Romantic Valentine Serenade

Well, my nine days off work just flew by (as they do!).  When I got back yesterday nothing much had changed except that sales of ready-made lasagnes and mince are down - people are actually going to real butchers and making their own lasagne so they don't risk eating horse meat!  It'll be interesting to see how long that lasts.  My hours are a bit different next week and I'm working on Wednesday instead of Saturday!!!!  That means I'm having a Saturday off without booking it as holiday for the first time ever!  And it's my Sunday-off weekend so I have a whole weekend - can you believe it?  I couldn't and had to check the rota about six times.



Think the camera lens needs cleaning!

So, while I was off we cracked on with the lounge.  We took the temporary loft boards out of the crog loft and laid proper floorboards and it now looks quite posh up there now Bob has given it three coats of floor oil.  It's a shame we have to spoil it by storing boxes up there, but I guess that's partly what it's for.  Eventually, Bob's record player will be installed along with all his LPs (I don't have any of mine any more - they disappeared in divorce proceedings somehow).  We'll also get a squishy sofa bed up there and make it into a den-type place. 

There, I've cleaned the lens

Ellie, my 16 year old neice has bagged it as her sleeping place already!  Along the low parts of the walls we'll build some cupboar/storage aort of things which will be very handy as we don't have a traditional loft to hide junk in.  The black line you can see along the floor is the other tie-bar we put in - didn't plan this very well did we, we could have put the joists a tad higher and then the bar would be hidden between the floor and the ceiling below.  Not to worry, it's not where anyone would trip over it and in a way, it's nice to see the workings of the building - there's not much that's hidden here.

Once the floorboards were down and we'd finished banging nails in, we got on with skimming the ceiling below.  Oh, what a nightmare that was!  We have got on fairly well with all the rest of the skimming we've done, but this just didn't go well at all.  I suppose it is quite a while since we did any and se we're out of practice, but this is also the only expanse on horizontal ceiling which must be the most awkward to do.  The only other horizontal we've done is the kitchen, but that is borken up into small segments by the oak joists.  As we were doing it it didn't feel as though it was going too well, but it didn't look too bad when we'd finished, so we were happy.  Then I went in there in the evening and switched the lights on - oh my goodness, what a mess it looked.  I suppose the lights and shadows highlight all the flaws.  It was bad enough for us to mix some more plaster and have a go at putting it right.  It's better, but is definitely not our best piece of work - cottagey you could say if you were being kind!  Anyway, tis done and painted, so that's that.  Since then I've done some wall painting.  It takes ages because, being bare stone, there are all sorts of nooks and crannies to cover, so that's an ongoing task.  You know, from our New Year's Day planning list which filled an A4 sheet with tasks, Bob has been able to cross off loads of things, but I've only been able to cross off one thing.  It doesn't take much to write 'pointing' on a list, but it took weeks to be able to cross it off and 'painting' will be similar I think.

We've also has some 'us time' while I've been off and had the friends from the caravan on the farm over the hill over for dinner - I don't think they wanted to leave our cosy kitchen because it was about 2am before we went to bed!  It was a good evening though.  The next day Jan (Bob's stepmum) came over for lunch.  It was a lovely sunny day and so we went for a bit of a walk and then sat on the beer bench for a cup of tea and a piece of cake (sticky marmalade loaf from the February page of the 'Bake-off' calendar Ben and Lucy gave us for Christmas - yummy-yummy-yum-yum!).  It was just so nice to sit in the sun for an hour or so - we seem to have waited a long time for a nice day.  Do you think that's this year's summer gone?  We also went over to Montgomery to the auction (didn't buy anything yet again) and a look round their little shops and galleries which made a pleasant change.  For Valentines we planned a romantic meal (bargain steak - reduced at M&S at Christmas to just 40p each) with all the trimmings and I was really looking forward to it.  Unfortunately, just as the steak finished cooking, I splashed a bit of redwine into the pan to loosed all the tasty bits which splashed cooking fat over the top of the woodburner, causing smoke, causing all the smoke detectors to blare out.  Because these are the proper hard-wired things, you can't just take the battery out which is what we used to do in the caravan (well, we actually used to take it out before we started cooking!) and wafting the newspaper under them makes no difference.  So we started our romantic meal to a fanfare!   Spoiled the ambience a bit!

Oh, nearly forgot - I've finished typing up my early diary, so there should now be three parts over on the right under the 'Pages' title.

Yellow paint - aaaarggghh!

I have now done my three days at work and I'm not in again until a week tomorrow - yeah!!  I have used up my last two days holiday for Saturday and Monday and because of the way my shifts work it means nine days off which is good.

Lounge ceiling against the stone.  The long black line on
the stone wall is the tie-bar we put in from one side
of the house to the other to keep the walls in place
and the smaller piece is an old wall strap which was
presumably supposed to do the same thing!

I am having a bit of a nightmare with yellow paint just now - never before have I had such a dilemma over painting a wall!  We got the breathable claypaint for the stone walls and also got some ordinary emulsion mixed to match for the plasterboard ceilings.  The paint is mixed to match the colourchart and it is a very good match - trouble is the colour chart doesn't match the paint it is supposed to be illustrating!  I have always said the colour we chose is an earthy yellow and Lucy confirmed this by calling it mustard when she looked at the chart.  As soon as we got home I couldn't resist trying a bit on the wall . . . . it is really quite a bright yellow.  I love the colour, but I'm just not sure it's what I had in mind for the lounge.  Anyway, yesterday I got on and painted the high ceiling with the emulsion and that is exactly the colour I did have in mind for the lounge.  So, I got a scrap piece of wood and painted half with the clay paint and half with the emulsion . . . . it was the opposite way round and the claypaint looked earthy and the emulsion bright.  Once it dried though it swapped round - it was really messing with our heads I can tell you and we were totally confused! 

The cosy batloft - or crog loft as it will now be known.
That's what they call one of these sleeping platforms
in Wales.

Each time I look at it I think something different and I have been going to go back to our friend at the decorators merchants and ask him to squirt a bit of brown in the claypaint and mix it, then I'm thinking the ceiling's too dark and needs lighter walls, then I think the walls are too bright and the ceiling's fine and round and round I go.  Think Bob's a bit fed up with my dithering!  So, the ceiling's had two coats and the batloft walls have had a coat of claypaint, I've also done a corner downstairs with it and I haven't added any brown to it and we'll see what I think when it's dry tomorrow!  We bought the curtain material for lounge a couple of days ago - it's a sort of slightly marooney chestnut colour, not sure what it would be called.  What colour is mulberry?  It sounds as thought that should be it, but I think that may be more purple.  It's definitely not purple!

Bob has made the pelmet to hide the messy top of the blind I made for the triangular window and it looks really good.  Bob confessed to being surprised that it looked OK because when I first mentioned the idea he thought it'd look a bit naff!!!!  There's faith for you!  It is made from a wany edge of Elm and so has quite a nice grain close-up . . . . it also had woodworm!  But it has been treated a couple of times and the holes filled so it should be OK - you can't just waste nice bits of wood!

As you can see from the pelmet photo, we've had more snow.  We had a good covering when we got up on Monday and that has stayed and then it snowed most of today too.  By the look of the forecast, tomorrow and Friday should be nice though so we are planning a day off - probably gardening or log-chopping, but it'll be nice to be outside for a change.  Then the next house job is to lay the floorboards in the bat loft - oops, sorry, the crog loft - because it'd be better to do that before we skim the ceiling underneath.  That way we don't need to worry about the plaster when we're whacking the nails in!

So, yesterday was pancake day.  I usually make too much batter and we end up with too many, so I scaled it down this year.  We have several frying pans in varying states of non-stickiness (should really say 'varying states of stickiness' to be more accurate).  We've been meaning to buy a new one for a while, but haven't got round to it which is a shame because the chickens ended up with more pancakes than we did!  They had all the disasters until we finally found a pan that worked and by then there was only enough batter left for three pancakes between us - still we enjoyed our one and a half!

Exciting news all round

Well my exciting news is that the pointing in the lounge is just about done and I can move on to other things!!  We will have to do a bit of re-building around the flue pipe when we install that and I have left a bit of pointing around that (so that there isn't an obvious line if the mortar is a slightly different colour when we come to do it).  Bob also found a bit I'd missed at the bottom of one wall.  I think I must have run out of mortar, then had the next few days at work and things got stacked against it and, in my mind, I thought that wall was done.  There are also the fiddly bits round the oak shelves and lintel.  But, that's not much so i can say it's just about done.  So, to celebrate yesterday I painted the high ceiling - yeah, decorating in the lounge, can you believe it?!!!!  At the moment it has trade magnolia emulsion on it because it's cheap and does a really good job.  That is just a base coat to seal the plaster though and I think it's going to havve and earthy yellow on it.  The stone walls we are painting will have clay paint on them which is very breathable (important for walls made of natural materials), but that is quite expensive so we'll get some standard emulsion mixed in the same colour for the plasterboard ceiling.  It'll be nice to have some proper colour somewhere as everywhere else is just pale cream.  The lounge should be quite light as it faces south and has two door-size windows and so can take the colour.

We put the oak joist into place on Sunday.  It was a little awkward as it is, obviously, the same width as the room, very heavy and needed to be high up.  We lifted it diagonally onto the scaffold tower, but unfortunately did it on the wrong diagonal as and so had to turn it the other way (because of the stones, wall straps, etc it had to go in a particular way and we'd forgotten that).  This was the point that I turned and walked straight into it banging my head and rattling my teeth . . . . oak is quite hard you know and it certainly made my eyes water.  Once I got over my dizziness though we got on with it and it fitted first time (well done Bob).  It looks quite smart now and much more finished.  We are starting to believe that this might actually be a room some time!

On Monday, Lucy (Ben's girlfriend) came to stay.  She had an interview at Aberystwyth Uni for the teacher training course the next day which went well.  So, the other bit of exciting news is that she got an e-mail from them first thing on Wednesday and they were pleased with her interview and wanted to offer her a place (well done her!).  She decided to make a little holiday of her trip so she stayed on Tuesday night too.  On Wednesday morning she helped us with jobs here.  She did the second coat on the panelling in the lounge and so that is now ready for the oak shelf on top - I think Bob might put that on today while I'm at work.

For ages Bob has been wanting to double-glaze the rooflights in his workshop and we have had the stuff to do it for ages, but he has been doing house-stuff.  So yesterday while Lucy and I were painting he got on with those and Lucy went and helped him put them in place when she'd finished her painting job. They are sheets of polycarbonate with a wooden frame round which fix under the ceiling.  They should stop condensation building up on the wriggly plastic hopefully.

I have ordered the clay paint for the walls in the lounge and that should be in tomorrow, so then I'll be ready to get on with some proper decorating!  Trouble is, I'm at work for the next three days after that - how frustrating!