First overnight visitors

Well, we got the oak room sorted - just in time for Carol and Graham's visit.  I finished the curtains at 10.30pm the day before!  It all looked really quite good when we'd finished and we were very pleased with it. 

Eventually, this room will have twin beds in and this double bed will be in the other spare bedroom.  We need to dismantle this bed because we need to chop the footboard down so tall people (Ben and Laura) can hang their feet over the end. 

Bob worked hard to get the panelling finished.  This covers up the
underpinning (you can just see the concrete blocks at the bottom of the uncovered
wall).  The little top shelf on the panelling took ages because it is cut to fit all the
ins and outs of the stones.  We will paint all this when we take the bed down
which will probably be next week.

Here's the flat-pack settee almost put together.  It was actually really
easy to put together and is quite comfy.  It makes the room look quite posh - a
bedroom with a settee in it!  Or is it a lounge with a bed in it? 
Either way, we sat in there with a beer when we'd finished thoroughly
enjoying a soft seat at last!



Instead of going for a walk with Carol and Graham (they do that on normal
weekends away), we made them chop down trees.  Carol was like a
demon with the chainsaw and Bob and Graham could hardly keep up
with moving the trunk along for her to cut the next log off!



 

Carol and I did try chopping a tree down the old-fashioned way, but
it really didn't work too well - wrong sort of saw of course!

Then, after a bit of a snooze we all cooked the evening meal
(curry of course) and sat around the table talking into the night,
as they say.  Very enjoyable and our first overnight visitors seemed
to approve of the accomodation - phew!

Now then, what do you notice that is strange here?  The observant
among you will see that the middle egg is a rather strange pointy shape,
but that's not it.  No, the strange thing is that there are THREE eggs!!  Elvis
has started laying eggs again after months of not doing, bless her little cotton
socks.  They are a bit peculiar and I'm not sure how long she'll keep it up,
but it certainly surprised us.

Now I have a strange observation for you that doesn't really relate to anything in particular.  Since I have been working at Marks & Spencer I appear to have a 'helpful shop assistant' aura that goes with me everywhere.  When I was choosing a yoghurt in Sainsbury's on Thursday an old lady turned to me and demanded to know whether they sold low cholesterol yoghurt.  Of course I am a helpful shop assistant so I said I thought they sold very low fat ones.  And would that be suitable for her diabetic husband she wanted to know, well I thought natural yoghurt probably would be.  So where are they then?  I spent about 5 minutes finding the yoghurt and giving her dietary advice and then went on my way only to be accosted by another lady wanting me to show her where the Worcester sauce was.  Both asked me as though I worked there not as one customer to another and this is not the first time it has happened.  So what do you make of that - very strange.

Well, I'm on my own tonight.  Bob has been at his Dad's for the day and staying overnight.  I changed my shift to work the afternoon instead of the early one today and while they were changing it around they added on an extra four hours so I didn't finish until gone 8pm.  So, I've had my leftover curry for tea, written this and now I'm going to try and work out how to change all the clocks and timers and then I'm off to read my book in bed (it wasn't worth lighting the fire and it's getting a bit chilly now).  G'night!

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!

Bank holiday

Bob has now finished all the joints for the extension and we've tried putting the various bits together - and they all fit!!!  Upside-down, it looks as though we're building an ark (as you can see).  So, now onto sanding them all down (well the bits you'll see inside anyway) and chamfering (?? spelling ??) the edges.  Once that's done, we'll have to check the weather forecast for a fine day and then enlist some local help to put it all into place.  The two of us have managed on the dry runs, but it's a different matter when it all has to go up together.  It's a bit like a jigsaw - you have to do it in the right order and some bits have to fit into two other bits at once (from different directions), so extra pairs of hands will definitely help.

I think I've finally finished pointing the walls in the kitchen.  I have a theory that mortar pixies live around here and at night they sneak in and undo the work you've done earlier - I seem to have nearly finished it so many times and then when I look again there's another big patch that needs doing.  I daren't look today in case they came again last night!  Next job in there is to sort of plaster over the stone - this is done by throwing bits of mortar at the wall and hoping it sticks . . . . . then scraping it up off the floor and trying again!  We just want to cover the stones but still have the bumpy outlines.  These walls were never meant to be left exposed and some bits are pretty rough.  The people who built it 200 years ago would be horrified at all the efforts to leave exposed stone inside I'm sure.  That said, in some other rooms we will have some exposed stone - in the lounge (which used to be a barn that was built onto the house later) we will have one stone wall because it is really nicely done - it was the outside wall of the house and so good stone was used.

As it is a Bank Holiday today, we're having a more relaxing day.  So, this morning we went for a walk - round the quarry and up the hill the other side through the woods.  Every now and then there is a clearing and you can look across the valley, over the quarry and (if you know where to look) can see our house.  Strange this fascination with seeing your own house from far off isn't it?  Like looking on Google Earth.  We see the house every day, but always try and pick it out when we are anywhere else.

Laura is coming for a few days next weekend - it's her birthday.  So, I'd better get that knitted rabbit finished so she can take it with her - nearly done, just got to sew the ears on.  Then I think Ben and his girlfriend, Lucy, are popping in on Tuesday afternoon on their way home from Aberystwyth.  Busy, busy, busy!

Oh, now I've got a blackeye!

OK, so now I've got a black eye - I did just try taking a photo of myself, but close-up and at this time in the morning (6.45am) it's not a pretty sight, so I couldn't inflict that on you.

Yesterday afternoon, Bob was getting on with the oak joints, so I decided to carry on with yet more pointing.  This time in what will be our bedroom, which means upstairs so I had to put some boards across the rafters and take everything up the ladder (and then try to remember not to step back while I was working up there).  Managed that OK.  I then had to move everything along to the next section.  Now when Bob gets his teeth into a job he is totally absorbed in that and doesn't really take any notice of anything else going on - least of all what the unskilled labourer is doing.  When I asked, he helped move the planks along, but then disappeared quick sharp back to his woodwork before I could pass stuff down, so I had to squeeze down the ladder, between the rafters carrying various buckets, etc and stupidly caught the cable leading to the cable-reel which was precariously balanced on a rafter as I did so bringing it crashing down on top of me.  Why didn't I move that first - stupid girl!  Anyway the plastic edge of the reel bounced off my eye, knocking my glasses off and it HURT!!!!  Made me cry even - how stupid did that feel, but it really did hurt.  Luckily I had unplugged the light from the cable or I'd have had a very hot builders light on my head too!  So now I have a black eye and a small cut above my eye and, as I only realised during the night when I couldn't sleep because my shoulder hurt each time I turned over, the cable reel obviously caught my shoulder too as it bounced down.  So feeling a bit sorry for myself now!

Anyway, enough of that!  This morning we spoke to the architect about head height and it seems that the only way we could reduce the size of the joists is by adding one or possibly two purlins (they go across the ceiling under the joists) which would probably have to be a foot deep .  . . . well that kinda defeats the object doesn't it?  So, I think we'll forget that idea and just be careful how we arrange the furniture.  Or we could have one of those height restriction charts like they have on the rides at Alton Towers to say 'If you are above this height we're sorry you can't stay in this room'.  Not so easy when Ben is 6'7" and Laura is 6"!!

We also wrote a letter to the Planning Officer asking if we could put an extra window in to let more light in.  In the past these minor amendments to the plans could be dealt with by writing a letter, attaching a drawing and then popping in to see the planning man at a drop in session, you could chat it through, he could tell you yes or no or what would be possible and then he'd confirm that in writing a couple of days later.  Not anymore.  Now you have to download a four page application form from their website (not easy to find the form), complete that with many of the details of the original application that they already hold on their computer, send four copies of that and any supporting drawings, etc (so that was 24 sheets of paper) to Shrewsbury so they can scan them onto their computer system - so why do they need four copies?  Eventually this all goes to the guy in Oswestry for him to rubber stamp and we should have a decision in about a month.  Well, that's progress for you!

So, a pretty crappy day yesterday.  But, today's another day - I'm off to Sainsburys again today as we have visitors tomorrow.  My sister, her husband and two teenage daughters are coming for the day.  I always worry that they'll be bored, especially the girls, but they seem to enjoy it.  Ellie, the youngest at 13 thought this was a fairytale place the first time she came and can't wait to get her wellies on and scramble about the cliff and woods.  Sophie is not quite so enthusiastic, but when she was given a get-out clause last time she, apparently, looked horrified at the thought.  It's funny, we get a lot more visitors now we live in a caravan than we ever did in our four-bed house!  That's actually really nice - lets hope it continues when we finally have proper accomodation (even if you can't stand up in it!).