I usually write my blogs on a Sunday night, as a nice way to finish off a weekend of DIY. Sometimes if we haven’t done much I’ll wait till the following week. As I didn’t feel what we’ve done is that impressive I wondered about rolling over this week, but then again it was a lot of work so I thought it’s still worth celebrating.

Our big exhausting job was finishing off the two patios. To do this we first had to shift a pile of rocks (again after already having moved them twice). There is a little bit left to do at the back of the house but as we need to rebuild the bank wall, we decided we’d wait till this was done. We also need to lay a connecting path between the two patios, which we originally thought we’d do in the same slabs, but it’s far too winding for big slabs to be practical so we’ll think of something else.

Chris continued with his stairs, reusing some old wooden beams to build two more.

Inside, my big achievement was finishing off the bookshelves. It still needs a bit of filling, but I’ll wait till the room’s had its final coat first. I then emptied the four boxes of books cluttering up our lounge and piled them in, to see if they all fit. They do, just about, but Chris agreed we’d go through and get rid of some so both bookcases can look a little less overstuffed.

The garden is really growing now, with plenty of tulips coming up, along with lots of selfseeded primroses, cowslips and red campion. We even seem to have a selfseeded black current bush. It’s all looking a bit wild and Chris is desperate to get on top of it, but I want to finish the inside before we worry too much more about the garden. Idris likes it as it is anyway.

Over the bank holiday we stopped in at a salvage yard and picked up an old sink to plant up as a bog garden, as well as an old stool which seems the right height for my harp.

One small job we finally ticked off was hanging up the second hand curtains I bought months ago in the study. The study doesn’t particularly need them at the moment, but I mostly hung them up to get them out of the way. Still it does make the room look a little more lived in.