Poor Elvis got got by a dog earlier in the week. We were in the middle of cutting the plasterboard for the oak room when there was an almighty chicken squwarking (how the heck do you spell that, everything looks wrong) outside. Bob legged it leaving me balancing a sheet of plasterboard and when I'd managed to manouver it back onto the trestles I joined him! By then the drama was over, but apparently Bob found a dog in the garden with Elvis in its mouth. After an awful lot of yelling from Bob the dog dropped the chicken and the dog trotted off up the garden and the chicken ran hell-for-leather in the opposite direction. So, we then had to round up the chucks to check them over. Peggy had missed the action, so we shut her in the run. We looked high and low for the other two for ages. Meanwhile the dog had made itself comfy on our woody slope, wagging its tail and watching the action. Eventually, Bob located a tiny mournful chicken sound from behind the chest freezer in the lean-to, but when we looked behind there was no sign of a chicken. Then another little noise and then more in response to our coaxing, but still no sign of them. They had squeezed behind the freezer and wedged themselves, two of them, in the space next to the compressor. We had to very gingerly move the freezer because we weren't sure if there was a bottom to this space or whether they were standing on the floor and might get their feet trapped if we just pulled the freezer out. After quite some time and with plums to entice them, they came out. Bonny was fine, but Elvis was a bit shaky and had some missing feathers. She wasn't quite herself for a couple of days, but seems fine now. By the time we had got them out, I was covered in leaves and cobwebs and was in danger of being late for work. So while I got cleaned up and changed, Bob went and coaxed the dog down, tied a rope around it's collar and, by phoning a neighbour, identified its owner who came to collect it. Drama over.
All that meant, of course, that we didn't get far with the plasterboard. So, the next morning we had another go. With all the bits cut we were ready to dot'n'dab. Bob mixed it up and I flung it at the wall. It didn't seem quite like I remembered it, but that was a while ago so I dismissed the thought and we went ahead and pressed the plasterboard into place. It just didn't seem to grab like it should, so we took it off again (it hadn't stuck at all). It had set quite hard though in just a couple of minutes and stuck very well either to the plasterboard OR the wall, but not both. So, we then spent an age scraping and chiselling it off! We later found out that once the bag of bonding compound is opened it should be used within a few days or it goes off and we'd had this open for months - well, you live and learn!
Anyway, to put the remainder of the morning to good use we thought we'd start moving the stones away from the site of our next wood pile. We had stacked useful big stones there ages ago when the septic tank was put in and they were now pretty much covered and overgrown with creeping buttercups. So we got the wheelbarrow to move and dump them up the garden where we'll be building a wall to do a bit of terracing. Got the first huge stone humped into the wheelbarrow and . . . . . . flat tyre! Oh, the morning wasn't going well. So, we just unearthed the stones and left them where they were and, once again, it was time for me to go to work and nothing much to show for our morning's effort. To catch up, Bob got some more bonding compound in the afternoon and we did the dot and dab walls when I got home and it worked beautifully. So, we have now finished the plasterboarding, taped the joints and filled the gaps against the stone wall and are all ready to get back to skimming. It looks quite different down there. I didn't realise quite what an interesting shape that end of the hall would turn out to be. With the sloping ceiling and door diagonally across one corner, it's quite unusual. It's also very high, unlike everywhere else.
We also have door number two up. That's the one to the utility room, so we can now put the washing machine on overnight to take advantage of the cheap electricity without Bob having to jump down the ladder in just his slippers in the middle of the night to see what the noise was (as he did the first time we put the washer on timer!). I slept straight through without hearing the noise this time, but Bob said it still woke him up, but he got back to sleep . . . . maybe when we have a bedroom door he won't hear it. We have put some hooks on the back of the door for visitor coats and it all looks quite good. We got some material this afternoon to make a blind for the utility room, but I'm not sure when I'll get round to that - it's not really essential and the oak room is priority at the moment. This afternoon we also bought some roses for round the kitchen door - cliche or what?! There were loads and loads of bits of wire, hooks, nails and pins in the wall around the door, so I assume that in the past something was trained up the wall and around the door.
Yesterday the settee was delivered. I joked with the delivery man about it being a flat-pack settee and took his serious nod as a dry sense of humour. Nope, we have a flat-pack settee! We haven't built it yet, or even unwrapped it as it will have to live in the oak room while we plaster around it and so is bound to get splattered.
We had our first dinner guests last night and had a debate about when having friends round for a meal becomes a dinner party. We decided this couldn't possbily be a dinner party as we haven't even got any table mats, we didn't have prawn cocktail to start and there weren't any estate agents or lawyers there (and you probably don't drink beer from bottles at a proper dinner party). Definitely friends round for a meal - Phil and Ann in honour of their unerring support, help and chicken-sitting over the last couple of years and a very nice evening we had too.
Tommorrow, we will have owned this cottage for three years - can you believe that?! Here's what the outside looked like when we got it - doesn't look so bad from outside as it did from inside and, looking at this picture, the garden actually looked a whole lot better then than it does now! Do you see how the garden joins seemlessly with the inside (as they say on all the Grand Designy programmes) with the tree growing through the roof from the inside - bit extreme maybe?
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