Let’s start at the very beginning, back in April 2014 we moved into our new house.
We were excited especially as my hubby Mark was moving back to his roots and would be close to his family. It would be the first time living near them since buying our first home when we were spring chickens of 19 and 20 years old.
Our first home was a two bed Victorian house but wasn’t the prettiest. All the downstairs original fireplaces had been removed along with all original features 😫. It was far from what we had envisioned. It was a project or should I call it a Restoration project, it needed buckets full of love.

I’m the first to admit, I cried my little heart out the day we got the keys. 🔑
Not long into the restoration we discovered I was pregnant, meaning we had to up our game to be finished in time to bring our baby home. I was already 3-4 months pregnant when we found out so time was against us.
Thankfully we finished in time but unfortunately I was admitted to hospital with pre-eclampsia on Boxing Day and didn’t come out again until a week after Connor was born two weeks early in mid January.
Mark had already moved in to our house as we had planned to move in on the 27th December.
It was the strangest feeling bringing our miracle baby home to a house I had never slept in, let alone called home.
Over the next few years, those walls saw lots of memories being made, three years of Fertility treatment resulting in the birth of our second miracle baby Calum.
As our lives changed so did the decor, a good few times I might add.
Considering the tears that were shed, the day our keys were handed over, that house became our home. A home I loved wholeheartedly.
It was everything we wanted apart from the bedroom space.
We did our best to turn it into a three bed but the tiny third bedroom would soon be outgrown and the option of our two boys sharing really wasn’t going to work as they are two totally different characters.
Con hardly slept, were Cal could sleep for England.
There was also their age gap to consider. It just wouldn’t work so on the market it went.
It sold within days, to newly weds and we found another project a few streets away.

This time we brought an Art Deco house. Mark fell in love even before we had entered the door. I wasn’t as keen as I had fallen head over heels in love with a Victorian house, we had put an offer in and were put into a bidding war which ended up being over the asking price so we kept looking until the front door of the Artdeco home opened.
Mark fell hook, line and sinker,  there was no going back even when we received a phone call to say the Victorian house was ours if we wanted it.
How could I agree to it when Marks heart lay in the bricks of the art-deco home.
We offered that day and never looked back.
This home was everything Mark wanted and within weeks of renovation I was hooked especially after the garden was finished.

We were extremely happy there, but life through us a curveball and we sold up and moved in with my Mum, kids in tow. One rental home later,

it was time to pack our lives up into boxes and move again. Our rental was just about to have a huge reno and extension all of its own.

The house was truly awful, disgustingly dirty with a mud pit for the garden.

On our first viewing Mark nearly walked out but we were far from a position that we could be picky, we had to go with what we were given.
I knew that in time and with a lot of hard graft, it could become a home that we could proud of, just like our first two homes.

In truth doing up the house would be the easy part (as money allows), the garden however was a mud pit, with no fences at the back or one side of the property. The only fence needed more than a coat of paint as you can see.

Our first job would be to make it safe for our Puppy.
Luckily we had moved in, in early spring, a extra warm spring and we managed to start the first phase of the garden make over.

Putting up fences was first. We put up new wire fencing at the back of the garden and put in new fence panels on our fence side.

We then started to clear and level the garden. Levelling the area was never going to be easy as we are on a slight hill which most of the drop seems to happen on our plot.

The work continued over most weekend with laying bases for sheds and putting them up.

Laying down turf, building a railway sleeper boarder and raised flower bed, making steps out of more reclaimed railway sleepers came next.

Building/erecting a summer house which was meant to become my craft room,(Watch this space to hear what our plans are for this space) was the last part, of phase 1.

It’s all came together nicely and started to resemble a garden, thanks to the hard work of Mark, his Dad and Mum and our nephew Luke, we couldn’t have done it without them.

With phase one complete and summer rolling to an end, we downed tools ⚒️ mainly because gardens don’t come cheap.
Our savings had been well spent and it was time to press pause until we could save up and move on to phase two.
The garden was already such an improvement, more importantly, it was safe for the pup.
All the hard work had been worth it and our mud pit was becoming a garden.
We could now spend sometime working out our next move, pricing up and coming up with a game plan.
To me the planning and coming up with ideas, is half the fun of it.
I’m sure my ideas changed as often as the seasons but that’s how we get the perfect images in our mind and hopefully results, even when you have the smallest of budgets.
Pop back soon to see what we got up to in phase two and three. Phase three has to be my favourite I love it.
Too-da-loo.

🏡🏡🏡