Official approval!

Yep, we have official approval from Building Control and have been 'signed off'!  We arranged the visit for yesterday when our man should have been back from his holiday, but their office rang in the morning to say he was not back and so the chap we had last week would be coming.  I guess the good side of that is that a different inspector may find new things for us to do, but this one just had to go through last week's list and tick things off.  Somehow it didn't feel like quite the wonderous moment we were expecting and we had to think about it a bit to realise that he had actually paid us some compliments.

Bob had put up a temporary handrail because the blacksmith one would take too long.  The inspector wasn't really happy with this because it wasn't continuous and someone might fall down the stairs while they move their hand onto the next bit.  We said it was only temporary and we had the blacksmith coming later in the day to measure up for the proper handrail and after a lot of umming and ahhing he said he'd lower his standards for us and pass it, although he wouldn't usually, because he realises we have it in hand and will do a proper job.  It takes a bit of thinking about, but I think that is actually a compliment.  There were a couple of other things in the same vein, but generally he was happy enough to pass it.

The temporary door between the kitchen and the
hall - it looks really weird and makes the opening
look much narrower.

In the end he shook our hands and said we'd done a smashing job, well done - so, from a council official I think we should be pleased enough with that.  And so, we are free . . . . free from official intervention and inspection, wooh-hooh!  In the age-old tradition, we had a celebratory beer and curry last night of course.

While Bob was doing doors I did some pointing-in around the stairs and the doorframes - that's what the pink stuff is everywhere.  It should all look much better once it's limewashed and blends in to the rest of the wall.

So, the blacksmith came and we have a plan for the handrail.  It'll be quite small and plain and will start at the top with a leaf-shaped piece which screws onto the newel post on our bedroom side.  It will then curl round and down the newel post (at regulation height of 900mm from stairs) in an eliptical helix.  Then down the stairs, fixing onto the oak post with a small bracket which ends with the same leaf shape, and then it will curl round the wall at the end and finish with another leaf shape fixing.

All the baby birds are growing up rapidly.  The baby woodpeckers have mastered the peanut feeder and are quite proficient on it now as are the baby jays - all regular visitors.  The seed feeder on the kitchen window is like Paddy's Market with constant to-ing and fro-ing.  Yesterday a pair of goldfinches dominated it and between them just about emptied it.  I don't think they ate much, just emptied it!  The chickens were in heaven of course with all those sunflower seeds on the floor!

We have a chaffinch who definitely thinks he should be allowed in.  He has taken to sitting on the little ledge outside the utility room 'draft hole' window and tapping on the glass every morning at about 6am and then he sits there all morning.  He then comes round to the other side of the house and either sits on the window sill and taps or sits on the window bar half way up looking in!  I assume it's the same one.  A couple of days ago, we had a very smart male bullfinch doing the same thing.  The mother woodpecker has started taking a seed from the feeder on the window and she then clings onto the wall, lodges the seed in a crevice and taps away at it to get the husk off to feed to the babies . . . . . it's really quite noisy here with all these birds tapping away!

The other day Bob had a little helper in the form of a baby robin who came into the lounge to inspect the doorframe he was working on.  He then flew into the end bedroom and perched on our 'chandelier' while he had a good look around.  This picture is a little fuzzy, but believe me, baby robins are very sweet!  The same little chap was trying to learn how to use the peanut feeder this morning and quite persistent he was too - no-one's told him yet that robins don't usually use those sort of bird feeders!

Well, it's the first day of summer and we have the woodburner blazing away, it's been pouring down for ever and it's almost dark at 5.30pm!  I know we've now had the shortest night, but I didn't think we'd notice the evenings drawing in quite so dramatically!  It's a good job we did our log chopping and weed pulling yesterday!