And relax.....

image from Clipart Library

It took a good 18 months from the point where it had become glaringly obvious that we could no longer put off having something done about the increasingly-dilapidated porch, to the work actually being completely finished, but finally everything was all done.  As I've said before, the delays were really nobody's fault but nevertheless it's certainly good to have got the space all done and dusted 😊

The sideboard had been in our dining room in Hitchin but we found that we didn't need it in the dining room here.  I found space for it, though, in my craft room where it proved to be a useful addition.  I knew that I wanted to eventually display Augusta Lodge in the porch, so decided to move the sideboard out of the craft room for the house to sit on rather than buy a new piece of furniture.  The cupboard and drawer space is useful in the porch, too.  Like everything else over recent months, work on Augusta Lodge has ground to a halt so it will be some time before I can move it to its new home out in there.  In the meantime I've displayed a couple of "pretties" on the sideboard that hadn't yet been found a home ~ you all know by now that I can't have bare surfaces 😄

The pictures are Carl Larsson prints that I've had for a number of years.  Having the picture rail makes it so easy to hang things, with no need to make holes in our lovely new walls for things that we might want to move at a later date!

I've had something of a re-jig of the space in the craft room since moving out the sideboard, and will share that with you in an upcoming post.

We bought the indoor log store last year, and it spent the winter beside the hearth in the living room.  It was always our intention to store logs in the porch but we've obviously had to scale back the amount we can fit out there. 

We previously had a freestanding coat/umbrella rack (that we had had in Hitchin) in the hall, and our shoes were on a rack beneath the dining room window.  Neither of these arrangements was ideal, to be honest, but it was the best we could do since we were unable to use the old porch to store anything.  It made more sense to have the coats on a wall-hung coat rack (which I purchased from a seller I had bought from previously on Ebay) and the lovely Shug fixed it in place for us.

This left space below for a couple of good-sized shoe racks along with a rather nice wicker umbrella/walking-stick holder between them and the heater.  The latter, which I got from John Lewis, has a weighted base along with a galvanised metal drip tray inside, so is lovely and stable ~ and, of course, no drips on the floor 😉

The mirror had also previously been hung in our dining room in Hitchin, but had been propped against the wall in our bedroom since we moved here.  It was nice to finally get it hung up and in use again!  The picture beside it is another Carl Larsson print.

My shopping trolley was just about the only thing that had been kept in the old porch, and needed a really good clean before I put it in our pristine new space!  Now that it's easily to hand, I will be able to make use of it again especially since it's not grubby and yucky anymore 😄

I took the ornaments on the windowsills from elsewhere in the house.  The only little tweaks I've made since are to simply move some of my houseplants out there, something it was always my intention to do.

We're really happy with our new porch and despite it being smaller than the old one, it serves our purposes admirably 😊