Elvis is laying again!

Can you believe it?!  Elvis has laid two eggs in the last few days - just amazing when you remember that we didn't think she'd make it to New Year!  Mind you, you really do have to laugh at today's effort.  You know I've said that sometimes one of the chickens lays half an egg by forgetting to put a shell on it?  Well Elvis's egg today was just half-size - it's tiny and looks so funny.  I was up at the top hanging the washing out when Bob first went into the chicken run and he came out to ask if I'd already been in there because he thought I was playing a joke on him. . . . . . just look at this . . . .

. . . . the other egg is her one from two days ago.

As predicted, I didn't have three days off last week and had to go in on one of my days off and this week I just have two days, and next week I am doing 20 extra hours!  This all makes planning house activity quite difficult, but hey ho.  I have a WHOLE WEEK off in February!  Then back in for a week and then over two weeks off.  Because I haven't taken any holiday since I started in August I have had to cram it all in before the end of March.

The window frames are now all made and are at various stages of painting/wood preserving, so we need to order the glass for them now.  That is usually ready to pick up within the week, so should fit in quite well with painting.  Here's the trial run of the smallest window.  We have left the original wooden lintel in (don't worry, there's at least two new concrete lintels behind so this one is only decorative really).  It is so NOT level!  Bob had to make the frame slope at the top to fit, but leave the casement for the glass square so it all looks really wonky which I love.  I don't actually think you'll notice it as much once it's all painted the same colour.  The new slate sill looks as though it's always been there doesn't it?

We made some marmalade last week which seems to have turned out rather well though I say so myself.  We used brown sugar so it is quite dark and very orangey.  I'm in the middle of another batch, but this time a lighter one with white sugar and a couple of lemons added for a bit of variety.  I invented a new dessert (well, I've not seen it before though it may exist) using the dark marmalade stirred into a dark chocolate ganache on top of a biscuit base.  This was inspired by a cake my nephew made us for Christmas using the same flavours and it worked really well.  Luckily, I wrote down the recipe as I made it up, so I should be able to replicate it.  Phil and Ann came for dinner on Friday, so they were my guinee pigs!  I don't think they minded too much.

Right, this week Tuesday night is my Saturday night (in my M&S work pattern) and we're having curry, so it's time to crack open a beer and get the naan bread dough on the go!

Well, we're back into the swing of working and getting on with the house.  Although my contracted hours at M&S have been drastically reduced, I only had one day off from New Year up until Thursday this week!  So, it was quite nice to have two days off together and then this morning as well.  Next week I have three whole days off (mind you, I thought I had this week, but it didn't work out that way).

I actually got on with some real 'building work' - making mortar and building up the walls around the 'hayloft' door.  The end bedroom used to be the cow barn (it had a trough and everything) and above it was a hayloft with a door to the outside.  Because the house is built into the hill, this door is at ground level on the outside but above head height inside.  The bedroom will have a very high ceiling and this doorway will be a window.  The stonework around the frame was very uneven, so it needed more stones putting in and a lot of pointing to fill in the gaps.  On Thursday we put the glass in which was a bit scary.  We had the scaffold tower up inside, but only had two narrow boards on it because we are using the others somewhere else and we hadn't bothered adding the extra set of bars to make sides round where you stand, so I was on that while Bob passed the big double-glazed unit to me through the opening from outside.  For some reason, I was really nervous (usually I'm absolutely fine).  I think it was because of the glass and the responsibility for holding it because I was fine when the glass wasn't there.  Anyway, apart from my nerves, it went in without any problem and that is another hole sealed.

Bob has finished building the steps to the (extremely low) doorway to that bedroom.  It is not a doorway that will really be used, but because it is a bedroom that doesn't lead onto a corridor or hall, it has to have a fire escape.  The steps are quite steep and curved, they look brilliant - I love curved brickwork.  This little corner gives an idea of what I imagine the rest of the garden will look like.  I think there'll be lots of steps and little walls all over the place.  Bob is now working on the frame for the little window in this picture (this will be the opening window for ventilation in here).  He had to make a sill on the outside, so he cut and split a big chunk of slate we had lying around - I think it used to be the kitchen door threshold.  Like the bigger barn doors I told you about, this will have the little door pinned back to retain the look.

We have done a bit of entertaining this week.  Maggie and Bill who I've spoken about before (just down the lane, renovating a cottage and barns, moved here just before us, daughter with a mohican) have sadly split up.  We knew about this ages ago, but it was kept quiet for quite a while.  Anyway, Maggie moved out just before Christmas and Bill went away for most of December until after New Year.  Things were a little awkward for a while with us seeing both, but having to be careful what we said to either.  So, now Bill's back and Maggie has her own house, we can see them as separate people and things are much easier.  Bill came for dinner on Sunday and told us all about his month away - including learning to morris dance!  Then Maggie and the mohican (which has gone from green through turquoise, red, pink and is now blonde) and the mohican's boyfriend (who also has a mohican), so Maggie and two mohicans, came for something to eat last night.  We could have gone wassailing last night if we hadn't been busy.  A girl at work lives in a village about eight miles away and they uphold the tradition of singing around an apple tree, tying things in the tree and pouring cider on its roots (to encourage a good crop in the coming year) followed by a lantern-lit walk across the hills to a pub - sounds like good fun and it's a shame we couldn't go.



I thought you might like to see where we've put the telly.  When it'off
and all black, it's hardly noticable - not sure whether it'll stay there though.
We have bought some new tiles for the sides of this fireplace with
hand drawn chickens on the picture tiles.  That'll be a bit of a messy
job to sort out though, so we'll probably wait until we're clearing that
corner for the stairs before we tackle it.



We've finally hung the tapestry we bought ages ago at Stokesay Castle with
birthday money.  I've been clearing the caravan out and trying to find places
for everything as I go.  I think this will eventually go in the lounge, but it might
as well be hung up somewhere rather than rolled up under a bed.
It's the Lady of Shallot by the way.



And finally, here's the view from our bedroom window this morning.
The first really hard frost since we moved in and we wouldn't know
how cold it was from inside!  I went in the caravan and it was minus one
inside - tee hee, good isn't it?  I'm not sure what effect it'll have had on
the plants in the garden.  We have all sorts of shoots and buds that
shouldn't really be there and even plants that usually die off and come
back in the Spring that have missed out the dying off bit and thrown
out new shoots, leaves and buds - we'll have to wait and see.



and a Happy New Year to everyone!

Yes, Happy New Year.  Hope you all had a good time and the going back to work/school/etc isn't too bad.  We had a quiet, but good one.  Laura went back to Scotland on Friday - they make quite a thing of New Year at Samye Ling with a huge bonfire and all the one thousand plus butterlamps lit, so she was quite keen to be there for that.  So we were back to just we two on Saturday.  I worked in the morning, then Phil and Ann called in for a cuppa with their son in the afternoon and we followed them out for a quick once around the 'block' for a breath of fresh air before coming back to light the fire and read for a bit.  Somehow, when we 'read' we always end up falling asleep - well we had been up since 6am for me to go to work and we had a late night ahead of us!  We made Beef Wellington with fillet steak for dinner which was just scrummy.  Bob went outside just before midnight with a log, money and bread to throw in as the first things to cross the threshold in the New Year for luck (it's a Northern thing I think).  Then a bit later one of the neighbours called round bearing a piece of coal which was nice.  She stayed for a while and we finally went to bed at about 2am.  All very nice although I will admit to a bit of a fuzzy head in the morning . . . . can't think why?!!  And so we can now say that we moved into our cottage last year - how strange!

On Friday we put the first door-sized window in the lounge.



The glass is, of course, made to measure and is a fairly snug
fit, but it has to have a slight gap all the way around to allow for
a bit of movement in the wooden frame.  Once it's in place you put
wooden beading on the inside to secure it and hold that in place with
panel pins.  It's a bit nerve wracking hammering the pins in so close
to the glass I can tell you!  I'm pushing on the beading to make sure
the silicone we'd put round the frame seals the glass in place.



And here we are looking out of our new window.
The old door frame is still there.  The idea is that
the glass is set back and so is unobtrusive (maybe
when it's mucky and doesn't reflect, that'll be the case)
and we are supposed to hang wooden doors that are
hooked open to maintain the look of the barn it used to be.
Whether we'll ever get round to that last bit, I don't know.



And so we survey our work.  Handy to have Laura here to take
photos of both of us together!  These window thingies'll take a
bit of getting used to, it looks a bit weird.  From the outside, with the light on
in the 'lounge', it's starting to look like some sort of barn conversion!
It certainly confused the chickens when they went in the other door, but
realised they couldn't get out of this one anymore!

The blackbird has been back pecking and flapping at the oak room window.  I think it must have been away visiting relatives for Christmas because I don't think it came while Laura was here.  The bird feeders are now very busy and seem to get empty rather quickly!  That may be because the woodpeckers and jay have found them.  The jay was quite funny when it first found them - it sat on a small branch next to the feeder and then tried pecking at it from there.  Of course, as you can imagine, the feeder just swings away when it does that.  The jay actually lost its balance once and swung down under the branch with one particularly wild lurch at the feeder!  One day we had a herd of redpolls in the birch trees outside the kitchen window, there were loads of them and were thoroughly enjoying the birch seeds.  I don't think they're that rare, but it's the first time we've seen them and I read in the paper the next day that their numbers had declined dramatically in the last couple of years, so I guess we were quite priviledged.  Once again, we have a robin who likes to think of himself as a chicken and hang out with our girls (they don't seem to mind this honorary member of their flock).  Elvis went through a bit of a wambly patch over Christmas and we seriously thought she might not make New Year, but she seems to have perked up.  She's definitely getting old though and needs her regular naps while the younger two go exploring and running around - she's not laying eggs anymore again, I think those few a while back were just a last fling!

Happy Christmas everyone

Hello, I'm back.  I am sorry about the lack of bloggery over the last few weeks.  We have had a very busy and very sad time.  Bob's dad has been battling cancer for the last three years and for the last few weeks we have been backwards and forwards to Peterborough helping him with various jobs, appointments and so on.  Very sadly, he finally lost his battle a fortnight before Christmas - we will really miss him.  He was an avid follower of this blog and, apart from the fact that we haven't really got on with anything I can write about house-wise, I really haven't felt like updating it.

Arthur's last visit to our house

Anyway, I'm going to try harder now, so here's a bit of an update of the last month or so.  We had a visit from Ben and Lucy - the first time they've been since June, so they noticed quite a difference (I hope!).  They stayed in the oak-frame room and had a blackbird as an alarm clock each morning.  When I went in there before they came I noticed some strange fluttery, muddy marks up the outside of the window.  They turned out to be made by a blackbird (quite young I think) which sits on the window ledge and then flutters up the window, lands and pecks and so on.  It does it each morning at about 8am - strange.  It isn't bothered if someone's in the room, but it did move away as soon as Lucy got the camera out.

Yeah, Ben can stand up in the kitchen.  At 6'7" tall, we were worried
early on that he wouldn't be able to.  We dug as much out of the floor as
we could, but we did then have to put 3" insulation,  4" concrete,
2" screed and 2" thick tiles back in, so we were quite surprised
at the headroom - still not sure how we managed it.

House-wise, Bob has made more wooden latches for the doors and has made two door-size window frames - one for the lounge-to-be and one for the end-bedroom-to-be.  They just need another coat of paint before they are fitted.  We have the glass ready to go in them stored in the caravan.  What seems like an age ago, I sorted out the door opening in the lounge building a low brick bit along the bottom and re-doing the pointing round the rest.  I had to re-do the pointing because we had a change of plan for the walls in there.  Originally, they were going to be insulated, plasterboarded and skimmed so I just slapped the pointing mortar in without tidying it up at all because ti would never be seen.  We have decided we still want to see the original brickwork round the window/doors and so need to point neatly and limewash the walls.  Course the mortar I used was quite good and it was a horrid job to pick it all out again.  Not to worry though, it's all done now and looks quite good.  It's surprising how much difference these making-good jobs make.

We had a visit from the Council Tax Valuation Officer.  When we very first moved here we got a council tax bill saying the house was a Band D!!!!  It had no roof, no toilet and one bedroom - how can that be?  So we appealed and won and they took the house off the valuation list and instead made an entry for the caravan.  When we moved out of the caravan we told them and they removed that from the list and so they then had to re-assess the house.  Given their last attempt to band it as a D, that is what we were expecting them to try this time.  A nice lady came round and we helped her measure everything and pointed out all the relevant points like the bridleway through the garden, the proximity of the working quarry, etc.  She was facinated at the thought of going up a ladder to bed and had to take a photo of it - not for the report, just for her own use!  She said she may have to give the house a temporary banding and then come back when it's finished, but we had a letter a couple of weeks ago to say it was a Band B with no mention of it being temporary, so we are really pleased and surprised with that.  Although I couldn't help a little thought popping in to my head saying 'What, surely it's worth more than that!' - I'm not really complaining though.

Before Christmas, the smallholder group had a meal out with a quiz laced into it.  Along with our team-mates, Phil and Ann, we won our champions title back again after it was snatched from us in a very close tie-break last year.

Marks and Spencer have extended my contract again and so I have a job there until the end of March.  They have reduced the contracted hours though which annoyed me a bit because I have never only worked the hours I'm contracted to do and I imagine they will continue to want more hours from us.  So I am left thinking I should get enough hours to pay the bills, but not able to rely on it which is not a very nice situation to be in.  Guess I don't really have much choice though and as they have only kept on three out of the 12 or so they took on, I should be quite glad.

My sister thinks I'm a real country-bumpkin!  We have stayed with Carol and Graham a few times on our many recent trips to the Middle East (Peterborough) and one time they were off to Cambridge shopping.  Carol said they were going to the Apple Store and I got quite excited with pictures running through my head of a dimly lit, wooden floored shop filled with baskets of all sorts of apples and apple products, maybe some cider to taste - how lovely.  The thought of Apple computers never even entered my little rural head.  Carol thought that was quite sweet really!

What an odd picture - a Buddhist nun straightening
her Mum's hair!!!!!!



And here's a rare sight - Bob and I looking smart!
I suddenly thought when we'd got ready for Arthur's funeral that
this is actually what we looked like when we first met and we had to
dress smartly for work - how strange.



We just had our very first Christmas in our cottage and very good it's been.  Instead of a tree, Bob and I went for a walk and collected branches of holly, ivy and yew and decorated the beams in the kitchen.  Mixed in with little red and white lights and some wooden decorations, it looks lovely.  Laura has been here since Tuesday and came with us to visit Mum and Dad in Norfolk, to Arthurs funeral last Thursday and then to Carols overnight.  Then back here in time to get the fire lit and some food cooked for when Ben and Lucy arrived on Friday.  I had to be at work for 6am on Christmas Eve - aarrrgh!  Still, once I'd got out of bed it was alright and I finished at 11am - much better than having to go in for the afternoon I think.  We had a lovely evening on Christmas Eve and I had a bit of an emotional little happy moment.  I looked around the kitchen and Laura and Lucy were sat at the table looking at pictures on the computer, Bob was stirring his risotto and Ben was putting a log on the fire.  We had music on and the christmas lights lit and everyone had a drink in their hand and it made such a lovely picture - just as I'd imagined it back in the days without windows, doors or a roof, in the cold and wet.  It made me quite proud of what we've achieved and very happy to have finally made it - I had to give Bob and Ben a simultaneous hug!



A Christmas toast!



Mud and candlelight

Greetings from the Somme!  We have been working outside for the last few days, but it has also rained a fair bit and the ground outside the kitchen has turned into a real quagmire - really sticky and squelchy.  The chickens love it!

We have been building a posh logstore.  Oak-frame with a slate roof don't ya know!  Actually, it's not that posh.  We have loads of old roof timbers in a pile and most of them are oak.  They have too many nails in them to use for much (although we did make a very nice beer bench out of some of the better ones ages ago), so we thought we'd make a logstore outside the kitchen out of them.  We found some bits of feather-edge board which Dad gave us, so we used that to board the sides and back.  The logs will sit on pallets to keep them off the gound.  We seem to have loads of pallets for some reason, so might as well use them.

We then had to think about the roof and decided the cheapest would be slate - we have loads of reject slates from the various roofs (or should that be rooves?) we've done - anything else would have to be bought.  So slate it is and all it cost us was a few roof battens and a bag of nails.  It was quite good fun to make, especially the slating because we didn't have to be too careful with it (unlike all the care we took with the house roof).  We finished it all this morning and Bob spent the afternoon while I was at work barrowing logs down from the top of the garden.  These are the logs we can use now, so it is good that they are now close by and that they will stay dry.  Good job done!

We had a power-cut last Wednesday.  How typical - the one night for ages when there were a couple of things on telly we actually wanted to watch and the power was off from 7.30pm until midnight!  Aaarghh!  So, we finished cooking tea in the woodburner oven and had a candlelit dinner, and washed up by candlelight, and tried to read by candlelight before going to bed by candlelight.

Talking of cooking on the woodburner, we bought some coal-type stuff to see how that works in the woodburner.  Boy, does it burn hot when it gets going - quite impressive really.  The oven got well into the 'very hot' setting, so we decided to cook Sunday's tea entirely on/in the Esse.  We were having toad in the hole and roast potatoes and I wasn't sure it'd be hot enough for the Yorkshire pudding - it was!  How's this for impressive Yorkshire?!  The potatoes boiled within a couple of minutes on the top too - brilliant.  Bob can take all the credit - I have had a horrible cold for the last few days, so he took pity on me after I'd spent 8 hours sneezing and sniffling my way around Marks and Spencers (mmmm, nice!) and cooked tea.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that, after three years without a cold (except that silly two day sniffle I had in August), as soon as I start working inside where there are lots of people I catch one.  Or maybe living in a heated house has made me soft already!  Anyway, I think it's on its way out now.

When we went to the Roofing & Salvage yard to get the battens for the logstore, we had a look at their pile of snooker table slates.  Under the green baize, snooker tables are made from thick slabs of smooth slate (about eight of them) and the slavage yard must have bought a job lot of them.  We had an idea that perhaps we could make one of the worktops on the kitchen out of one of them, but soon changed our minds when the chap said they were £180 each!  Then we spotted a broken one and luckily the bigger piece was just the size we'd need.  So the chap went off to ask how much that'd be - he was new.  Happily, the lad we usually see was there and said we could have it for £40 as we'd had so much off them in the past (that's where we got all the slates and other stuff for the roof).  He even said he'd bring it round for us which was quite a relief as it is very heavy and two hours later, there he was.  And, to add to our good day, he even said he'd buy some of our old floor tiles off us if we cleaned the mortar off them and the price he'd give us would cover the cost of the kitchen worktop and the battens.  Yeah, that's like bartering floor tiles for worktop isn't it?  As it happens, a girl I work with is re-laying her old floor tiles and I think they may be the same ones, so she may have them off us if she runs out, but the principle's the same.

I forgot to show you what Bob's been working on lately.  We only managed to salvage one Suffolk latch from the old doors (the one I told you about for the bathroom) and nice ones are at least £30 each.  With eight doors to do, that's quite a lot of money we don't have, so Bob has been making wooden Suffolk latches and they work brilliantly.  Now he's made the first one and got his template and everything worked out, the rest should be much easier.

More birds are discovering where we've moved the birdfeeders to, so we're getting back to normal on that front with nuthatches and marsh tits as well as the blue and great tits.  The robin seems to have given up on using the feeders, but is quite terratorial about them and chases off the other birds.  I guess once it realises that they all drop bits that it could easily pick up from the ground, it may have a re-think.  The chickens have already discovered this!  They can be quite bright when they want to be.

Wild tomatoes and goldcrests

My goodness, how time flies when you're having fun!  It's ages since I wrote anything here - sorry.  As I've said before, work gets in the way of this sort of thing (and of getting on with anything worth writing about).

So, we've had our second lot of overnight visitors and we've already managed to poison one!  Poor Mum was fine when she arrived, but felt ill during the night and spent the rest of their stay in bed with just half a piece of toast to keep her going the whole time - well, we don't want to overdo the hospitality you know!  No seriously, I don't think it was anything we did - we went out for a meal the first evening and between us all we had the same as Mum without after effects, guess it must be a bug.  Anyway, she felt a bit better by Friday, but they went home again instead of carrying on up north as planned.

After our meal out, but before the bug took effect.

Yesterday, Bob moved the bird feeders from outside the caravan to the silver birch trees across the mudpatch from the kitchen door.  So, this morning we were a bit more attentive to the birdlife out there again.  Over breakfast I watched a robin trying to learn how to use the feeder.  Unlike the great tits and blue tits, it just doesn't seem to come naturally to a robin.  It gets marks for persistance though.  After a few attempts using the hummingbird technique of flapping like mad to hover without actually landing, it had a bit of a sit down and think on top of the logpile before having another go and actually managing to land on the feeder.  It then looked a bit puzzled about what to do next, so went for a fly around to have a ponder and then came back, landed, pecked at the nuts and I think managed to dislodge something because it then spent a while pecking around the ground under the feeder.  Later in the morning, we were working upstairs with the windows open and could hear a lot of tiny, very high-pitched bird noises - either long-tailed tits or goldcrests was our guess and so we hung out of the window to see.  Goldcrests - loads of them.  They are really tiny (I think they are Britains smallest birds, but don't quote me) and they just never sit still, so it's quite difficult to get a good look at them.  We had the binoculars though and managed to watch them for long enough to be sure.  They are quite cute (they make wrens look big) and have a very distinctive yellow stripe front to back on their head.  It was lovely to see so many just outside our window.

We now have another door in place - the ensuite now has privacy, how posh is that?!  Like the bedroom door, this has to fit under the tie-beam and so is tiny, but the pair of them look really good.  You know its funny but, now that there is a door on there, we feel the need to shut it when we've never worried about it before - just because we can I suppose. 

Like the bedroom door, we salvaged some old hinges we had lying around, cleaned them up and blacked them and they look really good.  These hinges have a separate, square spike which knocks into the door post and the loop at the end of the hinge drops onto the round peg attached to the spike.  It takes a fair whacking to get the spike into the oak post (even pre-drilled and chiselled out) and there is a worry that plaster will start dropping off with the thumping, but it seems to have survived - phew!


I finally got round to making the Christmas cake.  I was all set to do it on Monday and had decided to bake it in the woodburner oven.  So I lit the woodburner after lunch to get it up to temperature, but then various things happened and by the time I was ready to do it, I couldn't really be bothered and sat and read instead, now how bad is that?!  So, I did it on Friday instead and in the normal oven because it was really too warm to have the woodburner lit all afternoon.  I had to get my old Kenwood Chef out of storage for the occasion and was happily chopping nuts and cherries while the Kenwood worked away on creaming the butter and sugar when I looked up to see smoke billowing out of the mixer - darn it, another thing bites the dust!  So, I had to finish the cake with the hand-held mixer.  Bob took the Kenwood apart and there was one very obvious burnt-out bit (the capacitor I think).  We've had a look on-line and I think you can get a new bit, so some day we may try to repair it I suppose.  Anyway, the cake seems to have turned out OK and is now soaking up several spoons of brandy.

The other thing to bite the dust was our mouse (the computer mouse that is - I'm sure the real mice are still running round as healthy as anything).  The last blog I did was using the pad thing on the laptop and it took me ages - a real pain.  So we went to buy a new one in Currys - how many different sorts of mice can there be?!  All too complicated, so we went to a little proper computer place on the industrial estate and told them what we use the computer for and they told us what we needed - much simpler!  So we now have a wireless mouse which goes to sleep by itself if you ignore it for too long.  This means we are now the proud owners of a nano-dongle as well - impressed? We are!  I assume this is the tiny little thing you plug into the side of the laptop which 'talks' to the mouse itself.  You learn something every day!

I found a wild tomato plant this morning.  Bizarrly . . . . bizzarely . . . . bizzarley . . . ? . . strangely, it is growing in the stones behind the trailer.  It is about two feet tall, has flowers on it and some little green tomatoes - who said you need growbags, geenhouses and sunshine?!  I can only think that it must have grown from a seed planted by one of the chickens - they love tomatoes you know.

Happy Bonfire Night!

Happy Bonfire Night!  Well, we have our own little bonfire (in the woodburner).  There is a proper bonfire and fireworks at the pub in the village and we should really go along and support it and have a pint in the pub, and we were going to, but Bob doesn't get excited about fireworks and  the accompanying karaoke and disco does kinda put you off!  So, sausage casserole here and our own little fire will have to do.

This has been an odd week - I went from having very few extra hours at work (which was quite nice) to working late one night, going in early another day and working eight hours on my day off!  So, being, there until gone 8pm last night and back in for 7am this morning, it felt as though I might as well have just stayed there overnight.  I'm in at 8am tomorrow too, but at least I have Monday off in place of Friday and I'm going to say no to any extra this week!

House-wise, we now have a bedroom door which seems really strange.  We're used to seeing light from the rooflight above the 'stairs', but now there is just blackness in that direction.  Bob took the old door apart, cut it down to size and re-attached the ledges and braces to make it fit the hole. Once he had cut it down and laid it out downstairs, he had to go back up and check the measurements several times because it looked so tiny.  In place, it reminds me of the door in Alice in Wonderland that she has to drink the potion to get through - quite cute really.



I guess this should have a person in the picture to emphisise
the titchiness of the door, but Bob wasn't available to pose!

And this has been my contribution this week - I've painted the boxing in in the oak room.  Bob has also chopped the bottom of the bed, so that can now be put back together ready for our next visitors.  Mum and Dad are coming on Wednesday for two nights on their way to the Lake District.  They have been to 'stay' many times while we were in the caravan, but following a very cold December week in the caravan the first year we were here, they have opted for the local Travel Lodge ever since!  So, it'll be nice to be able to offer them proper accomodation at last!