Step-building and siestas

Well, my wish for warm sun to dry the mud on the chicken's patio has certainly been granted and then some!  Phew, it's hot here and has been for the last week.  Fantastic for my long weekend off work which makes a change . . . . and Andy Murray at Wimbledon  and a BBQ made for a very good weekend off all round.

We decided we needed a bit of a project to get our teeth into for my days off and so we decided to re-build the steps up to the top barns.  They are higgledy-piggledy old steps made from a mixture of stone and brick.

This was taken before we moved here.  The steps in question
were completely filled over with soil and grass, but I guess a bit
must have been sticking out to make us think of clearing it back.
They are just in front of the left-hand door at the top.







So, they were higgledy-piggledy in the extreme and were really quite dangerous.  Bob and I were so used to nipping up and down them that we had developed some sort of muscle-memory in our legs to negotiate them safely without too much thought, but everyone else found them quite difficult (or avoided them altogether).  I must admit I did try to avoid them when it was wet and muddy or icey.  So we decided to sort them out before next Winter (or before someone has an accident!).  The main problem is that the stones slope downwards and aren't level side to side.  We want to retain the higgledy-piggledy look so have tried to keep stones where they are, but jack them up to level them and then fill in the gaps.

Some of the extra stones we've used are huge and very heavy and,
of course we aren't just trying to move them across the level,
but half way up the steps too.  There was one we wanted to use
half way up that I think has defeated us - shame because it is
a lovely big flat one.  It's not this one by the way, we got this one
into place without too much bother.



 

And there it is (fourth step up).  You can see what they used to be
like on the top half.  We have now almost finished the top half too.
Just need to re-lay the bricks which make the top two steps, but we
need to wait for the concrete backfill to go off first.  The big stone
that defeated us was supposed to go on that bare bit in the middle
and would have almost covered the whole area in one go!





 

I now have a tan similar to the one my sister and I used to get when we were little and spent the whole summer busy in the sandpit. Mum says we had lovely brown backs but pale fronts and faces. Mind you, it's only my shoulders that are brown now as I did have a vest top on unlike when I was four and could get away with no top at all (I guess sunburn just hadn't been invented then!).  And so to siestas - it really has been so hot for the last few days that we have decided to adopt the Spanish or Greek way of working and have been doing a few hours of step-building first thing while it is a bit cooler and then doing something inside in the heat of the day (even just reading or having a bit of a sleep - how naughty!) and then doing a bit more later in the day.  I can definitely see the sense in working like that when it's this hot.  We are lucky because it is lovely and cool in the house. 

 

 

We had a go at steam-bending some wood at the weekend for the first time since we moved.  Several components of Bob's chairs are shaped in this way and it is quite amazing to do.  The first ever time we tried it, we were so surprised that it worked that we just had to have a beer to celebrate (now there's a surprise I hear you saying).  I have to say, it's a tradition that we're fostering to the point that we have to time the steam bend to finish at around 6pm, when the sun's over the yardarm and beer consumption is permitted.

This is the steamer and consists of a length of double-wall
corrugated utility pipe with bungs at each end and connected
to a steam wallpaper stripper.  Simple!

So, for the technical-minded of you, this is how it works.  The steam softens the cells in the timber making it more malleable and by steaming it for one hour for each inch of thickness you can bend it into surprisingly tight curves.  The greener (fresher) the wood is, the easier it is to bend.  Once it has steamed you have to bend it round a former and clamp it in place while it cools and sets into its new shape.  To bend an arm piece for a windsor chair you need a piece of wood about 5' long and will have to bend it round until both ends are almost parallel with each other.  Now to up the technical side a notch - when the wood is bent that much, two things happen.  The inside of the curve compresses and the outside stretches.  We need most of the bend to be done by compression rather than stretching because if the wood stretches, it tears - bad!  To stop this happening, Bob has made some straps made from a strip of thin metal (as long as the wood we're bending) with wooden block handles on the ends.  The piece of wood to bend sits between the handles with the metal strap at the back and, as you pull it round the former (one of us on each handle), the handle blocks stops the wood stretching round and instead make the middle of the curve compress.  An additional benefit of steaming the wood is that it seasons it very quickly.  I guess the heat must bubble away the sap and so when the water from the steam evapourates, there is not much moisture left in the wood and it is ready to use.  OK, that's the end of the lesson for today!

 

While we've been around the outside of the workshop mixing bits of cement and so on, we have made friends with some baby Robins - ahh, very cute.  One is a bit older than the other as it has quite an orange breast, but the other has only a hint.  I don't think they're related, we don't see them together, but they are both quite tame and sit on a branch or the floor talking to us and listening when we talk to them.  Today Bob and I both had the same idea independently and when one of them appeared Bob pulled a few raisins from his pocket just as I got out my little bag of cooked rice!  The Robin didn't come and eat out of our hands, but it hopped quite close to eat off the floor.  It'd be nice to have a tame Robin wouldn't it?