🎶✨Welcome to the jungle! We got tools and plans! 🎶✨ it’s been awhile we know, but we thought a perfect comeback would be with us getting our new home! Opal and Smoke was always intended as a way for us to collaborate together and share our big adventures. So what better adventure and creative collaboration than working on our new home together?!Â
We hope to be able to keep this updated as we progress through the work we’d like to do on our new home: really as a way for us to be able to look back on the journey, and for you to know what we’re beetling through for the foreseeable!
Week One:
It was still early days and there’s a lot of work to be done, so we began with the “Don’t want it? Doesn’t work? It’s gone!” stage.
It means the place really does look a bit like a building site but it’s been great to strip it back and let the place reveal any surprises. Some good (like this pear tree?!) and some confusing (what is this pipe?! It’s attached to nothing!)
We’ve also found some hidden messages on the walls under the textured wallpaper which was a fun discovery, I’m still yet to decipher this limerick, so any help appreciated.
We had a brief interlude in house stuff at the weekend for a long overdue reunion with some family down south, the sunshine felt like a proper holiday and it was so lovely to see everyone! ❤️
James also had to travel a little for work so with some help from our wonderful friend Monica, I was still able to get enough done to impress James on his return!
Week Two:
A little over 2 weeks with the keys to our new home and we continued the Almighty Strip-Out!
With many runs to the tip with all the forsaken chipboard we could remove too! It’s currently (hopefully) close to looking the least like a house and the most like a building site that it’ll be. So we should be beginning the fun of putting things back into the house soon! 🤞
It seems a previous owner has done a lot of work under the floors which is great! We cannot speak to their joist ethics though so a lot of the week has been moving around joists to vaguely line up with each other.
Some of this weeks learnings have included fun new names: apparently those bits of wood that go between joists for strength are called either Noggings or Dwangs depending on if you grew up north or south of The Wall! Hatti has been getting well acquainted with both this week. It’s work no one will see, but we’ll know it’s there so enjoy the views while they last haha!
We’ve had some lovely visitors to the house this week too, work gloves and wine included 🍷
We also ended the week with an absolutely wonderful day at our dear friends wedding, so we downed the tools and scrubbed up for the occasion! We so enjoyed getting to celebrate with lovely people on their special day and are so excited for the happy couple ❤️
Back onto the tools this weekend though so let’s see what next week will bring! 🛠🤞
If you enjoy posts like these, let us know! We’d like to create something for our own memories and records but it makes us happy to know others are enjoying the progress updates too!
Hatti x
