This is the reality bit...

Now and again someone will ask something about where we live and why Mr C aka @moschops66 is seemingly always on the roof! So here is a bit of information I can point people to which explains our 'project'.

Our previous house was a perfectly nice 3 bed semi in an average suburb of Cardiff. Both our jobs were (and are) based in Cardiff too. Having lived there for 6 years and got it all how we wanted it with a nice manageable mortgage, we of course decided to move (obviously).

Hard to explain why we wanted to move, because most people probably won't quite understand, but we felt claustrophobic and hemmed in. We were surrounded by other houses which were occupied by the usual mix of people; some nicer and more considerate than others when it came to parking, noise etc. We just felt that we could never fully relax or escape the stresses of life being so 'in the middle' of things.

So we took out a silly mortgage, moved 60 miles away and bought an old, rather large house with 10 acres and no near neighbours, which would take us all our spare time to do up/maintain probably for the next 20 years!

The original house is about 250 years old but it has a hideously ugly 1970s flat roof extension; most of the original features went I suspect during the same decade and the whole thing is a pebble dash nightmare so please do not conjure up images of some beautiful old stone cottage because sadly, that it isn't!

To be honest it was the setting and the lack of neighbours, along with the accessibility to M4 corridor / Cardiff for work that swung it. A picturesque cottage would be nice but we also had budget to consider and compromises have to be made somewhere!

Seven years later...most of the inside of the house is now how we want it; @moschops66 (actually let's call him Paul) has done 99% of it himself and he has no background in this sort of work which makes it all the more impressive when you see how bloody brilliant he is at it! He won't agree of course but anyone who comes here, whether it is to their taste or not, will always comment on the quality of the work.

There is still a little way to go inside but this summer is all about the outside. Bizarrely, the previous owners had painted two faces of the house white and left the other two as the original brown pebbledash. The white paint was looking decidedly off colour, the fascia boards had all rotted and the guttering had broken so all in all, it was looking horrible. It couldn't wait another year so the whole Spring/Summer/Autumn project was decided. (That is along with mowing an acre of VERY awkward lawn regularly and cutting enough logs for the winter)!

To give you an idea...yesterday just removing one old fascia board took many hours involving saws, drills, rope and one very exhausted husband. He then has to make (yes he is making his own) replacement fascia boards, sand, prime, paint and fit. So there's that job many times over before we start with drainpipes, guttering and actually painting the whole house (which is quite big).

And THAT'S why he's always on the roof!