Turning this French farmhouse into our dream home: our next project

The new year started with really beautiful frosty winter weather. We don't often have snow here, we only had a tiny bit, but it did freeze quite a lot during the night and it turned burgundy into a magical wintry landscape. We headed out to check on the house of friends who aren't here for the winter to make sure everything was okay. And then when we got back home, we started our next project, which is to turn our guest room, which we have used as our bedroom, into a proper finished bedroom. So we're going to change a few things in here. We're going to take this old bed out that we haven't put into our new bedroom, so we are going to donate this. And Olaf is going to start to build the bathroom that we have always planned here but never built because it wasn't a priority. So that is our new project for the start of this year. So that bedroom was always intended to be a guest room and it was always intended to have its own bathroom. We needed that space though, the bathroom space, to store all of our stuff for the cabin and the cottage. Bedding, towels, extra blankets, duvets. I don't even want to know, I don't even want to think about, because it's now all in the bedroom and my job this week is to get it all out of there and we're going to move it all into our future offices. So voila, it is all going to go in here. As you can see, this is where we are currently storing things. So this is all the bedding and stuff for the rentals, extra stuff, candles. Here's all the coffee, the soaps, the towels. I am going to do a really major switch up of this. Switch out anyway, because this is not, we've just made it work with the limited space that we had on the other side of the house. Just to remind you, this nit didn't exist. 80% of the spaces that you now see me where I film did not exist when we built the house. It was a very small house, just the downstairs of this area, that was it. And the rest was barn and stable, which was not livable at all. We didn't even have four walls and a good roof. So we are gradually building a little of that. And as we were doing that, we were just using the spaces that we had to store the things that we needed to store. So that's why we gathered all the cupboards and wardrobes that we've collected over time from Emma Huissen, all those places, like all for, or they were in the house when we bought the house. This was in my son's room in the Netherlands. So we've just put them all here. So we have everything that we can, like all the space that we can. And I'm just, for now, I'm going to put everything in here. It will not be pretty, but I will make it pretty as soon as I brought everything that you've seen me film from the other room in here. And then figure out how I'm going to nicely organize this. So here's the thing, I think, with when you see people that are doing a big renovation project, it's lovely to see the end result and all the things that they're creating. But it's also sometimes, I think, good to remind yourself that it takes a lot of time and that a lot of the people that I know that do this live in pretty harsh circumstances for a long period of time during those renovations. And for us, I mean, pretty harsh. No, we are extremely blessed. I have a roof over my head. I have a loving family. We're all healthy. I have food on the table every day. I live in a country that is in peace. I mean, I would never, never, ever deny any of that. We're extremely blessed and we have a wonderful life, but the beautiful bedroom, the beautiful kitchen, that's not all that's to this life. It also means that in the past seven years, we have been moving things around in our own home while we were renovating it. I'm getting to the point where I would love for things to be put in their final place. And the good news is that that is where we are at the moment. We are currently working on getting to that point. See, the issue is my husband orders all the things he needs for his building works. I have no clue what they are and they're all just dumped in here. So I'm just going to make a corner with this kind of stuff because, like, I'm throwing this away. They all tell me, why did you throw it away? I needed that. I don't think he needs this. I'll have him check this bag before I actually throw it away. Do you know that mystery of the socks where you always only find one and then you're sure you put two in your washing machine and then you always find one? I think this is where that other one went. I am going to have to end the video here. After filming this, I had an appointment at the dentist. I need some major work done. And after that, my throat wasn't well and I had to take some rest. And I have allowed myself to just take that rest. So I'm only now recording this voice message so I can still post this video for you. I will be back with more updates as soon as I can. Thanks so much for watching. See you soon.