Getting the Keys . .

There’s something very strange about an entirely empty house.

How quickly a home becomes just a shell.  

Without people, without furniture and all those other treasures and items collected over the years that make it a family’s; it simply reduces to four walls.

When we first stepped into Hare House as owners, it had lain empty for six weeks.  It was cold and there were cobwebs everywhere.  Strange how quickly they’d formed.  But the views across the fields we’d fallen in love with were there.

The second day we returned with the children.  It’s very hard for them to comprehend that we will be altering the house.  That it won’t always have an orange and brown kitchen or turquoise carpets.  Having never done this before it’s hard enough for us as adults to get our heads around our plans, let alone a five and seven year old.  They can’t quite understand why we’re moving from a gorgeous, cosy two hundred year old beamed cottage into an empty house.  

But we focused on the parts that would sell it to them - the big garden that sits all around the house, the bedrooms twice the size of their current ones, “yes, ignore the sink in the corner’, ‘ no, we won’t keep this carpet, don’t worry’  And the beautiful views from the front, back and sides across the surrounding fields.  

Then there were two things I did almost immediately - get the heating on!  What a difference a bit of heat makes.  Suddenly an empty house doesn’t feel quite so miserable.  The second thing I did was to place a diffuser in every room of the house so it started to smell a bit more loved and lived in.  My two littles are really sensitive to smell so I wanted to ensure the house smelt beautiful.  It now smells so lovely when you walk in that we’ve had delivery men, stand in the hallway sniffing and exclaiming how gorgeous it smells!  That’s not a bad result!

Let’s start at the very beginning. .

We never wanted a project.

So exactly how we find ourselves with a project home is still a cause of wonder for me.

Interior renovation we can do.  Paint charts, curtain fabrics, rugs and carpets - I am all over it.  Give me Instagram, Pinterest and a Powerpoint mood board for each room and I am in HEAVEN.

But an entire house?!  Mr Rhubarb & I don’t like change or upheaval.  Our home is our sanctuary and anything out of place makes us jumpy.  Please don’t think this means our home is an organised pristine show home - with two small children and a puppy it is anything but.  We just aren’t very good in chaos.  When we had our bedroom painted at Rhubarb Cottage and had to sleep in the spare room with all our usual bedroom furniture on the landing, we struggled.  We are that pathetic when it comes to home renovation.  So why have we decided to take on a house that has been much loved for forty years but is a bit tired??

Two reasons really.  

1/ We wanted to stay in our village.  It’s a really gorgeous place to live and we feel so very lucky to have found it. There’s a running joke in the village that once you’re in you can never leave. People upsize and downsize but always stay in the village. When this house came up it meant we could have a bit more space but remain in this village we call home and we absolutely leapt at the chance.

2/  On our viewing as we wandered through the garden, we came across a huge old tree.  A massive branch hung over the lawn and underneath it there was a groove where years of a tree swing moving back and forth had made its mark.  It’s funny the things that speak to us when we look at houses, but for some reason, that groove in the grass really spoke to me.  I could hear our children’s laughter and joy and knew we could make this our home.