It's wednesday, let's discus my sunroom floor.

Good news, for those interested in my floor, we've finally found someone who can fix our problem without spending too much money and without having to take the whole sunroom down. He'll be fixing it next week and after that I can start decorating.

At last!

Now I'm quite giddy about decorating this room because I've been looking at that horrible floor for too long now, disliking it but appreciating the room itself more and more. It always has been such a non-room to me as it is really oddly shaped and an extension to the house that doesn't really fit. But over time it has become quite a lovely extension of the kitchen and I find myself hanging bits and pieces on the walls. My birds are already up there and now I've hung this artwork by Geninne up there to. It's going to be my bird room, or nature room. But also a good room to photograph in as the light is quite something.

Will post pictures when the room is done.

When the room is done ... sigh ... that sounds like music to my ears.

Now the weather is so nice we've moved from working indoors to outdoors. We are planting a garden from scratch. Only the trees were here and probably have been for the past 113 years.

I've started a tumblr blog for inspiration.

Hello, I'm back - finally.

It's been a hectic 8 months since we've moved here. This house is really something, each time we start a job it turns into about a thousand other jobs. Like the floor job I did in the sunroom, it turned out to a complete disaster. THE HORRIBLE FLOOR MAN, as he's know in my house, decided to seal the top layer of the concrete floor with polyester. This is quite fantastic if you want to have a cool floor that doesn't show wear, doesn't get dirty and doesn't let anything get in ... white paint included!!

I was rather pleased with the result I showed you in March to discover 8 hours later that the paint came off faster as it did to apply it. I could scrape it off like butter. A lot of products, tears, blood, sweat, money and threatening phone calls to THE HORRIBLE FLOOR MAN later we came to the conclusion that we had to take the perfect top layer of the floor off. I phoned another floor man and he diamond stripped the whole floor. Straight after that I painted the floor again and it stayed put ... for just a little while. After my first floor mopping the floor went sticky and the paint went all yellowy weird. Turns out that the actual concrete floor under the removed top floor didn't dry out completely so that's why it's sticky.

This is the sunroom today. The floor seems perfectly white but don't let the pretty picture fool you because the floor is sticky like hell - if hell is sticky and if hell exists.

I'll have to wait for the concrete to dry and than I'll sand and paint it again. I know for sure it will turn out to be ok but arrrggghh ... all the unnecessary work because of THE HORRIBLE FLOOR MAN!!

Just on the other side of the wall I'm setting up my kitchen.

This is my loo view :o)

I was supposed to paint the floor of the sunroom in the same color as the basement floors as that was agreed with Bo. He thinks it's a ridiculous idea to paint the kitchen and sunroom floors white because we don't have a boot room and the kitchen or the sunroom is the first room you walk in when you come from the garden. In a way I know he's right and point will be proven when I start yelling and bickering that there's mud on the floors but ... who cares now? I want my white floors!!

So what I did to prevent Bo changing my mind and having more endless discussions in which he of course is right, I phoned the paint shop and let them mix my All White in concrete paint and told them my husband would pick them up later.

I might regret this but for now I don't care.

These are the tools I use: a felt roller on a stick (so you can roll the paint out instead of using a brush - I don't like brush strokes and this is a really speedy solution), a brush for the sides, a paint roller bucket to dip the roller in, a piece of wood to stir the paint, concrete paint and my iPod - can't paint without the iPod.

I started by sanding the floor, gave it a good hoover and mopped it clean with hot water and a bit of ammonium. Next I started to paint the sides of the upper left wall and the first 3 corners with a brush, then I dipped my roller in the paint and started to apply the paint as if I'm cleaning the floor. You have to make sure that you spread the paint out evenly. Always work to a point where you can get out easily and where there's enough space to end.

45 minutes later it looks like this.

It's like a super blaster sunroom now!!

I need to apply another coat, paint the skirting boards, put up the skirting boards and I'm ready to start decorating although I don't have a clue what to do with it yet!

I've been whooshing around and making the streets and roads of my local area unsafe!

I've been postponing getting a driving licence for the past 10 years. With all my traveling around in my late teens and early twenties I never got round to complete my driving lessons because I was never in a country long enough (or legally) to go through the whole progress. I've been relying on Boris for the last 10 years and my British provisional driving licence which is very illegal outside the UK. Boris never really minds being my personal chauffeur but with us living in Belgium these days and because I still have a lot of jobs to do, errands to run and people to meet in The Netherlands it's becoming some sort of a handicap.

So for the last 3 weeks I've been on this crash course of 20 hours driving split over 2 hours almost daily at one of our local driving schools. With these intense 20 hours of training I'm allowed to drive on my own and it allows me to take my exam within 18 months starting after 2 months. So I'll have 2 months to practice on my own and than I'll take my exam.

I'm really excited about this and I keep telling myself that at 34 I'm proud that I finally did this. I've been driving around in Carnival chaos traffic all day yesterday and did quite well. Today I want to go to the swimming pool, do grocery shopping, plant shopping and tub trug shopping - we're going to be so bankrupt with me having access to a car!

I've also been busy painting the sunroom and I've been really busy ordering Bo and Jos (our previous, previous, previous neighbor who keeps helping us fixing up houses. He asked if we could move to Spain the next time) around in the kitchen. There are actually 3 cupboards put up and a dishwasher. Nothing works but I'm already ecstatic as I know in 2 weeks everything will work and I'll be over the moon.

After all my shopping driving trips today I'll sand the sunroom and start to apply the first coat of paint. I've picked All White by Farrow & Ball - our new home sponsor. I sometimes wish this was real-life. We could have Cath Kidston sponsor us, Farrow & Ball, Dove, M&M's, Boden, Lotus Toilet paper. Think of it!

Happy 2009!

We didn't celebrate last night instead we painted our dungeon aka the basement of the house.

I now totally understand how people like Dutroux can hide people in their homes without other people finding out. Our house has a typical Belgium basement where you can easily house a small family of immigrants or some kids. People in Belgium don't fuss with their neighbors. The houses across our street never show any activity. Last night, during the fireworks, I got excited to see a little boy run out of the house but that was just for a fraction of a second. So in other words, god knows what people are hiding behind those drawn curtains.

This is the second corridor in our basement, there are two in total with on each side two rooms. The door on the right is the door to my sewing room, the door to the left is going to be for storage. There's another door to another room and to a blocked passageway to the old brewery in the storage room. It's all really scary but white paint and some Cath Kidston floral fabric will do the trick.

This is what my sewing room looks like today. This is what it looked like a couple of weeks ago.

The floor is going to be painted in a sandy color and the heating pipes will be white too. Those holes in the walls are vents and will be covered with something pretty in cast iron.

We went for a shopping trip to Ikea last week to get some furniture for this room. It now depends on how fast the floors will dry before I can start moving all the furniture in. I get so ecstatic knowing that by the end of this month I'll be able to put things where they're going to be for a long time. To know that if I enter this room my sewing machines will be waiting for me, that I know in which drawer the good scissors are. Also this time next month I might have a working kitchen ... the thought of a working kitchen ... well let me spare you the details.

I used Farrow & Ball's Pointing (no. 2003) for all the walls and doors.

I always try to answer all my e-mail in a timely manner but sometimes I just can't make it. To all of you who are wondering if I'm fine, if the house is fine and if the BooBoo is fine ... yes, yes and yes.

You can keep track of the house over here if you didn't already knew. I know it's not a pretty sight, that's why I made a new Flickr account because I can't barely look at it in real time let alone that Flickr constantly reminds me how I have to do the washing up. It will be going fast as from next week because all the dirty jobs are done. I'm happy that as from today the house is free of men with red dusty faces.

There's finally proof that I actually live in this house and as Charlotte cleverly spotted, even more over here.

It's sometimes quite hard living like we do, especially now that my mum is here to stay with us for a couple of weeks. For example a couple of nights ago when we ran out of hot water again. My mother was the first to have a bath and she was lucky she still did get hot water. So by the time she was bathed, snuggled up and warm in bed I was standing in the bathroom washing my really dusty husband with a hot water kettle in a tub trug. Now that can be really romantic but not in my house and not when my mother shouted from the other room "can you be quiet because I can't sleep like this!!" Those are moments when I understand people who convict murders.

In general it's just really hard having a grown up mother. It feels like while she's getting older she behaves more like a child - a very demanding child. I sometimes wish I could say "shush" or "shut up" or "ok now you have to stop troubling me and do something for yourself for a bit" or just simply " if you do not behave this minute, no Kit Kat for you".

The Boo is doing fantastic. She's running, rolling in the grass, sitting in trees, getting dirty and fighting the neighborhood's stray cats. And all that just in the one hour that she's awake.

The kitchen is all newly wired up, has a new roof and this weekend the Bo will start making new ceilings. When they are done the plaster people can come in and after that I will kick in with painting and decorating. So some new stuff to show hopefully in a couple of weeks.

Oh and before I forget I haven't been posting much but I'm working on a rather difficult project for you to enjoy; "Yvestown Lifestyle" coming soon.

I subscribe to Martha's a tip a day mails. Each day Martha tells me what to eat, what to craft and what for cookies I should bake. The pictures used in these e-mails are so lovely, white, crisp and clean just the way I like it. Martha doesn't know that I can't bake because I haven't got an oven, my house is dusty, brown and smelly and to make matters worse I do not have a kitchen roof in less than an hour. There's a mountain of dirty dishes in my improvised kitchen because the oil that heats our house was used up last night so I didn't have a bath either because there was no hot water. I can't shower because I'm scared I will slip and crack my head open and the shower curtains stick to my body and I hate that because I'm scared they are going to suffocate me, so I have to take a bath. There isn't one white, clean, crisp Martha room in my house anywhere.

My friend Femke told me that I can use a little bit more light in my kitchen and to take her opinion serious we did something today that will please her.

This is what my kitchen looks like now. Isn't it just lovely?

Do you want to see my old white, crisp and clean rooms? Go over to the lovely interview I did with Lisa from Pink Friday. And to Whitney's beautiful site where I talk about my desk - boy I miss white!

I've made it! I'm in Belgium pretty much settled. I have to say that one adapts to a new home routine quite quickly. As the electricity network in the the house is quite a mess I can't do chores at the same time. For example when I run the washing machine I cannot hoover, do the ironing or run the tumble dryer. So I have to do everything in turns. Wash first, than dry and than do the ironing. I've been doing 3 days over 5 loads of laundry and saved all the ironing for today. The Bo is going to trigger the fuse box before the builders start this Saturday because I'm afraid we'll be out of power constantly if they use heavy machinery. Oh and we now have hot water - amen!!

We also mastered quite an organized living, as we do not have a running kitchen yet.

This is our current home plan. We set up an area to cook, eat, sit and work in the living and dining room. The office is under renovation as we found out that under two retro ceilings a true gem is hiding. It's a beautiful ceiling with 3D ornaments of birds and flowers. We're going to fix that up as the previous owners (we are the third owners of this house, the house is from 1896 so that's pretty unique) brutally smashed beams through the plaster leaving horrible holes. The piano room (the previous owner was a musician and kept that room for his grand piano) is currently our storage for stuff that needs to go to the cellar. And on Saturday the builders will start to work on a proper kitchen, a cloakroom and on the heating and electricity in the kitchen and conservatory.

This is what it should look like in a couple of months.

And this is how we are living right now.

I've made a temporary kitchen out of an old table and Bo hung a shelf for me because I can't go without a shelf.

And this is where we sat last night for the first time and watched Sweeny Todd on DVD - not such a great movie to watch on your first movie night in a new house. Beside that, great GREAT movie!!