A Stitching Odyssey: Trading in my sewing tools, temporarily...

Sadly friends, you won't be seeing any finished sewing posts from me for a while. I've alluded to buying a house before and having finally got the keys two and a half weeks ago, I've had to trade in my sewing tools for the rather barbaric-looking ones above...and then some! Although we don't move in until Tuesday, we've been putting in some crazy hours to decorate - either 12 hour days on weekends, or during weekdays, a couple of hours before work and even more after.

It's been an exhausting, and at times, frustrating journey, but ultimately very rewarding now that we can see it all coming together nicely. What pains me most though, is having absolutely no time to sew...or to even plan out projects. Before we embarked on this adventure, I insisted on leaving my sewing room unpacked for as long as possible, convinced I'd be able to sneak in the odd cheeky hour now and then. I was so wrong! But, at least it's all temporary until we've moved and my new sewing room is set up.

Now, I don't have the skills, experience or inclination to turn this into a DIY blog. However, I thought some of you might be interested to see what's been keeping me away from sewing. Plus, I've promised to document parts of our process here for friends and family...apologies in advance if you couldn't give a monkey's!

Hilariously, all this time and effort we've put in has been for just one room...the living room. We figured if we transform this into a stylish sanctuary, we won't mind tackling the rest of the house much more slowly. As with any older house (ours is Victorian, built approximately in 1905), things are never simple. Altogether we replaced the radiator, demolished ugly built-in cupboards, exposed uglier gas and electric metres, built slimmer-line cupboards for the metres, stripped layers of painted-over wallpaper, re-plastered parts of the walls, sanded the walls, sealed the walls, painted the skirting boards white, refreshed the cornices, sanded the wooden floor and filled/sealed endless nooks and crannies.

I hope you agree that the stripped back room is already looking fresher and lighter. We've since painted the walls and have the floor varnish left to apply, so I'll make sure to share some 'after' photos too.

All this is not to say that our house is in need of total renovation. In fact, it's in lovely condition and well-decorated, but I guess we want to put our own stamp on it and freshen in up a little. And there are so many beautiful original features that we fell in love with in the first place.

Anyway, sorry to bore you all with this! I just wanted to explain the absence of finished sewing projects on my part. I'm still reading/commenting on blogs as much as possible and you're all making me itch to get back in the sewing seat!

Have you ever been forced to take a sewing break? How did you get your sewjo back?