February 2019: we finally bought the new house, and it was completely empty. My plan was to document every step of the refurbishment. Reality had other plans.
An empty house and terrible audio
This was meant to be the first of a long series. The house was totally empty, so the audio indoors was awful, with lots of echo. I started bringing a few things over, and we had appointments to choose the wooden floors and the new tiles for the two bathrooms. The opening footage was shot on the 25th of January. By the time I sat down in the garden to talk, it was the 7th of February, nice and warm in the afternoon, siesta time, with not many people around.
Why I needed to stay focused
When you renovate a house, I realised, you have no time to think about placing a camera or documenting what's happening. You need to stay focused on important decisions, and filming makes you lose that momentum. By then we'd ordered the tiles and chosen all the materials for the bathrooms. The kitchen was the last big decision, due the following Monday. Once that was sorted, I hoped to dedicate more time to videos.
In the meantime I shared some aerial shots. I'd also just sold my little Spark, so it was time to say goodbye to it.