A *period* intro....

[mims&pip]

Hi all,

Just wanted to introduce ourselves properly - I am Mimi (Mims for short) and I've been married to Phil (Pip) for over twenty years

We adore all things *period* when it comes to houses, but in particular Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau and have owned Tudor, Victorian, & Georgian over the years. We have a habit of buying wrecks, restoring them (hopefully sensitively ) and moving onto the next project.

Just before Christmas 2014 we sold our (Georgian) home of the past three and a half years in Wiltshire and downsized to an 1853 detached Victorian house that was extended in an Arts & Crafts style in the mid 1920s. It is in the West Midlands.

I wanted to add a link to some pics of the current house (externals only, taken before we moved in) and our previous home (after restoration from unmortgageable wreck!) as I know you guys appreciate pics :wink: However, I can't seem to fathom how to add a link to my photobucket account - any tips please?

Our new house is (relatively) structurally sound, but untouched for the last thirty/forty years so bursting with potential.....and acres of woodchip - ten rooms at least on ceilings too The garden was once well-tended, but the last couple of years the house was empty so the garden has run wild - particularly the wisteria (60cm girth :shock: ) which is in danger of undermining the soundness of the structure!

Our plan is to restore the house to showcase our extensive collection of Arts & Crafts *stuff* - we detest minimal, neutral decorating schemes - and use some of the wallpaper left over from our large family home (sold back in 2007 when we realised it was just too big!).....

Will be back with pics later, hopefully

Mims x

 

[plasticpigeon]

Welcome to the forum. Sounds like you are seasoned restorers, I think I can speak for others when I say we'd love to see pictures. I haven't a clue how you managed to get a house from unmortgageable to finished in 3 1/2 years, you must know good tradespeople. Now you are in the west mids if you find anyone decent round here, please let me know, I am in Birmingham and have given up with trades. Where is your new place?

Regarding photos, just above the text input box there will be a number of buttons. One says Img. Press this and put the URL of the image from photobucket between the bracketed terms. Alternatively you can type it directly as text in this form:

 

[mims&pip]

Thanks PP....will look at adding some pics tomorrow

I guess we are seasoned restorers, yes.....we're on our seventh property now and apart from the first (a seafront basement flat on the South Coast), they've all been projects of varying degrees. Our *forever* home (stayed there ten years, which is the longest we've owned anywhere - the average being three) had been converted to four flats in the 1950s/'60s and was a real labour of love to reconfigure as a family home. It was the biggest property (square footage-wise at 3500), but not the biggest project per se, which was actually the last one - smaller house at 2500 sq ft, but way more complex, being older, stone and thatched :wink:

We do, however, do majority of the work ourselves - the main exceptions being electrics and plumbing - and it has it been a real learning curve, living on site every time and myself mucking in with labouring etc where possible. Last house we really had to pull out all the stops to get it finished so quickly - we weren't happy living there and a better proposition had arisen that we didn't want to miss

I've read - during my time lurking - of your troubles with trades and have seen your own fantastic results when you've had to resort to doing the job yourself. I can only sympathise regarding finding reliable builders etc - we, too have struggled, but at our last location we found some excellent guys eventually. So far (and we only moved here the week before Christmas), it's early days - we've only had new fencing fitted, which we would have done ourselves but needed it done ASAP as we needed to secure the garden for our dogs on completion, so getting a contractor in made sense.

Btw, location-use we are close(ish) to Wightwick Manor, one of our favourite NT properties - and one of our reasons for moving to this part of the world......

Mims

 

[Penners]

Welcome to the forum. Yes, we always love to see pictures!

If you should find yourselves in London, you might really enjoy the Geffrye Museum. It's a museum of home interiors through the ages. Well worth a visit!

http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk/

 

[mims&pip]

Welcome to the forum. Yes, we always love to see pictures!

If you should find yourselves in London, you might really enjoy the Geffrye Museum. It's a museum of home interiors through the ages. Well worth a visit!

http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk/

Thank you Penners

We're often in London - our son settled there in 2011 after graduating from uni, although he and his girlfriend have since relocated to Brighton - as I have to get my regular Liberty fix! I have to confess that whilst I've heard of the Geffrye, it's somewhere I have never visited. I have a list of places to visit and shall add that to it, as we are trying to make it our business to get to as many as we can over the coming months. I confess we only got to see William Morris's Red House in 2014.

We are members of the Pre-raphaelite society - another love - and are pleased to discover that in our new location we are only a hop, skip and a jump from many of their talks in Birmingham