How can you live like that?

Day 52 of the build and a fellow crafter on the Etsy forums asked, after seeing my flickr pictures, 'how can you live like that' To which I answered 'with lots of tea and equal amounts of wine' But I got thinking, the outside of our house looks pretty scary. Inside we are pretty much in a large static caravan with 2 rooms down stairs and 2 upstairs. Some peoples houses are this size anyway but we have several things that we live with that would never be considered normal. I thought I would catalogue them for posterity.



So here is how we live:

• We have 2 Giant skips on the street in front of our house for all the rubble and dirt.


• Our front door is tattered and bashed, it jams badly and you need to put all your body weight behind it to get it open or close.


• Our long and narrow hall is the only passage through from the front to the back of the house - 90% of the rubble has come though it to the skips (the other 10% going through next doors garden). It has had a bare concrete floor and no plaster on the lower parts of the walls for 2.5 years, since we got the damp treated The hall has stacks of building materials in it, not much, just stuff we have bought over the last few years and haven't got round to putting in the shed.


• The back door is in a temporary frame, it has clingfilm over the panes of glass for a very cheap double glazing method (which did work in the old kitchen, it is now burst) It is very scaby and dirty, and shakes.


• Our living room door has a fleece blanket pulled over the door to try to cut down the drafts


• Part of our living room is given over to tools and welly storage.


• Our wood burner has a pulley above it and a fire guard infront it on which we dry our washing.


• We have a water pipe and grey electric cable running across our livingroom ceiling to take water to our kitchen and bathroom and electricity to our shower.


• In the corner of our livingroom we have a step-stool leading to a hole in the wall to our stairs, which we have a curtain pulled over to keep heat downstairs.


• Our kitchen is along one wall of what used to be the dining room, with grey wire leading to the sockets.... the oven wire sometimes needs a 'jiggle' to get it working....


• Our Bathroom is in the corner of the same room, it has 2 walls and a door, so is private - there is no sink in the bathroom, we use the kitchen sink, all of 2ft away.


• Our waste gets pumped out through a saniflow unit, the pipe has been frozen solid 4 times.


• The bottom of the stairs (which used to lead to a hall) has a single sheet of plasterboard and a single sheet of weather board to keep the elements out.


• Upstairs is just the same as before, except for stacks of boxes in both rooms.

We get by, it is simpler, and cheaper, to stay here than try to stay somewhere else while work is getting done.... I can be on site, I can look after the chickens and the garden - we didn't know at the time it was going to be the coldest winter for several decades..... oops....

Thanks for reading ;o)