The health visitor wasn't too concerned - she said Ellie will probably have a big jump next week. She's eating the amount she should be, and quite often she doesn't finish her entire feeds - we can't exactly force her to drink more than she wants!

A funny day

Today started off badly - Ellie had a bit of a bad tummy and so has been screaming a lot of the day. She's still managed to eat a fair amount though, just not as much as normal. She didn't nap much today either because her tummy was hurting but it looks as though things have travelled through so she should sleep well tonight (fingers crossed!).

We all went up to the new house today to meet Foxy (the builder), Richard from Mullins heating, the electrician and Russell from Banbury Windows. They will hopefully be back to us soon to give us our final quotes. It was really gorgeous up there today, nice and sunny with a hazy sky as dusk was coming in. It was bloody freezing though! I shall be glad when we can go up there and be able to light a fire or put the heating on!!

The quarry

Grandma, Jo and Smee pushing Ellie in the quarry


Here is Ben in the quarry too.

Week 4 photo of Ellie

Jo, Colin, Ben and Grandma popped up for numerous reasons. We all went for a lovely walk in the quarry and ended up in a coffee shop, the location for the week 4 photo, cuddled up against Sam after a feed. The weather was really nice this weekend so we went over to the house at Cantlop Grove on the Sunday for a quick peek, followed by pub lunch at the Peacock in Shrewsbury. A lovely weekend, made even better by the fact that Grandma left a blackberry and apple pie with us. Thanks Mum!

The Kimbers came to visit

Grandad and Grandma came from Wiltshire to see Ellie. They stayed at Betty's for a few nights which was very handy. Here's a picture of Ellie and a very proud Grandad.

Another photo - week 3

Here is our darling in her 3rd week, taken late one night before bedtime. By this stage she was getting into some sort of routine, wanting to feed every 4 hours or so but it wasn't plain sailing as is the case with babies we have discovered! Top tip though, if they are still very windy and uncomfortable after a feed, try another feed of water on top. We've done this numerous times, all as the last resort and every time it has worked for us. Good old midwives, it was the hospital that told us this pearl of wisdom very early one morning!

Meg came to visit

Meg came down to say hello to Ellie, here they are.

Catching up with some photos - Week 2

Having created this blog 5 weeks and a bit after Ellie was born we need to catch up with some photos as it is our intention to keep quite up to date if we can. At least for the first year or so as she will be changing in appearance lots and doing things for the first time. Here she is in week 2.

Contented Little Baby

We've started trying to follow Gina Ford's Contented Little Baby routine from today. Ellie pretty much put herself into a four hourly routine quite a few weeks ago and so following this method will be quite easy for her.

She seems to be settling into it well, although obviously it's early days so far! She has had a cold and cough for the past few days and so was feeling a bit miserable but seems to have perked up a bit today. Daddy got to see her smile for the first time today! She'd given me a few at the beginning of the week but then got her cold and so didn't want to smile anymore :(

Ellie is managing to settle herself back to sleep when she wakes up mid nap/sleep which is very good news indeed - she might grizzle for a while but once we give her the dummy she is content to fall back asleep on her own. Sometimes we have to do this more than once but it's teaching her good habits for the future. She still gets lots of cuddles though!

Kitchen decisions

We went to Wickes and MFI today to look at kitchens. Strange how we both always gravitate to the most expensive kitchen in the shop! We both quite fancy solid oak cupboards and doors and a solid wood surface. We may even go for an island that can be sat at whilst eating cornflakes and looking out the window.

First post on our new blog

Hello everyone. I thought I'd create a blog to publically and easily share the news of Ellie, our new house and any other stuff that crosses our minds. Sam and I can both post news and photos and anyone viewing can comment.

For starters, here's a picture of Ellie at just a few minutes old. We can add more as we go along, lets see how it goes...

Jono