Welcome to my blog

We moved to Ireland with the notion of building our "dream" home in May 2007 after purchasing the site earlier on that year. Mr C is Irish and originally from Limerick but he remains in the UK during the week, his job is running www.cruise.co.uk and earning the bucks that will hopefully allow us to "live the dream."

It's taken us almost two years but ground will be broken on the site by the end of May 09!! A lot of blood, sweat & loads of tears (all mine!) have gone into this project already, we left a fabulous house behind in Newcastle...and now for my Kevin McLeod bit, "can the new build can live up to my expectations and the old house we left behind"? I'm not sure...keep watching my blog and you'll find out!!

Monday, August 17, 2009

Family Room Progress

View from behind!
click on the picture to enlarge


87 days into the project and this is where we are at.....

with the Family Room
Click on picture to enlarge

Am going to put a boiler stove into the fireplace in the family room. We do like to light a fire in the evening, so it will be great to know that every time we "light up" in the new house it will be powering up the hot water for showers and underfloor heating!! The family room is semi open plan through to the kitchen and dining area, so lighting up the stove should keep all of those areas toasty in the winter....oooh am almost looking forward to the depths of winter (next year that is!)

I was going to put in one of these




However, I'm now considering this one!

" The Aquatherm Eco F34 stove has the sort of heat output usually associated with a utilitarian boiler designed to be hidden away in a utility room, but in a stunning contemporary wood stove. The F34 has a huge airwashed window that is 900mm wide and 540mm high. The Aquatherm Eco F34 is also well suited for use with an accumulator tank. With such a large heat output to water (24kW / 82,000 BTU) you might decide to burn the stove relatively hard and store the heat in a large accumulator tank for use when needed later on. An accumulator tank can also easily form the connection point for other heat sources in your system, solar panels for example"....

This is a bit of a beast and I love it, it is just crying out to go here.....


next up the kitchen............

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Laundry Room Lovely........

I can't wait to get my hands on this funky heated towel rail which I bought today!
It's going in my laundry room.....how cool is this for drying your smalls on!

image courtesy of designradiator.dk

It's made by an Italian company called Deltacalor, whom I was totally unfamiliar with until very recently. They do however make the most fantastic radiators.....but not the cheapest around by any means.

Always on the look out for a bargain I bagged mine via ebay, (at a snip Mr C if you are reading this!!!) It's not a current model but that's fine with me, I'm sure our undies won't mind!!


A selection of some current designs from Deltacalor



They can be purchased in Ireland from Global Design