Well 2010 comes to a close and now 2011 is upon us we are faced with a new set of challenges. 2011 for us was going to be a holding year, with planning permission granted and a new baby on the way we’d decided to stop the renovation, save the money to get more done in one go and enjoy

With the groundwork already done by Dawn & her Dad (Eric) (in this post : HERE) it was now time to get the tiles removed, the roof opened up and wooden beams taken down so we can really start to see the potential in the space we then have and that was a job for me and my Dad! Here

Today was always going to be a quieter day on the big achievement front as being the weekend we had the football to listen to and the F1 qualifying to watch but we did make a MASSIVE leap forward on the heating of the house and this is by far the biggest step forward to the living conditions in the

With Christmas coming it’s time to spend a few days getting the house ready for the winter and the work we have planned for the coming months. Today was about setting the week up so it’s the start of all the dirty jobs (oh joy)

Dawn had the opportunity to take a week off with her family and spend it at the house. Given the house in an ongoing “work in progress” everyone was always going to be put to work.  Somehow they all managed to strike a balance of working on the house, garden, cowshed etc etc and exploring the area. This was just

Planning the layout of the house has been the hardest thing we’ve had to decide on.  Do we go for high style on the inside which ultimately affects the look of the outside or do we stick with what we have and compromise on size, light and what we see as quality of living space? This was a hard exercise

Well FINALLY we have got somewhere. If you remember our first set of blog posts from Feb 13th about the storm damage (here, here & gallery here) from this point it’s been like pushing water up a hill to get the whole insurance process sorted. And there are some lessons we’d like to share with you

With the builders coming round to quote for the repairs to the outside of the house it’s time to start removing one of the old building so they can get access to the wall, we could of course leave them to do this but it’ll be two days work at €250 per day so I thought I’d do it. Now

It’s hard to really explain how challenging cooking on a very old natural gas cooker can be for 3 adults.  Not having any space to move pans around normally means everything is cooked in one pan and you’re never really feeling the cooking love especially as the “cooker” is on wheels and the only storage you have are plastic bags

This week my father and I are over in the house for seven days, this will actually be the longest time we have spent here in one swoop and it’s borne out of the frustration that my wife and I have that we just can’t tinker with stuff on the odd weekend. A quick recap : While we are finalising