Introducing Spaw Cottage

Welcome to our new home – Spaw cottage. The cottages were built in 1730 – I know! Ancient! We are living in a bit of history.

They were later refurbished in 1825 and since been brought into the 21st centery with the addition of indoor bathrooms and central heating etc..

Lets start with the little lane you would use to come and visit us…

Yesterday I mentioned that the van we hired for our move got stuck in our driveway. The reason being that this little country lane is rather rutted and muddy. So when we tried to reverse the van out of our driveway – which has a gradient – into this muddy little lane, our wheels kept spinning – after 45 minutes of trying everything we could think of, we realized we were not going anywhere! This placed a considerable amount of pressure on us as we had to get the van back to the rental company before 8.30 the following morning or risk having to pay another full day’s fee, and of course the problem of how to get this great huge van out of our driveway. A quick call to the rental company assured us that we had plenty of time to get the van back, (we had planned to return it the same day as DH then would not have to miss to much work), but they also informed us that a tow – the only possible way to get the van out of the drive- was going to cost us £180 excluding vat! Eeeeek, suddenly the stress levels rose 100%. Until…. I remembered that we are AA members through our bank due to the type of account we hold. Jubilation!!! Sure enough, AA was with us in 15 minutes. Unfortunately the AA man also got stuck in the mud and a 4X4 had to come and tow us both out! What a performance! So free at last at no cost to us at all! Yipeee!

Moving on… if you continue down the little lane, you will come to some stables. The girls have already made friends and spent just about the entire weekend with horses. Beyond that is 15 miles of country walks. So we are really on the very edge of where suburbia and country meet.

Our front garden and a little snowman standing vigil made from Mondays snowfall ;o)

Our small front yard which I am told is quite beautiful in summer.

You enter through the front door into a cute little mudroom – which was difficult to try and get a picture of – then into the lounge…

From the lounge we move into the dining-room… you can just see the small back garden through the french doors. We have put our bird feeder there and have seen 3 little robins visit the feeder every day so far.

and from the dinning-room into the kitchen.

Now upstairs was a bit tricky to photograph. Once up the stairs to the right we have a small room which I am using as a study and a place to hang up washing while the tumble dryer is out of action. Our bedroom is also there but is really tricky to try and photograph! The photograph of the snow was taken from our bedroom window.

If you move left from the stairwell you will reach the bathroom – which I’m not going to photograph – it’s just a normal neat little bathroom. Then we have Miss J-L’s room..

Hmmm, that bed needs a skirt/frill on it’s base!

Can you see Cinders the on the windowsill? She just LOVES lying there watching the birds at the feeder.

There is another stairwell from J-L’s room leading to a loft room which Miss V-L claimed as her bedroom…

So, now you know where we are! When my little office space is free from laundry, I will show you where I post from ;o). We love our cottage! We love where it is and how we feel living here. It is beautiful and feels warm and comfortable. I hope that we will be here for many many years! I am looking forward to working in the garden – there is much cleaning up to do, and hopefully I can get some spring bulbs in the ground before it freezes over! I’m going to have to move quickly though ;o)

See you all for Yarn Along tomorrow ;o)