Gutted - downstairs

And we've begun! Our builder and his highly efficient team moved in this week and ripped out all the crazy shelves and leftovers from our house's time as an office. All of a sudden it's starting to look a little more like it could be a home. This is where our downstairs living space will be - they've pulled out the ugly orange shelving, the carpet and destroyed the stud wall that hid this faux fireplace.

This is the downstairs living space looking onto the internal courtyard. At the moment it's a tad hideous, but when we enclose it with some lovely glass louvers and create a hallway around it I think it will be simply stunning. As the downstairs has very few windows and no real ventilation, it will also be an incredibly practical element of the design.

This is Puddleduck's room without the desks and shelves and cupboards ... let's call it a blank canvas!

First job

I tripped and fell and ripped up some carpet today. I've been simply itching to rip up this green carpet. Somewhat bizarrely, every house we've owned has had this green carpet. Seriously. Given we've fallen head over heels with all these houses, I have this nagging thought that there's something bewitching about this particular carpet. Does it cast a spell on us? Why are we inexplicably attracted to houses with fundamentally ugly carpet?

Mr Puddleduck has been a little more circumspect about starting anything resembling DIY, so I seized the opportunity of being at the house alone this morning to start ripping up the carpet. Ostensibly so I could see the condition of the floorboards underneath it, but really just because I hate it. I have to confess I started peeling it back on our very first inspection. Shh.

Turns out the boards are in pretty decent condition for a house coming up to 150 years old. Well, I mean they look fine to my entirely untrained eye. Regardless, I'm very excited at the prospect of bare boards and no carpet upstairs. At the moment it smells a little like a stable up there and I lay the blame for that fairly and squarely on the ugly green carpet.