Home – Building Your Own Conservatory

Living in our cottage has been three and a half years spent coming up with clever storage solutions and making the most of every nook and cranny. We have pondered the addition of a conservatory for extra space over the last year and the soon arrival of a third person to the cottage is a perfect reason to get started. 

This is one of the first photos we ever took of the house, it’s not looked as sleepy as this for a long time!

The patio before the conservatory

 If there’s one thing Sam and I like, it’s a bargain. This doesn’t mean scrimping on quality but searching around and buying from unusual places always proves worthwhile. With a lot to purchase this year, a brand new conservatory was out of budget but it didn’t put an end to our conservatory dreams. We ended up buying one on eBay at a brilliant price, it meant Sam had to go and take it down but the money we saved was well worth it. We took time searching online on various websites until we found one that was the perfect size, we didn’t want to rush into buying one that wouldn’t be right. We really did fall lucky with this as it was a lot less than our budget because the seller was desperate to have it gone.

A bit of a building site at this point

 


The good thing with not going all out with the initial purchase of the conservatory means you can afford to change the parts you want to without much worry about having spent a fortune on the parts you want to alter. We got this gorgeous stone to make the outside window sills to replace the PVC ones, they really match the bricks and they remind me of slate which makes me think of Wales. (One of my favourite places) We also decided to purchase a new roof as they are supposed to be replaced every so many years so decided it was best to start with a new one. 

We weren’t going to put the frame up or anything Percy

Missing a few windows at this point but nearly there

The last couple of months have involved: turning our patio into the base for the conservatory, building walls, fitting the conservatory frame, building a ceiling, fixing it up with electricity. I can’t claim much glory for where it is right now, Sam really is the man behind it. We are now officially working with an inside room though so it’s time for plastering and painting so I will be able to help more now (I hope!). As you can see, Percy has loved every stage of the conservatory but is now loving the heat in there on a sunny day even more – he seems to be fixed to the window sills already. He has a knack of finding the peace amongst the chaos! 

I will be back to update with our design and baby proofing plans once the plastering and painting is done!