I recently dug out the estate agent's details from when we bought the house back in late 2004. Looking at the photographs, I realised that, although our big restoration project has yet to begin, we have actually made considerable progress during the past 6 years. So I thought I'd document what we started with and how far we have come.
This is how the outside of the house looked in 2004:
During the past two years we have repainted the whole of the ground floor, using Farrow & Ball's House White (a pale yellowish off-white) to replace the black and white paint. We've also removed the ugly fake burglar alarm box which sat between the two windows on the first floor. The front door was repainted in blue, as suggested by my mother - thanks Mum, a good choice - and the black 1970s door furniture replaced with brass.
This is how the front of the house looks today:
The concrete render on the back and side of the house was in very poor condition. It had cracked and damp had penetrated and was dissolving the lime mortar which holds the stone walls together.
The walls were sodden with damp and plants were growing on them underneath the render. The stone was beginning to crack and spall. We removed the render from the worst places and repaired and repainted the window frames, which were flaking and rotting:
Finally we removed the gates to the driveway, which dated back to the 1970s and were on their last legs:
We replaced them with custom made gates from Country Style Supplies in Wickwar, once again painted in Farrow and Ball's House White:
All the work was done by an excellent local firm called K T Home Improvements.
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