Flutterbymama

Lucas’s 4th birthday!!! (Yup a tad late)

But better late than never I always say. And believe me I’m nearly always late…even the boy was late!

The boy was born shortly before 6 in the morning on Sat 9th June 2007. It was a fairly straight forward birth. Into labour about 11pm Friday night and, although the midwife said it would be at least another 12 hours before I needed to come in, I was in hospital by 4am. Have some rest and try and sleep she said… yeah right! I had no idea that he was coming so fast but boy am I glad he did. Within a couple of hours I had him in my arms and we were overjoyed. Most of it was a gas and air blur and I saw baked beans on the ceiling and traffic lights changing from red to green but it was an amazing experience. It’s true what they say about the pain fading from memory to some degree. The midwife who delivered my bundle said I could probably be home by lunch! Fab I thought. Then it started…

I made a decision, mainly because I brick it if you come anywhere near me with a ruddy needle, to not have an epidural or the needle in the thigh to speed up the placenta removal. I had a brilliant water birth in a small local midwife run unit and I would do it all over again. The problems came whilst waiting for the placenta to come away. It never happened. So in the needle went to help it on it’s way. Still nothing. It was like trying to give birth all over again but this time it was painful. Sorry for those who are squeamish, they pulled on the cord, I pushed, nothing! After a couple of hours they called the larger local hospital as I had to be transferred so they could do a removal procedure in theatre. All pretty intense and I’m so glad my mum was there. She turned up from work just after Lucas was born. Thanks mum I can’t thank you enough for what you did that day. So long story short… they tried again to pull it out and then I heard a pop, yay it’s out no need for surgery. No it turns out they snapped the ruddy cord off the placenta. So spinal block and manual removal it is… woohoo. I’ve never been so effing scared in my life. Procedure went well but felt pretty shit as had no sleep since the previous morning, hadn’t fed Lucas and my poor hub thought he was going to lose me. It all sounds pretty dramatic but remember I was on gas and air throughout most of this so I was non the bloody wiser half the time. Very surreal experience. Not something I want to re-live but there is a high chance of it happening again if we decided to have another child. The moral of this story is that we are all safe and sound and happy and that that was just a small blip in our lives which we’ve had to come to terms with.

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Old shed, New room

I thought it was about time I got to posting some piccies of the work we had done last year. Yeah I know it’s been months since I promised anything, but to be honest my heart wasn’t in the taking of the pics at the time. There was just too much stress and anxiety surrounding the last leg of the build.

I love what we have and I’m not complaining, but, as I’m sure with anyone else who’s hired contractors to do the work, there are still little niggles that bug the hell out of me! Luckily most people don’t notice the annoying little things and are just amazed at the transformation. SO, without further ado, let me introduce to you our newest room in the house…

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Bird Feeders

Back in January when we had pretty bad winds here we had some minor incidents/breakages. The biggest was the trampoline leaning on it’s side against the hedge between us and next door. It snapped one of the poles but we recently had it re-welded and it’s all back together. The other thing that I was sad to lose was our bird feeder. It took us some time to choose this one in the first place and now it is smashed all over our rear patio under the apple tree, ok it has since been swept up and safely placed in the bin but it sounded a little more dramatic! We had, rest it’s soul, the eva solo glass bird feeder and it was beautiful. Granted it never stayed clean as lots of birds visited it but I loved it.

eva solo bird feeder

What to do now? Do we go for the same or look at the other options? Because the eva solo was on a drop hanger it was free to swing in the wind and that is what ended it’s young life.

These are some alternatives that I’ve found recently

Spherical bird house or Birdball bird house & birdball peanut feader designed by Gavin Christman and Kate Knapp

egg seed feeder

I love the simple shape of these but not sure how stable the hanging ones would be? I envisage the same fate happening to these as happened to our eva solo?

cup feeders

Sweet idea for flower pots or beds but not when there are cats about! Not ideal if it rains either.

Magis

Like the fact you can either hang or stick in the ground but a little vibrant in colour for me and looks a little fragile?

Blomus

Especially love the one on the right as the food is contained in a ball so the birds aren’t stood in the food.

left is again by blomus and the right is an apple bird feeder.

I have a problem with any feeder that has a pole and is close to the ground as I worry about ours and the neighbours cats. I do like the apple one though and I prefer it in white. Good idea but as it’s to be hung on our apple tree I’m assuming they would just help themselves anyway.

born in sweden & ChapelWood Contemporary Flight Style

The one to the top, born in sweden, is to enable you to stick it on a window. Some reviews have said it has dropped off and smashed within 5 minutes. Some have said it has lasted a month or more with no problems. I wonder if you have to regularly clean and re-stick like I do with my shower caddy? That could potentially be no good as I will probably forget. I need something idiot proof.

birdhouse by Marcel Wanders, Droog & scanwood

Love the Droog one but not sure about longevity in our country. Wind will probably get at it and smash the plate to smithereens. The scanwood is a much nicer version of those green mesh ones that I hate soooo much.

Phoenix large & small

I’m definitely feeling more drawn to these. I especially like the black one in large with the little perch. The grey one is also great. It may be good for sticking fat balls on and apples.

perch

So there you have it, my, kind of, in depth research into bird feeders. I haven’t yet made my mind up as to which one I want but at least I’ve satisfied my curiosity that there are some lovely designs out there. Which one would choose if money was no object?

Are you ready?!

So the previous post has got your juices flowing and now you want more!? Hell yeah…funnily enough so did we. I’ll explain as we go along.

We have spent so much time working on the details and finishes of this job it has meant spending a few extra pennies getting it just the way we want it. We’ve had to think about everything that would go in a kitchen like hoods, hobs and hooks, in and out lighting, paint colours and flooring. It’s been a hard shopping task but someone had to do it…lucky us!

We already had the David Trubridge pendant, which has been residing in our freshly painted bedroom for a few months

davidtrubridge.com/coral

but we had to choose lights for over the dining table and my wonderful hub found these Tom Dixon beauties.

Tom Dixon - Beat Shade Wide

We’ve also been searching for some time the perfect shelving, tv storage combo and found this Nisse Strinning combo on ebay. The wood is beautiful and we can’t wait to get it hung. It came from Germany and it was very reasonable considering one similar set went for over £800! Think we were lucky!

Ebaby...yeah!

The biggest difficulty was deciding what kind of extractor hood to go with. This was actually a really difficult decision. The hob and oven will span the opening so a wall fitting wouldn’t work, and to be honest I’m not a big fan of the wall hung type modern or not. Then we found one at Ikea that was just a long box but it was just too long. Arghhh this is just never going to happen…what about those Ikea ones that look like a lamp shade? Yeah but not sure of the design. Then I found those down draft exctractors which are just A-mazing! Fittings and space would be an issue…bugger am I ever going to find it? Hell yes, only would have to wait till next year as it’s not available over in the UK till 2011. Well if you search hard enough and the hub did just that and found the black version on ebay from Italy! SOLD! And it’s arrived in one piece and within the time they said it would…good old ebay…AGAIN.

You only get one for the money, two if you're loaded.

The kitchen base units are from a local company who buy German engineered kitchens and the lady herself is great and helped us no end to get exactly what we wanted. Her prices were reasonable and she managed to supply the appliances for less that I’d found on the internet. One of the main pieces of kit we wanted was a Quooker, a boiling hot water tap. It’s a beaut.

quooker.com/modern

Ok so that’s a little taster of what we’ve been longing for…

This is where we are now up to.. .in the garden. As you’ll remember from the sketchup drawing we had a ‘wrap around’ of decking from back to side. Thanks to the incompetent guy from the window company we had builders on site and raring to go but nowt they could really be doing, so…

…this is the plan I came up with for the garden design. We were planning on completing it all next year but decided to do it now so we didn’t have to suffer again with all the dirt and upheaval. Oh so glad we did it.

So we wanted more and got this…

Personally, we absolutely love it. I know it’s not quite finished. Bit of rendering, painting and sorting the wood for the brick seat, staining/painting the decking and wall, furniture, lights and plants and a swish new BBQ will make it everything we want it to be. We have a fridge and freezer in the new shed that used to be in the old outhouse building and we are thinking of getting a secure shed made for them so we can use them in the garden as a beer fridge and BBQ freezer?! Mad idea… we’ll see. Not bad for a novice eh? Ok I have to admit I took a lot of inspiration from a Southern based garden design company but did it on a much stricter budget with less fancy materials but I think it aint half bad.

UPDATE to kitchen knock through

Well it has been some time since I’ve been able to sit down and finally post some progress pictures but here they are…at last!

It’s a project that should have taken 6-8 weeks but due to a particularly rubbish supplier it is over running by about 3-4 weeks. The builders have been brilliant and are just filling their time with other ‘stuff’ we’ve asked them to do. Unfortunately there is only so much you can do without any windows or doors! F$%*ing window company!!!!! Arghhhhh. Don’t you just hate not having the control. The windows are to be made in aluminium and we were told 3 weeks…3 weeks came and went over 4 weeks ago now we are being told another 2 weeks. How can it take over 2 months?! Anyways I’m trying to stay calm but it’s difficult now that the summer has gone and we are p?*%ing money out the big hole in the back of the house through form of a heating bill. To top it off we don’t have a kitchen. We have base cabinets and an oven but no work surface, hob or sink and we are still waiting for some components from Ikea. Oh Joy! It’s just as well we can see how great it’s all going to be…

Take a look for yourself…

wall adjoining existing kitchen, lintel in!

original york stone flags lifted and new sub floor. Start of new inner skin wall.

Doors bricked up to window height.

Exterior wall. Prep for cutting of opening for bi-fold doors.

The opening for the bi-fold doors. Wow it's really taking shape!

Just a tad excited!!!!

Removing the existing kitchen units so my auntie could have them. Recycling is great.

The tasty wallpaper behing the original wall cabinets. MMMMMM

Removal of chimney breast in kitchen. This is not needed and gives more space.

The weird thing is, and it's not clear in this photo, but the hole goes through to next door!?

FINALLY! We have holes in our walls! Woohoo!!!

The space beyond the kitchen... formally known as the shed!

Old back door bricked up and frame for utility space going up.

The outside view of the old back door. We wanted to keep the arch and step so the history is still captured.

A new wall to be rendered and painted pink. It will have decking and seating and lights to make it cosy and funky.

So there you have it. The story so far…well actually no it isn’t. Because I’ve been busy chasing suppliers and project managing and looking after our boy and trying to prepare food in a microwave and camping stove for the last few weeks I just haven’t had time to update as much as I would’ve liked.

This is just the beginning but we are much further on. Check out the next post or two to come very soon and you will be amazed at the transformation of the space…

Kitchen layout programmes

So I’ve been trying to design the layout of our new kitchen/dining space which integrates with the garden room. After years of Ikea not being Mac friendly I finally discovered that they have done something about it. So without hesitation I got stuck in…yay this is great, I thought…not so bloody fast. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great for figuring out whether their kitchens will work in your space and even better it tots up the final cost of everything for you, so no nasty surprises when you order it but damn it’s fiddly. I just can’t seem to move anything anymore…arghhh and I thought sketchup was a pig! (I’ve actually got the hang of sketchup and by god it’s my preferred tool of choice. As it goes though I’m now confident that an Ikea kitchen WILL work in our house, the question now is…do I/we want an Ikea kitchen? I know of only one person who has one and says it’s ok but after 10/20 years will they still say the same? Anyone have any advice? On the other side I really don’t want to spend £15,000 + on a kitchen as we only want a simple looking one and nothing too now that screams I’m a shiny, bright, NEW, expensive kitchen. I want clean and new but character and lived in. In effect the units are secondary to everything else, if that makes any sense. These are my inspiration pics which show the feel I want.

This a screen grab of the Ikea self kitchen planner. I gave up in the end as I just couldn’t move anything…I may try again later.

These are my sketchup files…

Garden room, made from outhouses. Kitchen behind.

Kitchen area with existing table and addition of utility room.

The kitchen and dining table will still be in the old space just with new everything and we’ll have additional space beyond so we can actually see the garden from the end of the house. The house has a lovely long garden but it was just lacking in the view from the house. This is the reason we’ve gone to all this trouble and these were the conditions of buying the house. The garden will be transformed at a later stage but at least we can finally use the garden as intended. I have visions of watching Lucas play outside and I can be cooking and watching him. At the moment I have to be outside when he’s outside and it just means I can’t get on with ‘stuff’. It’ll be good for rainy days too as I can be with him inside whilst he plays but again I can be getting on with stuff and he won’t be in harms way when the oven is on and I’m cooking and washing. It really is going to transform the way we live in this house. I’m just so excited and can’t wait to start using it. Just another 4 weeks or so to go…