We arrived at the house this weekend to see a world of white. Being higher up than our current house, we drove from frost into flurries of snow. The highest hills were completely white, with the valleys still largely green.

We started out by clearing out some of the last few bits and pieces left to us as part of the sale of the house. Within the recently sold Welsh dresser we had a large number of glasses. Sorting through what we wanted to keep, the rest went online for sale.

With the breakables removed we cleared out the rest of the items that had accumulated in the dining room and kitchen, ready to take down the wall.

Our next job was to replace the remaining rotten beams in the dining room. Luckily we only had three to replace, as getting the beams out and back in is a fiddly job, involving a great deal of work with a crowbar.

We had been debating for a while whether we could get away with not removing the wood panelling on the eaves. The argument for removing it is so we can put in a thicker layer of insulating material. The concern was that removing the very old, slightly woodworm eaten wood would cause it to break. The wood panelling on the ceilings seems to have been there for a long-time, and is part of the character of the house. In the end we agreed to try and remove the panels as carefully as possible. Luckily most seem to have come off well, though we may need to change the ceiling in one room to something plainer, to reuse panelling in the other rooms.

Our final job for the weekend was installing more metal straps, going from the rafters to the walls or the walls to the floors. The aim is to drill into a big stone for the screws, however we have struggled either to line up the straps with large enough stones, or prevent the stones from splitting. In the end Chris had to cut the bent ends off the straps so we could rebend them to suit individual sections of wall. Hopefully these little bits of metal will stop our walls from slowly moving out and away from the rest of the house.

It’s lovely to be back inside working on the interior of the house. Jobs feel so much smaller and quicker than the never-ending roof. Of course the list is still somewhat endless, but ticking off items just seems to be more achievable. And even though it’s pretty freezing in the house at the moment, it’ good to have a little shelter, afterall, the weather outside is frightful.