My house’s journey in 2013 – from salon to normality

Loads of people do reviews of their life for the previous year, I’m going to do a review of my house’s life last year.

For the first quarter of the year I saw lots of my house because I was still getting to grips with my Fibromyalgia – I basically needed a jolly good rest.  Gradually it brought me the healing I needed and I started to recover.

Then suddenly at the end of May we had a meeting with my friend and hair dresser Tony and a plan I’d had for over 10yrs suddenly burst into life.

Having never designed a thing in my life, I became an upcycling/eBay queen and went on a crash course on Salon and Spa equipment.  I wasn’t just designing a small hairdressers, Oh no!  I was going the full hog and designer a 1700sqft cow shed into a Spa.

The cows moved out and we started with this:

Then walls went in and it got a front and back!

But of course I was ordering stuff like crazy and although some stuff could wait until the Salon/Spa was secure, the majority had to come to our house.

There were extra chairs in the bedroom, and we had to religiously keep the cats out, because look how comfy they all were:

The landing was full, the kitchen had a LOT of extra stools ….

There was no room for the kids to play in the lounge or playroom:

Plus for a couple of weeks the place was full of hairdressers or beauty therapists for the induction training – love them, but it was a bit cramped!

Literally overnight (we got 24hrs to do the final polish of the salon before our open day) this was created:

With crazy people like this in it …

Check out this video of our opening day to have a look around:

One of the rooms wasn’t sure what it wanted to be, but in November the ‘Fabulous Room’ arrived – the perfect location to combine friends, family and CAKE!

I went slightly stir crazy I must admit during those months!  It took 2 months to get the place back to normal and clean all the dust that was hiding under or behind everything, so I had only just got it sorted before Christmas.

I was working constantly in between nursery/school pickups, and then until midnight most nights.  My Fibromyalgia did get very grumpy with me, but I just about managed to hold it together with some pampering from our lovely team.  I’m beginning to see the woods for the trees now!

We’ve stopped using Cbeebies as a nanny and I’m starting to remember how to play with Barbie again (now that we can find her).  That’s probably what inspired my post last year about the ‘Three Best Gifts To Give Your Loved Ones’, as attention and rest have been limited.  Over the last 2 weeks I’ve done a massive declutter of the house and tackled the playroom and I’m much happier with how everything works – I LOVE space!

I’ve also had to clear out one of the bedrooms rooms for our new Spanish Au Pair who arrived this weekend – woohoo!  The reality of the demands of being a business owner and that I’ve had help from a friend staying on and off, and a husband available hit home at Christmas – there was no way I was going to be able to cope and juggle things.  So that’s going to be a big change for the house as well.

What an amazing year, and the journey has only just begun for Espiritu!