A brief introduction

Hello and welcome to this Blog. This is the first time I've done this (bit scary really!), but I should have started it about two years ago . . . . I first thought of doing it about a year ago . . . . thought I really ought to get on with it a few months ago . . . . but needed a kick start in the shape of my son, Ben, to actually do anything about it. He just sat down, worked out how to start a Blog and set this up - it took just minutes and was so easy, I should have done it ages ago!

Friends and family obviously know all the background, but just in case anyone else reads this, here's a very quick introduction (I'll write about all the stuff that's gone on so far in the weeks to come, but if I don't start doing updates on what we're doing soon then there won't be much point really).

So, here goes: - My husband, Bob, and I are renovating a cottage and attached barns on the English side (just) of the Welsh border in North Shropshire. We have been here since October 2008 (you see I should have started this ages ago!) living in a static caravan. We haven't done anything like this before (except in our heads) so it's a steep learning curve and taking a fair amount of time, but as we're doing almost all the work ourselves, that seems OK to me.

The former quarry cottage had not been lived in for over 30 years (except by sheep) and was in a very sorry state with holes in the roof, walls falling down, no floor upstairs, overgrown garden etc, etc. We have found the cottage on an 1832 map, but not sure how long before that it was built. Attached to the two-up-two-down cottage are two barns and they had a good thick layer of ancient cow muck covering them. The buildings are all in line, so a long, thin building just one room wide. The site is surrounded by woodland and on a steep slope, so the end barn is half built into the hill and there are two more small barns further up the hill. It is just outside a small village and you get to it down a narrow, muddy track (it's actually a council-maintained road, but they've obviously forgotten about it).

OK, so briefly this is what we've done so far - we've stripped the roof and replaced many of the timbers and re-slated it, we've done a lot of underpinning (in some places the walls didn't actually reach the floors let alone have foundations), cleared out all the barns and removed the very rickety haylofts and insulated and concreted all but one of the floors and we've done endless re-pointing (and still plenty more to do). We have also built a stone and slate extension and have the foundations and concrete slab down for the other half of the extension which will be oak-frame clad in chestnut. Most of the new oak beams and posts are now done in the cottage part (which will be the kitchen).

You may be wondering about the name of this Blog and can probably guess that we have chickens and one is called Elvis - I'll introduce you to them later.