Snippets of Home - 2

You enjoyed the last tour of our Welsh home so much that I though I would continue … so lets finish off the downstairs today then.

As you can see here in the living room this is a favourite spot of the animals, even without the log burner being lit at the moment thanks to the new doggy bed that Alan has bought them.  When it is  lit the log burner can warm the whole house.  We have the living room door closed for a while to trap the heat downstairs and then an hour or so before bedtime we open it and the heat rushes upstairs … much quicker than we do!

It's so much cheaper to heat the house with logs from our woodland and off cuts from the workshop.  Alan has been busy chopping up all the odds and sods of wood he has out there that will never be used for making stuff, hence the rectangular basket full of blocks of wood.  They burn really well and warm the house for free, as most of them are from old pallets.

To the left of the fireplace are the built in cupboards.  They are original to this 1900's cottage and although I painted them green on the outside as the wood was quite poor,  inside the shelves and walls are lovely and rustic.  The top cupboard currently contains my huge DVD collection and board games for wet Winter nights and in the bottom cupboard there is the box of Christmas decorations, a couple of electric fans for hot summer nights … and not much else since all our simplifying.  

Well apart from the internal workings for the Freesat box, a complicated wiring system as our satellite dish is on a tree in the woodland right at the top of the hill.  It's never easy living on a Welsh hillside!!

At the other end of the room is my little old table.  Functional and useful for holding the lamp, and with the leaves up big enough for four people to comfortably eat around.  It was only £50 from a little antique type place a couple of years ago and I've been tempted to paint it a few times, but it so closely matches the little chair which was one of my Nana's wedding presents back in the 1920's that it has stayed in it's original polished wood up to now.

 Here's the view from the front window, looking out on the A470, the railway line one field away and the river Conwy another field further on … with the Carneddau mountains as a backdrop.  A very picturesque outlook and one that we have spent far too long gazing at over the last six and a half years when we should have been doing something else.

But ...

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

William Henry Davies.

The view from the side window - not quiet as appealing but here we look out onto the garage space and workshop with the net and polytunnels just in front of our fields, with the hills again in the background as the valley winds round following the course of the river.

 Another Mavis? … no she's just moved position in the time it took me to take these photos.

The door to the right of the fireplace leads to the bathroom, this would have been a huge no-no for us buying the house if it hadn't been for the upstairs toilet.  Which on moving in we found hadn't bloody well worked for years and which took us two years to eventually get sorted out!

Oh well it's all good now.

The bathroom.

It's still a bit of a work in progress as we had to have the chipped much larger bath taken out and the new one is leaking so Alan hasn't been able to get the side panel on, although he has finished the tiling.  

You can ignore the smudge on the shower screen ... it's not … it's actually on my camera lens 🤣

The view from the loo!!

That BATH sign was here when we bought the house and we just painted it green, it's just one of those things you never get round to replacing even though it annoys you a bit.  The chair is another one of my Nana's, this time a kitchen chair rather than the bedroom chair that we have in the living room.  So because it had had more wear and tear I painted it green ... it's been a couple of different shades of green actually.

The bathroom window does not have a view, apart from being that obscure, opaque glass they use in bathroom windows, this window is literally two foot away from the rocks that form the bottom of the hill we sit on.  All that's behind the house is a small drainage channel to direct the water that runs down the hill from coming into the house.

Going back out into the living room if we cross over to the door we can see the built in bookcase, not original to the house but put in by a  previous owner.

And through the living room door to the teeniest little hallway ever.  Just a three foot square of carpet big enough to open the front door or walk over to get to the stairs.  The understairs cupboard, which holds a lot less clutter than it used to, still has it's original door.

We had all the doors dipped when we bought the house as they had been clogged up with many, many layers of paint.  I do love the natural beauty of wood, even if it is simple old pine and we have never been tempted to paint them again.

So that's it, the downstairs tour complete.  It's been good for me doing this as now I can see what I will have to tidy, change or titivate ready for the estate agents photos in a couple of months.

You want to see upstairs?

Sue xx