Shiny space-age house

Upstairs in the house now looks really weird.  Alongside the old brick fireplace, we now have metallic, shiny silver walls!  Very bizarre looking.  It does actually feel warmer up there than downstairs which is encouraging and it seems lighter too.  Guess if you have mirror walls it should do!!

So, the ceiling has 2" insulation board between the rafters and then 3" or 4" below the rafters.  The walls have 1" between the studwork and another 1" on the roomside.  Then I've stuffed rockwool in any little nooks and crannies around wonky bricks, etc and taped all the joints with special foil tape.  That's weird stuff - it's like sticky tinfoil and, oh, don't ever pull the backing paper off a strip all at once, it curls up on itself before you can blink and then you get in a right pickle trying to sort it out . . . . . . not that I've done that at all of course, no, not me!!  All in all, we should be fairly toasty up there I think.  We now have to get the building inspector to take a look and then we can plasterboard . . . . . well, after the plumber has done the pipes for the radiator  . . . . . and there is one more oak post to go in first.  Oh, there's always something else to do before we can do the next thing!

While I've been insulating, Bob has been carrying on with the doors.  We had a bit of a palaver getting the nails.  We wanted traditional rose-head nails - the ones you see on old doors that look like little studs on the outside and on the inside you see the ends bent over and back into the wood.  Bob found the only company in Britain still making them - it's in Glasgow, but the Period House shop in Shrewsbury is one of their stockists.  On New Year's Eve Bob rang them to make sure they had some in stock - yes, loads.  So on Tuesday we went to get them.  They didn't have any 3", only 21/2" - the chap on the phone had made a mistake.  But, the lady running the shop could pick some up from their Ludlow shop and bring them with her the next day.  So, Bob went back the next day - oops! she'd forgotten them!  Her partner was driving over with them, so Bob went off for a coffee while he waited.  When he got home we excitedly (doesn't take much!) opened the boxes to have a look.  The first one we got out was only 21/2" long, and the next, and the next and so on.  Out of 11/2kg of nails we only had 30 that were the right length!  Anyway, a couple of phonecalls later and the poor girl at the Ludlow shop was sorting through their big box of nails to find  11/2kg of 3" nails and then posted them to us and they arrived special delivery this afternoon.

Now we have to learn how to clench!  No, it's not a post-Christmas exercise for firming the buttocks!  It's when the nail is knocked through the wood with the pointy end sticking out the other side and then the end is bent over and knocked back into the wood a bit like a staple which fixes the joint.  It's not that easy, but by the time the doors are finished we should have the hang of it.  The nails are really quite soft which is good for bending them over, but means that the pilot holes have to be just right or the nails bend all over the place as you knock them in.  The other problem is that when you knock the pointy end back into the wood it can knock the head end back out.  Following some internet research, tomorrow we will try holding a sturdy hammer against the head while the pointy bit is knocked back in . . . let you know how we get on.

The chickens have finished their Christmas stalk of sprouts and so are glad that the snow's gone and the garden has thawed out enough for them to peck at the greenery.  I haven't told them that more snow is forecast for tomorrow yet!  Still no eggs from Bonny, but her comb is definitely bigger which apparently happens when they are ready to start laying, so we have high hopes for the next few days.  Did I tell you Peggy laid a lovely double-yolker just before Christmas - just my sort of egg, lots of yolk and not much white and delicious in my bacon butty!  They have all taken to wandering around the bit of woodland across the lane which is owned by the quarry.  Yesterday, the quarry manager came round to take some photos of the Keep Out signs for some report or other and said that if the chickens are in the picture, he'll put in his bio-diversity report that there are wild chickens in their woods!  Well, it'll make a change from great crested newts and horseshoe bats!