Tah, daaahh!

Tah, daahh . . . . we now officially have stairs and they're screwed and glued, so Bob can't sneak them out again when I'm not looking!  It does seem strange I must say.  Bob keeps having a shock when he thinks I'm upstairs and I silently appear at the kitchen door instead of my entrance into the middle of the kitchen being heralded by the clanking of the ladder. 

The official ladder removing ceremony!

Glue, screws and clamps . . . . it all went very smoothly
and I didn't have to do too much fevered brow mopping.

Having the stairs in has changed all sorts of things we hadn't really thought of.  We are now using the space under the stairs.  We cobbled together some shelves using shelves out of the caravan cupboards and bricks so the groceries that used to be stored in the broken freezer in the utility room are now under the stairs.  That has meant that the working freezer is now in the utility room.  Oh, all these luxuries we now have.  For years we have had to get keys, put on shoes and paddle through rain and mud to go to the freezer (it was in the top barn for a couple of years and then in the lean-to more recently).  That meant that we generally didn't bother to add a few frozen peas to the carrots with tea or to have ice in cold drinks . . . now we can just step across the hall and there they all are!  We used to hook the hand towel through the handle of the broken freezer, but we can't do that with the new one, so we've had to dig a hook board out of storage for the towel.  We can also now rearrange the hall bookshelf, grandfather clock and bench and hopefully get the clock working again.  It objected to being stored half in Bob's dad's shed and half in our barn and then being moved around and so has refused to work.  When it is in its permanent place it'll be worth spending some time getting it absolutely level and tweaking it all and then hopefully it'll be happy again.

Without the ladder in the kitchen, there is also more room to pull the table out a bit which means that you can sit on both sides of it which is much better when people pop round for a cuppa.  One slight annoyance is that the stereo used to sit on the mantle piece (where the drill is in the picture above) with one of the speakers stood on top.  Course, there's now a stair in the way which is obviously fine.  It is just annoying because the speaker only doesn't fit by about 1.5mm!!!!  I think we may slice off a bit of the bottom of the speaker box, it's just so close!

Bob did the long walk on Saturday morning.  There is a 10 mile walk which we did last year, but you can add an extra 6 mile loop onto the middle of it and go up another hill.  It's actually the hill they used in the Hugh Grant film 'The Man Who Went up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain' and has fantastic views all round.  Going up he could barely see more that 20ft in front because of the mizzly rain, so he'll just have to take their word for it!  As part of the Hill Walk Weekend, a beacon is lit on Bank Holiday Monday up a hill behind the village.  I think they do this every year, but this year of course it tied in with all the Jubilee beacons.  We went along and really enjoyed it and bumped into lots of familiar faces.  It was all so low-tech, no lights, no speakers, big screens or announcements and little obvious health and safety interference just relying on people's good sense and looking out for each other which is as it should be.  At the bottom of the hill adults could buy a flaming torch and you could see a trail of torches wending their way up the hill in the twilight and then the beacon (just a massive bonfire) was lit.  As it got darker we could see other beacons all around the horizon (interestingly, there were far fewer on the Welsh side than the English!).  Everyone was trying to work out where the other beacons were.  You could obviously tell the direction, but not the distance.  We could see the oil refinery flame at Ellesmere Port, so we knew some of the beacons were a good distance away, possibly even as far as Manchester.  Some places had fireworks and one sent up a couple of chinese lanterns which lasted for ages and drifted over our hill before finally going out. 

On Tuesday we had a street party . . . well, we called it an End of the Lane Party/Stair Warming Party and we invited all the people we know who live at the end of a lane . . . so, that's Phil and Anne!  We put up our bunting in the form of the union jack-style piece of felt we made at Smallholders a year or so ago and had a good meal and a couple of bottles of wine.  We could have had a proper street party, but when we thought about it we realised that most of the neighbours are actually fueding with one another!  We have so far managed not to fall out with anyone, but the people across the lane (the alpaca people)have fallen out with everyone else at some point or another the latest being arguments about their teenage lodger riding his very noisy motorbike around the bridleway and round and round the field on a regular basis.  This has resulted in Barb and Darren calling the police and eventually getting a Section 59 injunction to stop him (or he gets his bike crushed).   Barb and Darren are the couple who had trouble getting the static caravan down the lane and destroyed another neighbours fence (resulting in major arguments and police involvement) and then accidentally set fire to the caravan.  Bill and Maggie had a major falling out with the alpaca people some time ago and that also involved the police.  Of, course, Bill and Maggie have also split up and Maggie moved out, but is now moving back in which means Bill has moved out for good amid screaming matches.  Other neighbours have fueds over road access, planning permission and so on.  So, all in all, a street party might turn out to be a little more lively than we'd like (although we could save time and invite the police too because they already know most people!).  So, I think Phil and Ann are the only neighbours we know not at loggerheads with anyone!

Anyway enough of that!  The baby woodpecker has left the nest and can be seen out and about.  Yesterday it was clinging onto the little birch tree in the garden.  The mother was getting peanuts from the feeder further up the tree then breaking them up in a crack in the tree before feeding them to the baby.  This picture was taken through the kitchen window which really did need cleaning and was also wet from the rain, so it's not brilliant, but gives you an idea.  I have now cleaned the window by the way!

Stairs progress report

Just look at that!  The first stairs are in and I've actually been up them!  These ones are screwed down onto some blocks of wood Bob incorporated when he was building the steps.  In a few weeks, once the wood has acclimatised itself to the surroundings, we can tighten the screws and then plug the holes to cover the screw heads.  We're going to use bog oak which is almost black so contrasts the pale ash of the step.  You either make the plugs out of the same wood, line the grain up and try to hide the plugs or you make a feature of them which is what we decided to do (so much easier).

Now, here's where it all gets tricky - how do you suspend/support the ends of the steps which turn a corner and so have no wall to be attached to?  This chunky oak bracket is our solution.  We got the local blacksmith to make some chunky brackets to hang the chunky oak bracket from.  They are bolted to a joist behind the old beam you see in the picture.  Again you have to decide whether to try and hide the fixings or make a feature of them - I think these metal brackets actually look pretty good.  Just hope the joist is man enough for all this!  At the moment this all looks a bit odd because there is just this chunk of oak hanging down in the middle of nowhere with no obvious purpose in life.  Once the stairs are attached there'll be a reason for it and so it should look better.

 I finished tiling round the fireplace.  We realised that the old tiles were 6" and the new ones are 5" - oops!  5" is a really silly size as nearly everwhere sells standard 4" or 6", but Fired Earth obviously think its funny to trip people up like this!  We made up the difference with some tiny square slate tiles which actually looks fine.  We have them as a splashback behind the sink in the bathroom and also around the sink and on the window ledge in the ensuite.  They are the same (just a different shape) as the tiles on the hall and bathroom floor too, so Country Living Magazine would say they provide continuity and flow throughout the house . . . . like we planned it!! 

Well, we're off on our holidays again tomorrow.  First we are going to Scotland to see Laura at the Buddhist monastry.  I was supposed to be on a painting party with her re-painting one of the outside Buddha statues which would have been quite good fun.  In preparation for this weekend they had rubbed down the old paint, sealed it and put an acrylic base on ready to take the fresh colours.  Trouble is, the frost got to it and 'blew' all the base coat taking bits of the old paint with it.  So they are now having to strip it all back again and start over.  In some places it is back to bare concrete and so they will have to wait for that to dry out.  Oh, if only someone had thought to wrap it up to stop the frost getting to it.  Bob is booked on the tree-planting work party (they have about 2,000 deciduous trees to plant which I think is part of the programme to replace the pine trees that were planted in their millions, but have now been cut down).  So, I think I might be doing tree planting too.  On Sunday afternoon we are joining Mum and Dad who are on holiday in the Lake District for a couple of days.  I'm not holding out much hope for the weather in either place, so any dry or sun we get will be a bonus.  Last time we were in Scotland (April last year) we got sunburnt . . . . don't think there's much chance of that this time do you?

Triangulation problems

Oh, don't talk to me about triangles - they've been causing us major headaches in one way or another.  On Sunday I decided to finally make the blind for the triangle window in the oak room.  This has taken an awful lot of thinking about, we even spent a whole morning with Dad a few months ago brainstorming solutions to the problem of curtains/blinds for a triangle-shaped window with a sloping roof above.  We went through all sorts of wacky ideas.  We finally decided on a roman blind which opens with a sort of fan action.  This, of course, means that you have to pull the strings different amounts to make the blind pull up different amounts at each side.  For now we will just have two separate strings and you do just that - pull them different amounts.  Eventually though and when Bob had his lathe set up, we will conjur up a system where each string winds round a different size wheel.  You turn both wheels together, but the different sizes compensate for the different lenghts of string.  Anyway, I measured up each side of the window and cut the material to fit (or so I thought).  I worked out how the stiffening struts fit to do the fan bit and where the strings need to be attached to each strut so the strings pull up properly.  Bob made a batten to attach it to and we held it in place only to find that I'd gone wrong somewhere (probably because I couldn't be bothered to get anything to stand on to measure the long side and so couldn't really see what I was doing properly).  The slope of the material doesn't match the slope of the window!  I think I'll be able to sort it though.

The other triangle problem related to the stairs.  Bob has attached all the triangles to the diagonal supports under the stairs and attached them to the wall.  He then spent an afternoon puzzling why the steps don't fit as we'd expected them to.  It seems he overcompensated (or undercompensated) when adding (or taking away) thicknesses of the wood of the stairs themselves.  So, there's nothing for it but to take them off the wall and cut all the triangle bits off and do them again.  Before we do that though, we need to go and buy some more wood.  Ho hum!

Oh, to add to our misery yesterday morning we broke one of our precious pices of glass that are to go into the draft holes!  We had them made by a local glass artist and they survived three years in the caravan falling off their perches, etc. But when we were attaching the batten for the triangle blind, one got knocked off and broke in half, unfortunately not cleanly so we can't really just glue it back together.  Oh, we were a bit miserable and cross at that point yesterday I can tell you!  So, an early cup of coffee and clear the heads was needed before we could get on and think about anything else.  After the dodgy start though, we got on and had a really good productive day.

On Monday before I went to work we quickly plasterboarded
and skimmed both sides of the new bit of wall in the kitchen

Then yesterday I tiled and painted it.  Not really sure if you're
supposed to do all that in 24 hours, but it all seems fine!

While I was doing that, Bob built two of the steps
that go through the wall for the bottom of the stairs.
It just looks so much more solid now.  He's going
to do the bottom one today (if it ever stops raining
long enough to get the cement mixer out!).  Oh, those are
the offending triangle bit which have got to come off!

I got the end bedroom decorated over the last few days
which I really enjoyed doing (good job because Bob
doesn't really like decorating).  We're not sure the colour
is quite as we remember it, but we like it anyway
which is the main thing.

and here it is done, with the shades on the light and the
black window frames re-touched.  You can't see it on this picture,
but the glass shades have little bubbles in them which makes
a lovely soft pattern on the walls when the light's on.  Aahh, can
you see poor Bob mixing mortar in the rain!

Last night we went to a film-showing at the neighbouring farm all about becoming less dependent on oil and promoting local.  That all sounds a bit boring doesn't it, but it was actually quite interesting and positive - all about doing things ourselves and in our communities instead of relying on big Govt initiatives.  There was beer from down the road and bacon butties made with their own bacon and bread made on the premises - yum, yummy, yum yum!  On Monday evening I had to go to an M&S team brief on plans for the year ahead - oh, what a contrast, it was all about money, money, money.  Tonight we have a talk on ducks and geese at smallholders.  Then on Thursday Jan (Bob's step-mum) may be coming to stay - busy, busy, busy.

Friday was Bob's birthday and we had a lovely day doing not very much.  Lie-in, breakfast in bed, lunch at a canal-side pub and then a walk along the towpath, lazy afternoon then fillet steak and good wine by candlelight.  A nice break.

Morning!

Morning!  I'm back from my sickbed, thank goodness.  I had a fortnight of feeling absolutely rubbish - mainly a sore throat and cough and then of course no sleep because coughs always get so much worse at night, why is that?  I had to have Easter Saturday off work because I got conjunctivitus too.  Luckily the shop was closed on Easter Sunday and I only had to do 4 hours on the Monday and then nothing until Thursday, so it gave me a bit of time to recover.  I still have a bit of a throat, but it's on its way out.  Oh, a chunk fell off a back tooth on Easter Monday as well to add to my misery!

So, I haven't been doing much in the way of 'housework' (as in the building type not the dusting type, mind you, I haven't done much of that either!).  I did do major freezer-filling cooking though - 8 x chilli, 12 x chicken pie, 6 x sausage and mushroom plait, 1 x pastry flan case, so time wasn't wasted.  It's such a good feeling to have a freezer full of homemade 'ready meals'.

Bob has been doing major housework though . . . . . . wait for it  . . . . . . he's started the STAIRS!!!!!!!!!  First is the oakwork - a sole plate (on the floor) with the newel post coming up off it and a post next to the wall which is really only decorative.  The bit between the oak posts will be plasterboarded and on the cooker side there will be tiles like the wall behind the cooker.  The work surface will go around the cooker (not the front of course) and will come this way a bit to make a useful little surface.  Where Bob is will be an understairs cupboard (so useful for hiding junk) with a door on a slight diagonal to the edge of the fireplace.  It will only be half-height because above that the stairs will turn to meet the landing.  Not quite sure what will happen with the underneath of the stairs there - I think we will finish them as though we'll see them and then we have the option to leave them visible or hide them.  Can't plan this bit ahead, it'll be one of our 'decide when we get there' bits.



So now when we go up the ladder there is a post sticking

up in the middle of the bit where you get off, just to make

things more interesting! We've got used to that now though

and it doesn't really cause a problem.

Those flippin' rabbits have been at it again!  We thought the roses we planted by the kitchen door would be safe because they were covered in thorns and have actually been sat there in pots since October without being touched.  But within a couple of days of being planted they'd been 'rabbitted'.  So now they look lovely with emergency rabbit-proofing in place.  So, we now have two jointed rabbits in the freezer!


At long last M&S have made a decision about jobs and have offered me a permanent post.  That is good news and actually quite a relief, but I couldn't help thinking it sounded a bit depressing - a permanent fixture, part of the furniture, I'll be there for the rest of my life!  That said, I'm hoping that the things that wind me up about it were all related to being temporary, the way they dealt with that and the uncertainty it caused and that now I'm permanent everything will be lovely.  I'm contracted to do 22.5 hours a week over three days with a strong possibility of extra shifts if I want them and I'll get every other Sunday off.  I did try to get one whole weekend a month off instead, but they wouldn't go for that.  So, I'm going to think positive and get on with that and enjoy getting on with house things on my four days off a week.

Just had to go out in the pouring rain as Bob spotted a rat going into the lean-to.  That's the very first rat we've seen since we've been here which is absolutely amazing I think.  It hid behind the tumble dryer and Bob tried to get the air rifle to it, but it scurried off too quickly.  So, we've blocked up all the holes round the door and checked the whole of the lean-to.  No sign that it's been in there much which is good.  Hopefully we won't see it again, but maybe we'll get a bait trap just in case. 

Right, I've got to get going.  I'm doing decorating today which is really exciting.  I'm going to start on the end bedroom and it's actually going to be a colour instead of the cream we've used everywhere else.  Our local decorators merchants managed to track down the recipe for and mix a colour we used to have in our bedroom at our old house and which has been discontinued - Natural Saffron.  Ooooo, so exciting, I'm itching to get going so that's all for now.  Bye.

How filippin' posh are we?!

Oh, we are now sooo posh!  We have lights in all our rooms and working sockets too.  It felt so strange after the electrician had been on Monday to finally coil up all the extension leads and bulbs on the ends of cables.  We have never been here without trailing cables before.  The electrician actually seemed quite sad to be saying goodbye (after all these years!) and said we could do his barn up when he gets one (which is quite a compliment).  He seemed quite pleased when we said there was still the workshop to do and we were hoping he'd come back to do that.



This is one of the lounge lights.  They are made by an old company who used to make gas lights and have now moved on to electric versions modelled on their old styles.  Of course they will have glass bell-shaped shades and possibly different bulbs, but there's no point in getting too posh all at once - we do still have building work to do in there!  Just below this light (although it's not easy to see here) was where the wrens nested last year.  I did have thoughts of leaving the nest, which really was a work of art, and somehow covering it with glass or perspex, but realistically, it's probably not a brilliant idea as it would probably rot or something.  So last week we sadly pulled the nest out which was a shame.  I did manage to get a photo of the babies peeping out of the nest, so we are going to print that and hang it near where the nest was to remind us of our little visitors.  As you can imagine I had to nip in and take a pic really quickly before the babies ducked down out of sight, so it wasn't the best photo, but Ben kindly did a bit of work in photoshop or something to take away the glare form the stone and make everything a bit clearer so it should be fine.  Also in the above phot you can see we have put one small piece of plasterboard up on the lounge ceiling.  This is because a smoke detector has to be wired in that corner as there's a bedroom next to it so it was easier to put the plasterboard up before the electrician came.


And here's our chandalier in the end bedroom (ex-padded cell)!
This also has clear glass enclosed shades which are safely
packed away.  We're really quite pleased with how it looks
hanging from the new beam.  We bought this light fixture what
seems like years ago, so it is really exciting to finally see it
in place.  Makes my fingers itch to get decorating!



And here's the batloft and that wall I spent two days
pointing and smoothing off.  We quite fancy painting this
wall quite a dark colour and making this bit into a cosy squashy
den eventually.

So, with the electrician's visit out of the way, that's another deadline met and past.  Our next major deadline is Building Control sign-off which we have to have within three months.  Since moving here we have had self-build site insurance which covers equipment hire, contractors on site and quite a lot of public liability and is, therefore, quite expensive.  As of next week we have more traditional buildings insurance.  I assume that you usually have to have your Building Regulations sign off certificate for normal insurance, but this company will cover you so long as you get signed off within three months.  So, that's our next aim.  For that we need the electrician's certificate which he is now doing, that energy rating certificate I told you about which is in hand, a stench pipe which we've almost done (just need to get a couple of pieces of cast iron downpipe to finish that) and, of course, some stairs.  That will no doubt please a lot of people no end - it seems to be the thing that bugs the most people, except us!  Mum will definitely be excited when the stairs are in because she will be able to see our upstairs for the first time (dodgy knees don't lend themselves to climbing ladders really) and lots of other people seem really concerned that we don't have stairs.  As I said, it doesn't bother us really - we're quite used to our ladder.  Once they're done, the building inspector will have to come round and check all sorts of things - oohh it'll be like taking an exam!

Non-building things we've done include starting to thin out some trees across the path which make that corner quite dark and damp and spoil the view.  Bill and his new lady friend came round for dinner - she seemed very nice and we had a really good evening.  We were a bit concerned that Maggie may have popped round as we know she is really curious to find out what the new lady is like - now that could have got awkward,  but we got away with it!  We just got quizzed about her the next time we saw Maggie, but told her in no uncertain terms we weren't going to discuss it.  It's quite difficult trying to juggle staying friends with both of them!  We've also had the woodburner flue swept, and not before time apparently.  The other thing we need for Building Control is the commissioning certificate for the woodburner which the plumber was supposed to sort out but hadn't.  So the chap came today to do his smoke and draw test.  When he lit the bit of newspaper the smoke just billowed out, filled the room and set all the smoke detectors off!  That's not supposed to happen apparently.  So he checked the flue and pulled out loads of tarrey clinker and then swept out a tonne of soot!  Oops.  Apparently having the backboiler means the tar builds up more than normal (the water cools things and that's when tar forms) and so we should sweep the flue twice a year to include the middle of winter, but nobody told us that.  It is, apparently in the maintenance manual which comes with the woodburner . . . . we don't have one!  Once he'd swept the flue though it performed beautifully and the certificate will be in the post.  I was at work while this happened and when I got home I chucked a log on to up the temperaature to cook the potatoes in the oven and the temperature shot up past the top of the scale . . . so, it's made a difference.  Bill came round for a chat just as we were about to have tea, so by the time we ate the potatoes were very, very crispy - they actually didn't have much potato left in the middle!

Oh, I still have a job after next week . . . . until 28 April!  It's really quite unbelievable, but apparently they don't have next year's budget yet.  One of my temporary colleagues (there are three of us) resigned today which has them on their toes a bit! 

Isn't it nice now the evenings are lighter?  All the birds are in full voice and very busy doing what they do.  We were woken this morning by pigeons doing an awful lot of flappy stuff in the trees - guess there'll be baby pigeons around before too long!  We usually lie in bed in the morning listening to the greater spotted woodpeckers hammering away in a nearby tree and this morning a green woodpecker was cackling away close by.  Bob has heard the first chiff chaff of the season and the nuthatches have, once again, been showing interest in the old woodpecker hole in the dead beech tree.  Everyone's busy, busy, busy.

The stair hole's done

We have finished knocking through the hole for the stairs.  We actually finished the knocking through yesterday after a full day at it (that's the stage shown in the photo.  Then this morning Bob got the angle grinder to the stones that were well-embedded in the wall that's staying, but stuck out into the stair hole.  That done, we have both spent the afternoon re-building it!  Don't worry, there weren't any disasters, but we had to 'make good' the edges and fill in gaps - doesn't sound much, but it took us until 7pm.  It's a bit scrappy looking now, but also looks fairly solid.  Most of it will get a layer of our rough plaster like the kitchen and bedroom - angle ground (angle grinded?) edges don't look at all pretty so need covering up.  This will then blend into the painted-only stones that will make up the hall side of the wall.  We have had a few very long days of real hard work and are both now a bit achy and knackered!!  Oh, for a hot bath! 

Tomorrow we are off to defend our title as quiz champions at the Smallholders Group - should be a laugh and everyone brings lovely food!  I hope they don't mix the teams up because I think we owe our win last year more to our team-mates than ourselves.