The four houses that got us to where we are today...

Although I tend to steer away from writing long blog posts, I recently read a great post about a fellow blogger's journey to their dream home and thought now might be a great time to recap on our own (not entirely smooth) journey to our current house renovation.

Jim and I married in 2007. When he proposed we were both living separately in different military accommodation in Germany and though we knew he was due posting, we don't know when or where.

Sometime between getting engaged and getting married we found out Jim's next posting was to Alberta in Canada and that we were going two weeks after our wedding.

We knew nothing about the house we were getting and the first we saw of it was when we arrived in the taxi outside. Our first married home was a privately owned house in a condo in the town of Medicine Hat. It was pretty big inside with lots of nice (and unexpected) bonuses like a dishwasher, electric garage door and walk in wardrobe, but it had very little outside space and it was 50km from the base where we were both working and where the majority of the British Forces lived. Also despite Jim's fantasy of being emerged in "a real Canadian community" the few neighbours we met were all retirees!

For the first few weeks in this house Jim and I worked totally different shifts and commuted independently to and from the base. I would come home several hours before him and sit in an empty house feeling miserable (and occasionally crying) or walking the empty streets around our house. Quite quickly we (and by that I mean me!) began to talk about moving to a house on the base, but we were told there was such pressure on housing that we would never get one. Thankfully they were wrong....

So six weeks after we had arrived we moved again...

Our new house was right on the corner of the village with a huge garden, white picket fence and a deceptively large interior. Although it looks like a bungalow we had a huge basement which accommodated a laundry room, our bedroom, a bathroom and a cinema room. It was cheap to rent, always warm (even at -40c) and close to work and our friends. We had great barbecues in the garden in the summer and equally good fun in the winter. I really loved this house on so many levels. The only downsides were mowing the HUGE lawn and the fact I used to envy our neighbours who lived in the prettier weatherboard houses, so you can see where that particular fascination of mine started! Indeed it was while we were living here that we bought our current house in Sussex and began to dream of transforming it.

In August 2009 we left Canada and moved to Cyprus to house number 3, and this was what was waiting for us when we arrived...

The houses had been built in the 1950s and save for the addition of double glazing, they had not been touched since. Though a part of me loved the novelty of the blue formica kitchen when we arrived, by the end of our time I hated it with a passion. On the plus side we had sea "glimpses" from our bedroom and a beach moments away, but the downs were many. Our garden was untameable. Over-run with weeds in winter and a dust bowl in summer. The house was almost always too hot or too cold as it had no air-conditioning and no central heating and temperatures in Cyprus would fluctuate from just above freezing to +40c. The green carpet (an MOD special the world over) was hideous and the original 1950s bathroom and plumbing was awful. Though it looks good in the photos, don't be fooled I was trying hard to make it look good!

After another two years we were off to Northern Scotland and I had mixed feelings about living in a modern house on a large housing estate... 

After Cyprus this house felt quite luxurious. An en-suite, four bedrooms, central heating, a utility room and neutral coloured carpets. In truth the house itself was pretty good, but despite its location surrounded by hundreds of houses it was also one of the loneliest places I have ever lived. I hated the penned in feeling of being able to see into my neighbours houses (and for them to do the same) The house had dark window frames and though it faced east/west it also felt quite dark inside a lot of the time too. In truth I'm probably a little harsh on this house because I spent a lot of short Scottish winter days pacing around it with a very young baby whilst Jim was in Afghanistan, but by the end of 2012 when we heard the news that we were heading south, I was delighted to leave and incredibly excited to finally be taking control over our housing.

And so we arrived in Sussex at the end of January 2013 to a house with lots of potential and lots of work needing done. A few days later we met with our architect to discuss ideas and an entirely new journey began to transform this...

into this...

We are now 3 weeks in and the house is slowly taking shape. If you want to follow our journey, click on the link below to add to your Bloglovin feed.