Hello, & welcome to my first ever Blog. My name is Dwyllis & I am a New Zealander, living in the lower-central part of the North Island. I live with my husband David, our two Bengal cats Tammy & Lily, plus our four dogs, Jontay, Zoe, Loki, & Bryn. In March 2011, David & I moved into a rather delapidated five-bedroomed home. It was an Edwardian, weatherboard villa, built in 1910. My first impression, when being shown this house, was to refer to it as "the ugly house" to the real estate agent. It sat close to the road, with no fence between it & the pavement. The verandah which would have originally sat across the entire front of the house, had been removed in the 1960s in order to add two more bedrooms to the three-bedroomed house. So the once charming cottage-villa had become, in my eyes at least, 'the ugly house'. It took the real estate agent a few minutes to persuade me to view it, but once the front door was opened, & I stepped inside, I fell in love with it. A long, central hallway ran from the front door right through to the back of the house ....identical to a rented house I had lived in from five to seven years of age, before my parents had purchased a rambling, somewhat ramshackled house built in the 1870s. It was growing up in this charming, but faded colonial house, that my love of these old weatherboard homes began to develop. "The ugly house" was not the first house I had moved into which required a great deal of tender loving care, but hopefully it will be my last. So ......I now invite you to join me as I take you on a journey ....a journey of restoration, love, care, & often frustration .......as David & I work to restore Le Villa Gris (The Grey Villa) .....the name we chose to bestow upon our home when we began painting the exterior in the summer, in a beautiful shade of French Lavender Grey. It is a journey, but it is also a labour of love.