This may be my last ever blog!

Yes, this may be the last you hear from me.  Bob's just put a log on the woodburner . . . . trouble is it has a branch sticking out so it's too big to go in and the other end is already alight so we can't take it out!  So, I'm typing through a haze of smoke as we wait for it to burn enough to push right in so we can close the door, either that or it burns the house down!  Farewell!!

Oh, well OK then the drama's over - I just managed to knock a bit off the burning branch which was enough to be able to push it back a bit and close the door.  The fog's now clearing and I think we may live to see another day!

We have our first paying guests coming next weekend . . . . well, not paying, but Carol and Graham (my sister and husband . . . her husband, not mine of course) are staying overnight so that's quite exciting isn't it?  So, we've been working hard on the oak room for them to stay in.  It is now all skimmed and decorated and has a door.  The electrician came on Wednesday, so the light, sockets and underfloor heating all work now.  Talking of heating, the underfloor heating has come on over the last few nights.  You can tell it's been on in the morning as nowhere is chilly, but I wouldn't say the floor is really toasty.  I guess it has quite a slab of concrete to heat and so will take a few days to do that.  Glad it's doing its thing and coming on automatically and working out for itself how long it needs to be on, etc.  The plumber also came on Wednesday and he has drained the whole solar system, flushed it through with fresh water and then pressurised it all with fresh glycol.  He's taped the posh insulation on all the pipes and tweeked a few parameters and has high hopes that all will now be well.  It has been working fairly well to be fair, but it is really too late in the year to tell if it really is all lovely, so we'll wait and see what happens next summer . . . . . . . . .

I've had a really busy week workwise - this is supposed to be a part-time job, doing just 21.75 hours a week, but this week I've done 40 including being in for 7am on my day off!  Next week four or five new people are starting, so perhaps it'll calm down a bit.  Tee hee, we won't be the new kids anymore and people'll be expecting us to know what we're doing!  I've just found out that in the lead up to Christmas the shop opens at 7am which means that the people who go in early to fill the shelves, as I do sometimes, have to be in at 5.30am - oh joy!!!

Won't think about that just yet!  Here's the rest of our week in pictures:

Bob playing with fire again!  He's actually retrieving the old
suffolk latch which we salvaged from one of the old doors.
It was fat with a million coats of paint and the best way to strip it
is to chuck it in the fire.  It's now about half the size and attached to
the bathroom door.

We suddenly realised that the stone wall in the oak room was
covered in green slime - well not slime any more because it had dried.
It would've been sensible to clean it off before we built the room wouldn't it and I do remember thinking about it, but it never got done.  So, with rubber gloves and old washing up brushes we set to with stone floor cleaner and it does now look much more like an inside wall thank goodness!



We went to the blacksmiths today to pick up a curtain pole and saw
these bright little numbers and thought they'd make the view from the
oak room a bit more cheerful!



. . . . . and guess what I'm doing again?  Next lot of curtains
is on the go - for the oak room of course, but I'm not sure if I'll
actually get them finished in time for next weekend.  We chose the material
yesterday, but they didn't have enough so they took our number and said they'd
call as soon as it came in.  Not long after we got home, they called to say it was in - now how's that for service?!  Someone else had actually ordered some and that's what
arrived, but they didn't need the whole roll so there was enough for us too - handy!

Now, just look at this cheeky chicken!  Tuesday was a lovely day so we
had the kitchen door open and spent the whole of our lunchtime shooing the
chickens out of the door ending up with a washing up bowl of water as a persuader!
Next thing we know, a chicken appears from the other direction and hops up into the
stair opening to look at us and check if there were any sarnies going spare.  She'd gone through the open door to the middle barn, down the steps, along the hall and then up onto this bit of wall!!  On the same day, Bob found a wren in the middle barn (where they nested
earlier in the year) - well they'll have to think again because they won't be able to get
in there next Spring . . . . hopefully!