Nowhere Near Finished Yet

Mostly Betty’s family are on the top, and Jack’s family are on the bottom rows – they’ll expand when we’ve got the printer working again! Our personal favourites are the beautiful photo of Betty’s Grandparents’ wedding, and the rather lovely one of Jack’s dad holding a panda! We’ll keep you updated when we add more!

Lots of Love from Jack and Betty xx

http://www.iheartjoan.co.uk/

Love from Yeti Jack and Silly Betty xx

a look of terror? x

Lots of love from Jack and Betty xx

Jack’s plan for monday, he’s just revealed, is to take a nap on it, and see how comfy it is. Seriously, that’s his plan for the day. *sigh*

awaiting Jack's 'comfiness' review

Lots of Love from Betty xx

Videogame Book Covers - A J Hately

This was Betty’s most recent purchase as ‘a present for Jack’ – but there are definitely a couple she threw in there for herself… They’re postcard prints of videogame-inspired book covers (available to buy here – there are loads more on the shop now – someone needs to do another order) – it’s really great as a lot of game merch can be a little tacky – but the illustrations on these are just perfect, and the colour pallette looks really great – they’re hanging in the staircase that leads up to the office, it was looking a little bare, and now we can see these from our room which is pretty cool.

Humphrey and Robots in Disguise

We’re also really both fans of vintage movies and fashion – Jack frequents the post office for work, and the ladies there had gotten a bit silly and drunkenly pinched a life-sized cutout of Humphrey Bogart – of course! They thought of Jack first of all so now he’s on the staircase, next to Betty’s screen-printed gig poster for Robots In Disguise (not sure where this was from – I’ve had it for years! – Betty). Jack really likes to hide Humphrey around the house to terrify unsuspecting visitors…

Those are all PC Games...

Bioshock

the rest of the Bioshock triptych

Love from Jack and Betty xx

They are currently on their second renovation project, and as with the first, doing all of the work themselves – that’s no mean feat given the project they’re tackling! Here’s a look at their first renovation, and a sneaky peak at their second! With a few words from the boys themselves…

the day they got the keysafter rennovation

We rented a flat in Wolverhampton – this was mostly to build up a solid credit rating which takes three years. Once those three years were up we had itchy feet, we felt like we were living in a rabbit hutch!  Renting a house was always a non-goer as it’s often more money to rent than to buy, and we’d have ended up spending lots of money on someone else’s house as we did on the small flat. The new place… to be frank we were looking at park homes due to house prices not falling that much at the end of 2009. After looking at many different park homes we came to the conclusion that they were glorified, overpriced caravans that you actually have to vacate over Christmas which of course isn’t ideal. Ant started to look at authority houses (something that Sam was far too stuck up to consider) and he found our house for £65,000 – Sam soon changed his tune! We viewed it, and instantly fell in love. It was old and unloved, and had a lot of land considering the price. It just oozed potential! We viewed it just once, and made an offer £3000 below the asking price, which was accepted.

The house had problems streaming from it. Everywhere you looked a new issue would arise, causing yet another challenge. This house hadn’t been touched in years. The walls were damp, there was no central heating which certainly didn’t help matters. To add to that, the old kitchen chimney leaked in from the roof, as well as the back garden being slabbed up to the airbricks which meant that the water flowed straight into the house. It was like a swimming pool, not a home! Some problems were easy to fix, simply lifting the slabs for instance; but the chimney took two whole days of non-stop hammering to take down to roof level (it wasn’t in use at the time).

living room before and after

Another big challenge we faced was changing a beam that had wood worm. It was rotten, but it was meant to be a main support for the upstairs. Ant changed this and of course it did weigh an awful lot to carry away! The list goes on…

the kitchen

The biggest success for us was the lounge with its real oak wooden floor and solid fuel fire. It was acosy room, with the light off and the fire lit, you really felt like you were in the 1920s. We had all the technology you could want but we didn’t shout about it – we respected the age of the house. Old buildings influenced us, so we restored all the fires, put the picture rails back up and used simple accessories which really brought the house together. It’s the finishing touches which are the key to success!

the bedroom

The new house… well, again we started to outgrow the house. It was feeling like another hutch. We wanted two reception rooms so we could keep one where we could entertain. We definitely wanted another old house that needed love! We were so surprised to find a house with lots of land, and again original features – but this time in a nicer area. This feels like our forever house; more grown-up, sophisticated. Double bay indows – front and back! Original Stained glass front door, all original 1930s internal doors as well as wood-panelled stairs. It really is a dream for us, and we aim to return it to its former glory!

The end… (for now!)

outside the new house

lovely windows

original stairs!

Stay tuned for more Jack and Betty’s house updates,

Love from Jack and Betty xx

ignore the fingerprints on the mirror

We went on our first trip to IKEA yesterday as a couple! I desperately needed a desk, and as you can see I still don’t have my own computer at the house – there was nowhere to put it before! I settled on the MICKE desk – it’s small and a little horrendous, but it’s plain and fits into our office/loft space really nicely. Jack is at home all this week, so whilst I was at work he set about building it – flatpack furniture is one of his great loves, he’s silly enough to do things like put our double bed, on his own, so this was a pretty easy task for him!

My 70s typewriter fits really nicely here (until my mac arrives) – and Jack’s really handily set up my mirror right next to it in case I need to contact the other universe (read:because he is a geek)

Love from Betty xx

You can now follow our very own Betty on Pinterest! She’s posting loads of her inspiration pictures, there’s some great stuff on here! It’s really fun, too. You should request an account!

Lots of love from Jack and Betty xx

no. 19, Jack and Betty's House

The house we bought is in a small, industrial Black Country town – it’s exactly what we were looking for – a Victorian terrace – a house with a bit of history to it. We’d looked at a few things that were a bit similar a little further afield, but with little success (you can read a bit about it in our ‘how to decide on location‘ guide). Ours was only listed on the estate agent’s website, rather than on anything like Rightmove so it had taken a little while to us to find – we went to see it with some trepidation – why was it so cheap? What was wrong with it?

We instantly fell in love, though – the house really stands out in the street; it’s the only house that’s been painted bright red, for one. The black masonry and the detailing in it is lovely (if a little worn). It looks teeny-tiny from the outside, but as the estate agent said (repeatedly), “it’s like a little TARDIS inside”. It’s a little bigger than some of the other houses that we’d viewed of a similar age, and a lot bigger than any of the newer houses that we’d seen.

after we'd taken up the floor, before we'd painted

the living room, just as we started to paint

The front door leads right into the living room, it was all very plain inside – the walls were a sort of pale mauvey colour (which Betty tried to photograph, it just looked like brown) and the living room leads right into a really good-sized kitchen. Going even further back there’s a small, but fully-equipped bathroom, and on again from that is a terrible, little pebble-dashed extension (the less said about that the better, it’s a bit of a sore subject at the minute). Upstairs, there’s a good-sized landing with two main bedrooms, and a little ‘bedroom’ (read:cupboard)  about the size of the room Betty grew up in. Literally big enough to fit in a bed, and a wardrobe, it’s the room that the boiler is kept in. Then upstairs again is a loft conversion – we think this was probably used as a kid’s room, there’s a little, (quite dangerously situated) alcove that was being used as a wardrobe.

On the way out I think we’d pretty much decided, we asked the agent about an odd square in the middle of the living room floor. “It probably leads to drainage, or pipework”. But on further inspection, it was a cellar!

the cellar door

There are real stairs that would have led to the cellar, but they’ve been blocked off. We suspect that because of the loft conversion, the stairs up to the first floor had to be moved around, blocking off the stairway that leads beneath the house. As it is, there’s a rickety little wooden set of steps, and the real brick stairs will be reduced to keeping wine on (if we really brought wine, and could be bothered to go that far to fetch it).

The house has already thrown up some challenges, and we’re sure there are plenty more to come. Nothing’s really finished yet so we don’t want to show you too much! We’ll let you have a peek soon!

Love from Jack and Betty xx

We used a mahogony effect stain on it in the end, it’s very shiny, and a bit dangerous when Betty’s got the wood polish out – like a wooden ice rink!

Some tips:

• Try your darndest to get any nails, pins and staples out of the floor before you start
• There are always going to be some nails, pins and staples left in the floor, no matter how hard you try – expect to go through a few belts for the sander – it all costs money!
• Expect to go through more varnish than you think – you can always return any tins that you don’t open so it might be worth buying extra to save you going back and forth
• We varnished ourselves upstairs, at night, just before we went to bed. That way we didn’t need to worry about stepping through it when we needed to get through the house!
• Don’t get any gloss paint on it – it’s not fun.

Love from Jack and Betty xx