Making a home to raise a baby in

Pretty stoked with the changes we managed to achieve in our 1980 built new home within 5 weeks of getting keys. All of the major things we wanted to get done achieved 2 days in advance of our deadline- that being our babies due date. What a team!

Our new home – 5 weeks to get it ready for the baby!

I would definitely never recommend to someone that they move house when they are 8 months pregnant and their partner is living in London Monday to Friday! We must be the only people who have rested when having a baby!

Our previous home was on the market for two years without selling, then in February, when I was five months pregnant, a landlord made an offer as he wanted to buy a load of properties before stamp duty went up on 1st April. We had to wizz the house sale through for his deadline, meaning we had to find somewhere to live ourselves very fast!

We looked at renting, buying, new build, old build, before settling on a 1980s four bed detached which was close to my mum and A1 motorway. However there was absolutely no way the sale would go through by 31st March, meaning I had to move in with my mum until the sale was completed – Mark was away in London working for the i Newspaper anyway, so worked out quite well as I wouldn’t be miles away on my own.

We got the keys at the beginning of May, Mark moved home the day before his sister’s wedding on 20th May – so I was in charge of getting the house baby ready! Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot I could do with being so heavily pregnant, thankfully I have an amazing family who steamed walls, stripped wallpaper, painted, cleaned and were there for support every single day.

Every wall had awful wallpaper on, the carpets were in a lot worse condition than we originally thought, the kitchen had a really unnecessary wall between it and the dining room as well as really old wood cupboards – buying a new build would have been so much easier! In five weeks we:

• Stripped four bedrooms and painted all of the walls
• recarpeted the hall, landing, stairs and three of the four bedrooms
• knocked a wall down between the kitchen and dining room
• plumbed in dishwasher and put in worksurfaces in the utility room
• replastered the ceiling between kitchen and dining room
• moved light switches in the kitchen
• wallpapered in the kitchen and living room (i did this close to my due date if not on)
• painted nursery
• assembled all of the nursery furniture
• moved our furniture in from storage
• painted built in wardrobes
• painted fire
• laid laminate floor to the living room and kitchen/diner (which was fun because the company went into administration before the floor was laid, thankfully the man we’d paid to lay it took pity on me and managed to get our flooring, I didn’t ask how)

our old home: