Recently I’ve been thinking about bringing my house up to date. The last thing we had done was the kitchen back in 2016, and to be honest the rest of the house is looking a bit tired. We moved in in 2006, and in the initial years we were pretty good at keeping on top of the decor, being new homeowners. In recent years we’ve been slipping a lot more, particularly in the last year as our business has taken priority over everything else.
It’s a fairly modern house, being built in the 90s, and to be honest that’s exactly my taste – I’m not a fan of anything high-maintenance or anything where I can’t do what I want without feeling guilty about destroying some important part of history.
Ideally we’d have the whole place repainted from top to bottom, new PVC windows to replace the 90s wooden frames, a new bathroom, have the wooden floors polished up, new internal wooden doors in a different colour (they’re currently white, I’m thinking lightish wood), and a new conservatory. Our current one has a kind of weird, inefficient hexagonal front to it, and not only does it make our house darker, it’s really impractical for both cleaning and general use. Having bookcases or storage units up against it is a no-go, so I’d love to square it off and have some kind of brick at least partway up it.
The conservatory doors are also a weird size; shorter and narrower than standard doors, which makes getting garden furniture in and out a challenge. It’s particularly awkward because our downstairs is pretty open plan, apart from the kitchen, and so we like to open up the back doors when we have a lot of people over to create the illusion of an extra room and keep air flowing.
Mr Next Door has a set up I’m jealous of, because he has bifold doors that fold right back against his house (like these folding doors – I may have already picked out the frame and handle colours!!), so it feels like his entire house extends out into the garden, which sits on the edge of the canal. Basically for him it’s like having a sun deck extension to his house, which means unlike me, he doesn’t have to do yoga in full view of everyone to get the calming effect of the water and the wildlife outside (first world problems, right?!).
More than anything I think replacing the glass “walls” with brick and having bifold doors that open out would make a huge difference to the way the light falls. Our house has smaller than average windows, and we have the lights on pretty much all day even in summer because of the lack of light that gets in. During the summer our house gets very hot, and when it’s full of people, which is usually at least once or twice a week, people often melt even with windows open. Huge doors would be amazing for letting a breeze in or offering easy access for people to step outside for some fresh air.
What’s the number one thing you’d change about your living space? Let me know in the comments!
