This is a big milestone, the tiler has started on the floor:
I really like the look of these tiles! And when all the concrete is covered the house will be much easier to clean as well. For the past month, we’ve had a sheet vinyl floor in one of the rooms upstairs with the bare minimum amount of furniture. When the floor is done we can get some more furniture out of storage. We’ll still have to paint but we’ll be careful.
It looks great! I love the faux wood tiles.
It looks a lot more realistic than I expected. And with underfloor heating, it will be super comfortable this winter.
I picked up my sewing machine from storage and borrowed a serger, hopefully by next week we’ll have a table and then I’ll start to work on curtains. At least for the bedroom - living in a house without curtains and doors is not ideal in May! Sunrise is 5.30am and sunset is 9.30pm.
We get pretty intense sun here so blackout curtains and well insulated curtains were one of the first things I did. The house also had miniblinds, which I really hate because of the cleaning, but they do allow me to adjust the light.
It will be fun, though, to make curtains in fabrics you like! How exciting! Heated floors will be fantastic! I had them in my bathrooms when I lived in cold PA.
Curtains are so expensive to buy! Anything made from a nice fabric and not some cheap synthethic is hundreds of euro’s. And often they’re still pretty boring colours. Making them myself isn’t the most fun ever but it will be worth it.
This is for my craft room. I found this heavy cotton for €1/meter in the remnant bin at the fabric store. It reminds me of London and of Dublin. If I ever get tired of this busy print, I’ll just sew new ones.
What fun fabric!
Yes, it is always nice to be able to sew and when you are tired of it, you can make something else or use it somewhere else!
I used this fabric to make curtains for my husband’s music studio…so far, he is not tired of it!
This is true in US dollars, too! Oof. I’ve been hunting for new drapes for our living/dining room and oof. I have 6 windows and prefer drapes that go from ceiling to floor. Including a nice wide hem, that’s about 6 yards (meters) per window. I still hope I can find 18 yards of something that really looks like good linen in an appropriate shade of grey for some kind of miraculously low price!
Shower curtains are a quick and cheap way to get curtains. Lots of designs and printed scenes. We needed curtains for our 4 large porch windows and this was an economical way to go, plus they are usually more mold resistant and always washable.
I love that fabric!!!
When I first moved into my home (back in the middle ages) I couldn’t afford drapes (and this place is half windows), I used decorative sheets.
We have insulated drapes now which helps with the heating and, if we keep them closed most of the time, keeps the house cooler in the summer.
Because we live in the woods our window coverings are pretty much exclusively used for light and temperature control. The exception is the café curtain in the downstairs bathroom which is really more for a sense of privacy than real privacy. Many of them are only there because they make the decor just look more finished to me. 
I found what I think looks like a nice curtain fabric on the website of a small independent shop half an hour away from here. They’re sending me a sample. They’re also vendors at the weekly open air market in my city, so if I like it, I can pick up my order there. It’s not a natural fibre, but in pictures, it looks pretty good for a synthetic fabric. The fabric doesn’t let any light through and is insulated, so that would be ideal. It’s only €12,95 per meter and our windows are small. I hope it’s nice!
@marionberries in the past we’ve had a shower curtain for a curtain, and also at one point also an old sheet and a fleece blanket. We poked them into the wall with thumb tacks as our old plaster was crumbling away and if you put any weight on it it all just fell down. For our new house we want proper curtains (eventually) but we haven’t decided if we want curtain rods or rails. When we’ve made that decision, we can put those up, and then we can always find a temporarily solution. In the hallway I’d like to put up the curtains I took from my late grandma’s house: long, red velvet. They’re a bit worn, they’re probably from the 70s, but I always loved them when I was a kid. It will be nice to use them again.
We are busy painting our house. It’s a LOT of work. The painting isn’t even that bad, but the whole house was replastered last month, so we need to sand & prime the freshly plastered walls and ceiling before we can start painting. And we have floors now, so there’s a lot we need to do before we get the paint out. We are using a professional paint sprayer so the painting part is pretty fast. We’ve decided we’re going to spray the whole house white at first, all walls and ceilings. After all the walls have a basic layer of paint, we’ll put the furniture back in and by that time, the kitchen will also be finished. We’ll have a complete house again 
We got rid of a lot so after that we’ll have time to sit back and think about what we’re going to do next. I’m sure we won’t keep everything white, but it’s much easier to just paint / wallpaper one wall at a time.
Good thinking! Nice to have a blank slate to start planning. I always said you need to live in your house for a little bit to see how things feel and flow. We actually started with the palest blue because we knew we both liked that color and so we got things that blended with it and also painted the rooms in coordinating greens, yellows, blues and even a purple (my old craft room!).
When we were getting the house ready to sell, the agent made us paint everything white again. I guess to give the potential buyers a new blank slate!
We’ve lived here before of course, so we have some idea of which walls we want to keep simple and which ones need a brighter colour or print, but we’ve also changed a lot in the house (including moving a few windows) so maybe our plans will change. Plus we simply lack the time right now, and we don’t even know yet what furniture will go where. We’ll have plenty of time to think about that later.
Homes listed for sale almost always look boring! I suppose a lot of people can’t really see through decoration that’s not their taste. I always love looking at the ads of quirky homes where owners have simply refused to change anything. Or homes that look like they’re straight from a certain period in the past with no modernisation at all.
How are my fellow DIY’ers doing?
We are making progress every day. We have kitchen cupboards again (no appliances yet) and today Ikea delivered a whole bunch of stuff for my home office / craft room, including a really nice standing desk which will double as a cutting table. And I’m lucky that my employer has great benefits so they’re refunding all but €40 of the price of that desk. All my machines are back here now and we’ve picked fabric for the curtains. Once we’ve set up the desk I can get to work. In the future I hope to build a seperate long, narrow sewing machine desk but for now, this one will do.
Getting a quote next week to finish the back room, hopefully this summer!
I just got my other area rug yesterday, and most of the remaining furniture will be delivered this afternoon. Then begins the big shuffle of stuff.
Next week, the last of the cabinets will be installed, the bar gets a second clear coat, and the front of the house gets torn up (to re-grade the ground and repave the walkway and landscaped areas).
I will have pictures later, but here’s my rug (with bins of yarn holding down the edge that was curling up a bit)…
Fingers crossed for a reasonable quote! 
The workmen here are saying that for them, the economy is noticeably slowing down. Rising interest rates, inflation and economic uncertainty make people think twice before spending money on home upgrades. Apparantly only things like solar panels, heat pumps and insulation are still very popular.
@tendstowardschaos Nice! Can’t believe that’s the same space you showed just a couple of months ago. It looks like a proper living space now.
Jim is driving to TN today to get the last of our stuff, including the rest of my craft room, from storage. Meanwhile the contractors are coming back this week to replace a window, and some rotted boards on the chimney. And I’m trying my best to clean and organize some more, as we have a house warming/pool party planned for 2 weeks from today, and in July is the LC Meetup here. Jim has been busting his butt on the pool, and it’s crystal clear, and as of yesterday, got up to 84 degrees without the heater or solar cover!
