We moved house recently. Complete turmoil.

I liked the new windows. There's a long story here, but a couple of pictures will suffice for now. The old house featured ugly, sticky, patched-and-painted, rattly windows; impossible to open without at least two hands, difficult to close without dropping, and impossible to leave ajar. Like this:

whereas in the new house, we have...

...double-hung, oiled oak, sash windows. They were covered with years' accumulation of grime, varnish and paint, but it's very rewarding to fix them up. Especially when they slide so well. Bliss.

The flipside of this artsy renovation ("fiddling while Rome burns", some would say) is that we do have bigger, more urgent problems. Inexpressibly defective plumbing, for one. I've lived in some odd places, but never a house where the upstairs bathroom waste pipes simply opened onto the sitting-room ceiling below (until the ceiling collapsed). So we have a hole now.

It'll take some time...