With a couple of other obligations this weekend, we didn’t get an awful lot done, but little jobs are better than no jobs.

One little job I decided to do was plug up the last of the gaps in the landing ceiling. The gaps were letting in cold air from the attic, so first I had to push in some insulation and then tape up the plastic lining. A few coats of paint and the new boards will fit right in.

After plastering the landing, we realised we’d used the wrong type of plaster on one small section, that still had a layer of plaster on it. This had left a poor finish, so Chris used filler to smooth out the worst parts. I then sanded the filler and the plaster, before applying a watery coat of paint. I had planned to paint the landing white, the same as the stairs, but seeing the space now I feel it needs colour to pull together the various corners. I’ve got to decide what colour

Our big job of the weekend was continuing to move the huge pile of soil beside the drive. Frustratingly, the photos makes it look like we achieved nothing, when in fact we moved two-thirds of the pile. I realised too late taking the photos from the other direction would have shown our progress much better.

We found a line of big slate stones buried upright in a line, which probably once marked the edge of a wall. Chris spent a lot of time and energy digging them out. At some point we can repurpose them as garden steps.

In the spare bedroom things have descended into chaos once more as I moved everything around to paint two of the walls. The two remaining walls still need plastering, one complete plastering, the other just a bit of smoothing out, but it’s nice to see what the room will soon look like.

Outside spring is on its way, with daffodils having joined the snowdrops on the side of the road. I’m looking forward to working on the garden, but there’s still a lot to do inside before we can really dig into the garden.