You can’t start a blog without a good ol’ introduction so here’s our “Hello (renovation) world!” introduction post.
So let me tell you a bit about this blog & the renovation as a whole!!
Our Journey to Renovation
First things first, this is us: opening the door to the “Summerhouse” for the first time!!!We’re pretty ordinary people, parents to 3 awesome little people and in context of this blog newbie DIYer taking on the project of a lifetime!!!
Yes before this project we didn’t even own a screwdriver!!!
We are a Swedish (Elin), English (Tom) family who’ve hopped around a bit but now we’ve decided to put down roots (we think) in Northen Sweden where Elin is from. And now to the house & the renovation.
So while living in Gothenburg in southern Sweden a house we knew came up for sale near where Elin grew up, with house prices totally & utterly ridiculous in Gothenburg we thought we could buy the house “up north” as a summerhouse and at best keep renting an apartment in Gothenburg, best of both worlds we thought!
Yeh well when our third child (Emmott) arrived in July 2017 our 83m3 apartment in Gothenburg suddenly felt very small & we couldn’t really stop our longing for a house. So in 2018 we bought another lovely house “up north” (not far from our summerhouse) & swifty moved north. We thought that was us setup & done with houses but during the summer of 2019 when spent the whole summer at the “summerhouse” (despite no water or toilet) and quickly fell in love with being there, a decision was made to sell our current house & renovate “The Summerhouse” (as it’s always been known as & probably always will be known as!)!
At the time we had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for but we let the idea grow and before long (mid 2020) we started to pull up floorboards & brainstorm ideas. It felt exciting & exhausting at the same time but once we told the kids about the plan & they loved it, there was no turning back!!!! The renovation was happening!!!
I wanted to start this blog to share the knowledge we’ve learnt and to have record of everything we’ve done since a lot of the work is already a massive blur!
Fast forward to today over 4 years on and we’re still going strong(ish), “going tired” might be a better description, either way we’re still renovating and DIYing and now entering what we hope will be one of the final big phases of renovation as we tackle the upstairs!
Renovation Updates
March 2021 and we’re in the final weeks of “phase 1” which is “move in downstairs” by April 30th 2022, we still have no idea if we’ll do it but having sold our current home in November 2020 we kind of have no choice!!!
Jan 2022, we did it, we moved in (downstairs)! After some self imposed delays & non-self imposed delays we made it into the house just after xmas 2021!
The rest of 2022 was a slower pace but still a productive year, we painted some of the outside of the house, built a carport & shed, rebuilt most of the porch and generally settled into our new home.
2023: despite a self-imposed “rest” year a lot still happened at the house: some hand made windows, a hen house then some hens, child #1s bedroom, an office and a whole load of smaller bits and bobs.
Early 2024, finally some brain space (sort of) to start writing and planning again, we’ve now started phase 2 which is renovating upstairs, just 160m2 to go! They’ll be regular updates here detailing the projects we’ve doing, materials & tools we’re using and general eco-friendly renovation/DIY stuff too.
So to wrap this intro up, this blog is about renovation, DIY, family life, eco-friendly building (byggnadsvård in Swedish, building conservation in English, perhaps?) and probably a bit more!!! It’ll be written in English with reference to Sweden & Swedish terms too.
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Thanks for reading