Do you love your home? Now we’re under lockdown we are having to spend 24/7 in it whether we like it or not.

We have lived in our house for almost 14 years now. You’d think that after having lived in it for so long we would have gotten it to a stage where we are happy with it, but that is pretty far from the truth. We probably spent the first six months after we moved in, redecorating the house ourselves. As soon as we’d got into a liveable condition, the jobs that we never got around to, took a backseat.

A marriage and two children later and there is never any “spare” time left to even think about finishing the house – especially in those early baby days when you’re just in a haze of sleep deprivation and nappies. Unsurprisingly, there are still jobs that need doing and as we’ve grown as a family, so have our needs.

We have been talking about renovating our home for a while now – we’ve even toyed with the idea of moving. With two boys growing by the second we simply need more space and we’re very lucky that we are able to either add a conservatory or extension to the back of our house.  Conservatories generally work out a bit cheaper than an extension and would probably give us the same amount of space, the only thing I am not sure about is how useable the space would be in the winter as I know conservatories aren’t normally as well insulated as the rest of the house.

With us all at home now more than we’ve ever been before, I am making what feels like a million meals a day in our tiny galley kitchen (totally bored of it too). It’s been on our to-do list to change it for ages but with all our conservatory/extension plans, we figured that it would make sense that we looked at updating that at the same time. I am so desperate to knock through into the dining room to make our kitchen bigger with all the mod cons. We can barely fit two people in it at any one time and it is so cluttered as we simply don’t have enough cupboards to house things in.

The other thing we want to do is convert the loft to add an extra bedroom. Doing this would mean the boys would each have their own bedroom and we’d be able to use our box room, which is currently a dumping ground as an office.

Now is probably the ideal time to really think about the work that we want to be carried out on the house. It gives us time to agree on what part of the work to start on first. For the record, Mr H wants to start with the garden, whereas I want a new kitchen! After living in the house for 14 years, I think a new kitchen should definitely top of the list don’t you think?