Our Lives Ruled by Carpets

Firstly, an apology - it's been awfully quiet on AnAcreInHampshire for the last few weeks. This is in complete contrast to what life has been like here - we have been crazy busy!

Our efforts have been almost exclusively spent achieving one goal - CARPETS. We have been living in fairly basic style for the last year-and-a-bit, with the vast majority of our furniture, books and precious things packed away in our sitting room. Upstairs we had a bed, a set of drawers and LOADS OF TOOLS - I even had the luxury of an indoor workshop for most of the last year. Having finished the majority of the indoor building work, the time had come to move the tools out and the furniture in.

Knowing that we both work well to a deadline, we bought some carpet online and booked a carpet fitter, leaving about three weeks to transform three bedrooms and a landing from near-chaos to completely empty, decorated and ready to carpet.

There was a LOT of work to do - the small bedroom and the landing needed lining in 6mm plywood owing to uneven floorboards, I needed to fit extra sockets into the ring main and there was a set of central heating pipes which had to be moved - when the carpets were down, there would be no access under the floor in the whole upstairs of the house. Add to that the need to redecorate one and a half bedrooms, fit a load of skirting, repair a leaky radiator and touch up everything else - we had our work cut out!

I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Here is Kristy hard at the decorating - that odd little alcove was created when I built the wall that is to her right for the bathroom - one day, we'll have a built-in wardrobe in this space. Kristy was amazing during the re-decoration phase, pulling a 14 hour day to get the rooms ready...

My contribution was more building-related - here is some of the ply lining going down in the small bedroom. I wanted to be VERY sure we had a good base under the carpet - the 8 x 4 sheets had about 80 screws per sheet holding them down.

This was almost our last view of the old floorboards. We had to completely empty all the rooms before Paul the Carpet Fitter came, so everything had to be carried downstairs the night before.

Here is Paul adding the final touch to our landing... He has done a lovely job, and even though he wasn't cheap we were very pleased with the quality of his work. He even installed oak thresholds between the rooms, and along the edge on the stairs - much better than brass, and more fitting for the house.

...And a final After Shot - a wide angle pic taken from our bedroom, looking over the landing and into the bathroom and bedrooms.

Now the fun bit can start - actually moving in! We are having all sorts of fun, unpacking things we last saw in May and June 2013. Paul is booked in to return at the end of the month to carpet the sitting room - between now and then, we have to completely empty THAT room - and decorate it!