The baby wrens have arrived

Yes, we have babies!  We've seen the adults busy with worms and grubs in their beaks, so guessed that the eggs had hatched and when Bob looked this afternoon there were several bits of shell on the floor under the nest.  I tried to take a phot of the shells on my hand or next to my finger to give an idea of scale, but I'm not clever enough to hold eggs and hold the camera still the same time, so they were too blurry, anyway the eggs are smaller than my finger nail (you'd need a lot of them for an omelette!).  The chicks will be so tiny at the moment, it's hard to imagine.  We can't see them because the nest is quite deep with the entrance hole near the top.  If I remember rightly from last year, wren chicks are incredibly quiet, so I don't think we'll hear them for a while.  When they're a bit bigger they do cheap a bit when the parents come with food, but the rest of the time they are very good and sit quietly.  Not like woodpecker chicks who make a racket all day long which just gets a bit louder when the adults visit with food.  Talking of woodpeckers, both adult Greater Spotteds have been on the peanut feeders almost constantly for the last few days, so I think they have hungry mouths to feed.  They take the nuts to the telegraph pole across the lane and wedge them in a crack then peck at them to break them up before they take them to the babies.  I watched a blackbird collecting twigs for a nest this morning - as the twigs were very fine and he had a whole beakful, he looked as though he was wearing a big false moustache, quite funny.  I assume this will be a 2nd nest - it seems a bit late for the first brood.

We had a rootle through some of the stuff we have stored in one of the barns the other day.  We haven't looked at it all for two and a half years and we've forgotten what we've got which makes it all quite exciting.  Bob wanted to unwrap it all I think.  We didn't though.  We were looking for some cupboard doors to go on the cabinet under the basin in the en-suite as they did in the old house (we replaced them with birch ply doors before we moved!).  We found them and they are lovely - made from rippled sycamore with quite a bit of character in them.  When they are closed you can see a face which I used to call a devil's face, but looking at it now, it's quite cheery and smiling - must just be glad to be here I guess!

Bob has made the bit the basin will sit in so we can put the little square slate tiles on it and fix the sink in before the plumber comes to connect it all up.  The good thing about doing all this ourselves is that we can have the sink as high as we like (less bending to clean your teeth . . . . how old do we sound?!!).

You'll be pleased to hear, we don't need to plasterboard the whitewashed walls.  Colouring the whitewash wasn't as scary as we thought and we now have creamwashed walls - if anything they are a bit too pale!  Never satisfied, eh?  We also mixed some red ochre and yellow ochre to make a deeper colour for one wall in the en-suite.  It made a lovely rich terracota colour . . . . which has now dried to a pale apricot colour.  Well, that's OK - not what we intended, but fine.  You could get a bit addicted to this - it'd be quite interesting to see if you could get a darker colour.  I think you have to be careful as too much of the pigment can spoil the way the limewash dries and it'd just be flaky.

Bob has carried on with the kitchen floor - it's a bit back-breaking, so has to be done in shorter sessions.  It's coming on well though and the bit for the woodburner is done which is the most important part as we need to get that delivered so the plumber can connect the backboiler. 

We had a mega-shopping spree earlier in the week  . . . . . although we only came home with a tub of PVA glue!  We ordered the tiles for the bathrooms, the sink for the utility, all the sockets and switches, heat and smoke detectors, extractor fans, bathroom and hall lights, showers (electric for downstairs and mains for upstairs) and a water softener!  We should be able to collect some of it tomorrow and the rest next week  . . . . . and then pay for it all - gulp!  The floorboards haven't arrived yet.  It was pouring down on Saturday, so they didn't deliver which is fine as we don't want them spoiled by getting wet.  We'll have to arrange another time, but trying to find a dry time is proving a little difficult - we had a huge thunderstorm on Monday.

Tomorrow morning we have the electric company coming to change the meter to Economy 7 so we'll have to find some jobs to do that aren't reliant on electricity.  Perhaps I'll do some more painting - I'm trying to do all the bits that'll be awkward to do once the electrician has been and fitted lights and so on.