Welcome! I’m Mar, living in the Netherlands with my partner/sort-of-hubby Pat. We have the privilege of taking care of one rather large dog, who sometimes listens to the name of Champ, a smaller dog called Ivy, a cat named Daisy, and two rabbits called Bram and Toos (yeah, those are typically Dutch names). And believe it or not, the cat is smaller than either rabbit.
Our little grove
Last year we bought a house in a small village in the middle of the Netherlands. The house sits on a piece of land next to a little grove, turned play area for the village. We have a decent plot of land (by Dutch standards), which is about 1.100 square meters, or 0.27 acres.
The house itself was built sometime in the 1930s. The exact date is unknown, as are the building plans… We do know it existed during World War II, because, as the story goes, shrapnel from the bombing of the house across from ours was found embedded in the front door.
The house
The house was put on the market in 2020, and while it is in good structural condition, it hasn’t seen any upgrades in a long while. Most of the windows are single-glazed, those that are double-glazed are from the eighties. In addition, the roof and crawl space are without isolation, so as you can imagine the utility bill is quite high. The only source of heat is an old-fashioned gas stove in the sitting room. The kitchen was added later at the back of the house, and both the toilet and shower cell were placed at that time as well. They are on the ground floor and only reachable through the kitchen.
But we fell in love with the place, the space, and especially the potential. So we bought it, intending to drag it into the 21st century, kicking and screaming if necessary. And that is how our journey began, a journey where I will keep you up-to-date on our progress in dragging our house into the 21st century and creating a home.
I hope you’ll enjoy reading along and please let me know what you want to hear about especially!
Mar
