To look at our garden now, you’d think we were living on top of a rubbish tip. Which, if I’m honest, we are, as the garden has become the dumping ground for all of the stones and rubble and wood and tiles etc from the ongoing kitchen renovation. It’s actually too awful to even post […]
Although the kitchen is nowhere near finished, the space is definitely beginning to resemble more of a room, as each day goes by. It doesn’t help that people who do building work, or plastering work or electrical work, seem to juggle a number of different jobs every day, out here. We rarely get a full […]
It seems like a few weeks since I wrote about the kitchen renovation – and that’s because it is. Because, unfortunately, nothing majorly monumental has been happening. Not because the builders have walked off the job, or because they are lazy. Far from it. They have kept turning up in the very wintry weather we’ve […]
We are very excited that visits out here are being planned already for 2018 by family and friends. If you’d like to come out to Istria, here’s where we are currently: 18th – 22nd April – booked 22nd – 29th May – booked 29th May – 5th June TBC 30th June – 4th July – […]
When we bought the house in Istria, one of the things which sold it to us, was the size of the main bedroom. Compared to other bedrooms we’ve had, this was massive and with a lot of potential. Over the months, we’ve done bits and pieces to try and make it comfortable, as we work […]
It’s the weekend, but that doesn’t stop our builders. Give them their due, there’s some work ethic being displayed here! We *think* that the major drilling work might be over for this phase of the house renovation, so whilst Misko & Edin got on with the cabling and first plastering of the ceiling, we were […]
It’s been a while since I’ve recorded anything about the kitchen renovation, simply because nothing massive – or Instagram worthy 😉 – seems to have happened recently. But actually, a lot has happened and we are hopeful that the dirty, grimy work is now almost over. Or, at least until Silvano returns to dismantle the […]
Who’d have thought stairs could be so problematic? To be honest, I’ve never really given stairs a lot of thought, because they’re just…there. But our stairs need a lot of thinking about, because they’re pretty unusual. We have one set going upstairs from the living room, and another going down into what will become The […]
If you’re remotely interested in the tales of our house renovation, or maybe fancy a bit of a break out in Istria, we’d love you to give us a follow over on Twitter. If you’re not that interested in the story of the house etc, but like to travel – and stay – in nice […]
Although our house is quite old – we think parts of it are over 200 years old – and is quite traditional in structural style to many of the stone houses in Istria, we are determined to stamp a contemporary feel on it. Apart from The Well Room where the floor is stone flags (therefore […]
Quick backstory if you don’t know our story. June 2016 – visited Croatia on holiday (Zadar). Loved it. July 2016 – saw a house online for sale in Istria, northern Croatia. Flew out on impulse, loved it. August 2016 – put our West Didsbury house 0n the market and made an offer on the Istria […]
In the house we’ve bought in Istria, we have two bathrooms. Sounds like a bit of a luxury, doesn’t it? But, both are very small and both are poorly laid out. The house had previously only been used in the summer, and more recently, less frequently, so not a great deal of attention had been […]