Rambler: January 2014

About three weeks ago, we moved house.

The new house is a farmhouse in Breamore, half way between Salisbury and Ringwood.

There is a long story behind the move, which I will now tell.

About 5 years, our family was attempting to sell the house. It was owned by my grandmother, who had moved out. The plan was to sell it, and divide the profits between the various family members, however it seemed very tricky, due to the price we were looking to sell for and the downturn in the housing market. After about two years of attempted sale and price dropping, my parents decided to take it on themselves. They payed each family member that would have received money from the sale and began to plan what they would do. With the house came a lot of land, which previously wasn't being used by the owners, and was let out to a friend of the family, who raises cattle. We don't have any plans for the land either, and continue to let it out to that friend of the family, and to another that has hunts occasionally.

Here is a picture from a hill that roughly shows the house and the surrounding land.

Here are some pictures of the old house:

During the first year, we drew plans up as to what we would do to the house, consulting an architect and looking into planning permission. In the end, we decided not to ask the council for planning permission (as in this area they are notoriously strict with what changes you can make. The fact that it is a listed building did not help either!) and do what we could within the boundaries there were. In hindsight, I feel we've done pretty well considering that!

So after a year or so of planning, we began work! The first task was to demolish the entirety of the insides of the house. Sounds crazy....looked it too..but it worked out!
It was rather an old house, built in the 20s (I think?) and all the rooms were quite small. It was a fairly big house divided up into many small rooms, which was totally the opposite of what we wanted. It wasn't in the best of conditions either so we decided to scrap the insides totally.

Here are a few photos of what it looked like when we had the house mostly demolished:

As you can see we then started on rebuilding the second floor by putting massive steel girders in place. From here we started to build the foundations for the extension and build the second floor.

Before I go on to describe the inside of the new house, I will show some pictures comparing the outside of the new & old house.

The house is not entirely finished yet, there is still a fair few things we have to sort out yet, but despite that, it's very homely. The main yet to be done are as follows. The library has yet to completed. Currently, we have put new windows in and the floor is concreted, but that's as far as finished goes. Throughout the build process, we used it as a wood room, where we could cut up planks. It still remains in that state, with sawdust all over the floor (not the best for keeping the house clean!). There are two guest rooms that we have yet to do, both are pretty incomplete. The downstairs one has yet to be painted, and when it comes to that, we will need to take all the boxes out of there, as we are using it as a storage room for the moment. The upstairs one needs carpet in it. These are the main issues we have to sort inside the house. However when you look outside, another issue presents itself clearly: the garden. It looks totally different to how neat and tidy the grass looked in some of the earlier photos of the house. Here's what it looks like now from my window.

That's about all the things we need to sort, other than a few minor issues like finishing my sleeping platform off in my room and a few other things like that.

The 'library'

The 'guest room'

Despite the fact that this blog is already choc a block full of photos, I feel I should add a couple of the finished insides of the house

The hall

The entrance

The lounge

The kitchen

The kitchen/lounge

Now I come to describing my finished room. I have to say, I have a fucking huge room. I've also managed to fit all my things in, guitars, amps, computer, clothes and all! It's the first time i've ever had all my things in my own room, as before most of the above were in the lounge at the previous house (except the clothes obviously). I must say, i'm liking it so far!
To top having a spacious room, containing all my gear..I have an en suite bathroom, with a toilet and bath.
I haven't mentioned my bed yet, because this will be in the floor above my room. However floor isn't finished yet so I am sleeping on the guest bed on the ground floor of my bedroom for the moment, and most likely for quite a while.
My walls are also pretty decent. I've put all my poster up on the protruding wall where the fireplace was, and it's a nice place to put up all my posters, pictures, gig tickets and other similar collections.
One of the largest changes is that I am actually keeping my room fairly tidy, which is a surprise to me. I suppose that I like the space and feel I should retain it's neatness.

Now, for the obligatory pictures of my room!