Real homes: house-swap to Sydney

For the last few months, most of my spare time has seen me dressed like this.

The reason? Well, aside from getting fed up with living in a never-finished place for nearly eight years we're doing a house-swap with a family in Sydney, Australia to visit my two brothers, who live out there. And the family's house looks like this...

Have you ever done a house-swap? I don't want our guests in London to feel short-changed, or at least not really short-changed (that is some house – I can't even begin to compete) so it's been a massive push to finally finish off all the jobs that have been lingering unfinished around the place. It's also good practice for the looming Air BnB project, which I'm hoping to kick-off in the next couple of months  – the room is finally ready and I'll post some pictures of that next week.

Typically most of the work on the house isn't even stuff that other people will notice. But I do, and it's been worth it. Over the next few weeks I'll share some of the changes that didn't just involve repainting a room white and covering up brown stains from the leaky roof, and shall also report back with more photos of our glamorous holiday home.