I’ve just had a quick look back at my first garden renovation post and it’s a reminder of why I started the blog in the first place. It’s so helpful to look back and see how far we’ve come, especially when the going gets tough and the tough very definitely get going. August has been a typical UK affair – moody, unpredictable and not easy to work in. Combine that with tonsillitis and I kept thinking I was getting nowhere fast. So going back over that first post written about two weeks ago has inspired me to keep ploughing forward no matter what.
The Fence
We now have a fully fenced garden, all the way around. It was a mammoth effort with the help of our lovely neighbours to completely clear all the vegetation from the left-hand side ahead of Alan Fenceman and his team coming to install about another 30ft of fencing one very rainy Monday. I won’t lie, it feels so strange to have this new view but it also feels great to know we’re more secure, have more privacy and have definitely added value to the house. Not only that but it’s now all the lovely grey/blue “Urban Slate” colour by Cuprinol.
The Outbuilding
My last post finished with us having pulled all the ivy off the walls and now we’ve nearly finished sanding too. It’s a thankless task, the angle grinder is heavy, noisy as hell and obviously the dust is next level. When I come to paint it though it will make it all worthwhile and hopefully give a much better end result. I keep trying to imagine different paint colours and a hanging garden…I hope I can pull this off!
The Wall
The BIGGEST transformation of this phase so far though has to be our retaining wall around the patio. Since I painted the first part of the fence dark grey a few weeks ago, both the wall and the patio have really stood out and not in a good way. The yellow stone which would look totally at home in the Cotswolds looks really dated and just wrong. So with the help of trusty Frenchic paint which was kindly supplied to me by the team for this project, I set about painting the whole thing and my goodness, it looks so fresh and modern. The colour is called ‘Dazzle Me’ and is a very fresh white colour that I love.
I absolutely love working with this paint, coverage is great and you need very little if any prep work. I first bought some to paint the inside of our kitchen back door and then worked with the team to transform the outside of my kitchen door too. Now the wall is looking super smart all that’s left for this area is the patio but that’s going to take some time as I want to get the rest of the messy projects done first.
The Beds
I’ve now dug a complete path out in the front of the outbuilding and created the seating area in the top right hand corner. This is the area that catches the sun first thing in the morning and I can’t wait to pop a couple of chairs up there. I’ve also pulled out all the old wooden edging that we had down the right hand side beds and created a relatively straight border all the way down which will now be edged by bricks instead.
The next week or so is going to be really exciting – a big delivery of stones and bricks have arrived to start some more of the creative elements and we’ve worked out what furniture we want at the back of the garden. I’m definitely not going to get it finished by the end of August but what good project ever ran to time?
Disclaimer: the paint for my retaining wall project was kindly gifted by Frenchic. They are a brand I have bought from before and can’t recommend highly enough.
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