Have you ever found yourself, scrolling through the classified ads , trying to find the bargain of the month that seems to usually be so out of reach ?
No?
I have
Hundreds of times
Thousand of times
Millions of times 
Temptation and ads go hand in hand to support the manic behaviour of a shopaholic . They’re designed to entice shopping and fulfill your souls darkest desires, like a new kitchen cupboard or a pair of 18th century terracota urns.
I get brainwashed every time when things are too cheap to miss, even if we have to drive for 5 hours to fetch them.
From old fashioned newspapers ads to the Facebook selling pages or gumtree I get triggered when something is too good to be true !
There’s some bargains to be had and that’s what hubbie always fears the most. He despises to discover What’s the next thing I’m gonna find that it’s so far away, he will rather destroy the source and not have any temptation than having to drive another 200 miles again. 
The fact is that I truly needed this. Because I was an only child for a very long time. I’m a bit spoiled .
After building the pantry on the side of the fireplace in the kitchen, I wanted to add some extra storage on top of it and give the illusion of a built in. And this is when this beauty comes in place.
And it was around the corner
And it was old
And it was green
So thank you Daniel for letting my have it, your patience is infinite. 
That’s my little cabinet waiting patiently in the kitchen counter to be cleaned, in all its mucky glory.
it was absolutely filthy beyond belief, I don’t even want to think what those stains were generated with or by what.
But with a little bit of elbow grease and half a bottle of fairy it has scrubbed relatively well. Like a naughty kid, the answer with this cabinet was soap …
after unifying the cabinets with paint and giving them a more professional built in appearance, the units are now ready for te last phase of varnish. Hooray! 
what secrets lay inside this beautiful pantry ? 
(just cleaning products, there’s no budget for fake supremes. )
Now, a throwback to what the kitchen used to look like before I tackled it.
Empty,
Mental asylum empty, can’t cope with minimalism. We will all agree that it has much more personality now doesn’t it ? 
And here’s our new-to-us 1930s door:
This piece is a wonder of my skip diving adventures or a reflection of :
” how-to-take-doors-at-1am-from-a-neighbours-skip-whitout-making-any-noise”
( that’s real footage of me running with the doors )
Really guys, the pink panther thief could learn a thing or two from me. 
The fact is that our hallway leading to the kitchen was a bit dark, and it was in my plans to source a vintage glazed door to replace the existing one, but why buy one when this perfectly good one was left outside to rot by an unloving previous style deprived owner?
Now is mine ! 
After stripping the door and giving it a fresh coat of paint it looks like a millions bucks 
(really a million bucks ,this doors can go for top £££ when restored )
Thanks to my Diogenes syndrome and because of my hoarding abilities, I rescued this victorian lock and door knob from a door in the street when I lived in London , and I knew one day It would Come in handy! ( let’s forget that it has been gathering dust for 6 years amongst other pieces of tat)
On another note, We’ve started the process of decorating the living room.
Here’s a before picture so you recreate yourselves in the horror of avocado green and brown , and the wonders of a psychedelic 70s vomit carpet. 
The first thing I did was demolish the old 70s surround and tile the hearth underneath with something more in keeping With the victorian insert we were going to use 
the glazed cranberry tiles really make an impact in such a small space . I’m truly amazed that they didn’t even cost £20
after some tedious search online we found a gorgeous slate fireplace that has the arts and crafts jewels of my dreams,
The ones I always wanted in this particular style of fireplace.those rounders are usually made of jet stones from Brussels. 
As the fireplace was all covered in magnolia gloss, I had to strip the whole thing and this is the result, just waiting for that chimney breast to be skimmed and then we can start wallpapering ! 
This is me stripping 3 layers of awful paint , can you believe that someone painted it teal at some point ? 
And this is the way we got it home, poor thing all covered in butterscotch-gravy-baby sick awfulness
Continuing with the shopping theme, in the way back from the garden centre ( where we bought enough plants to make the entrance of the house looks like a jungle, ( we just went to buy some hedging) they had a clearance in place so we came back home with 70% of their stock 
So we also stopped in a salvage yard on the side of the road and of course this beauties had to come home with us obviously, they’re the old supports of a double Belfast sink.
They were broken in several pieces so I pieced them together with masonry glue.
the grey blobs that you can see,are the losses they had so I recreated the missing parts in concrete and mould them to match the lost pieces. 
after the first coats of enamel you can hardly see where the damage was.
this normally go for quite a lot of money but regarding that they were in such poor state they were a good deal and the restoration was fairly easy. 
And alas, this is the end of this couple of months chapter. We Now need to focus on finishing the small little jobs ( like coving, repainting, slimming, floor the upstairs landing….etc etc ) to make the house complete everywhere.
I’m not good at all the finesse and little touches, that’s hubbies job. The job that entails taming me like a wild beast so I finish what I’m supposed to finish instead of starting new jobs ! 
The main bigger jobs that we still have to complete are one half in the kitchen and the living room ready for Xmas. Will we manage it ? Stay tuned for another episode of the 1903 house !
The 1903 house 