As mentioned elsewhere, this blog has recently been moved off the elderly WordPress platform to a shiny new blogging engine called Ghost. Ghost is a brilliant new way of managing your content, and one that’s simpler and faster than WordPress. Enough about the technology though. Once I’d moved the blog over, on looking through the content I was rather shocked to realise that the last house-related post had been made a whole TWO YEARS ago – looking at how to replace a radiator valve without draining-down your heating system!

Although the post was two years back, I felt a quick update was in-order. Firstly, we’ve been a little distracted away from doing stuff around the house thanks to the arrival of Baby Eleanor in July 2013.

Ok, enough of the photos – sorry; as you may be able to tell from the photos elsewhere on this site, couldn’t resist.

Alongside Ellie’s arrival, I’d also changed jobs mid 2012; moving on from Archant to head up IT at the UK’s largest Car Sharing network, Liftshare. Go head over to LinkedIn if you want to find out more about this or Connect.

In terms of the house, the pace of change has slowed down somewhat – primarily as with Sam and Ellie and a busy day-job, there’s not much in the way of time left to get anything done!
Time aside, a couple of significant changes have finally happened however – replacing the front-door which was well and truly past its prime, and removing the old garden summerhouse to make way for construction of a new raised decking area to help make the most of the sunshine.

A long-overdue new front door !

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you may remember what the house used to look like from the front. If not, here’s a quick reminder:

The door was probably the original wooden door first fitted when the house was built in the 1970’s. It’s clearly not really been maintained over the years either, resulting now some 30-years down the line, in being a very long time past its best. With a rotten door-surround, leaky panels, and cracks throughout it just had to go.

We found and hired a great local tradesman to supply and fit a new composite door & engineering-plastic door surround – removing and cleaning up all the rotten bits, and fitting a door that should last for at least another 30 years!

As the old door surround was removed, the true extent of the damage & rot was quickly revealed. It’s quite surprising that it had lasted as long as it has – but clearly it wasn’t going to go on for much longer.

With the surround & associated mess removed, the door itself was soon removed along with the bulk of its old frame.

Meanwhile, the shiny new door was being prepared for installation…

*Skipping over the day’s solid labour involved, here’s the result of a new door & custom door surround installation nearing completion. *

We’re delighted with the result, and in one step has completely transformed the front of the house!!

Many thanks to David Cooper of Norfolk based Cooper Home Improvements, who fitted the door for us in May 2013 – highly recommended!

On to the back…. click the photo below for a post all about clearing up the garden, woodwork, building stuff & decking.