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Levelling up
It’s felt like a physical weekend, with lots of lifting and bending, but we’ve seen a good amount of progress to make it worthwhile.
I finished off the last few slabs on the side patio, before we reach the section covered in piles of stone that need to be moved first. Chris then cut a gap for our wisteria plant and dug it into the ground with some compost.
We then moved to the front patio. Originally we thought we could do the same as the side and put the slabs straight down, but the ground was too soft. Chris spent a morning wheelbarrowing up gravel and tamping it down.
We’ve had an old concrete lintle hanging around our garden for ages, Chris keeping it to use as a step. He finally put it in to try and even out the slope.
Connecting the two patios we want to lay a path. Currently we have piles of stone blocking it, so we thought we’d build a raised bed along the front of the house. Chris was very keen to do this drystone wall, as I’ve done all the others. I admit it’s neater than mine.
I headed to B&Q with a sample of our cupboard colour, and got a paint match to paint the coat rack. I then added hooks and Chris cut and routered a worktop piece for the bench. Chris also managed to pick up a second-hand radiator that’s the right size, so we’re good to go on moving the radiator so the coat rack can shift across.
Chris showed me how to use the router so I was able to shape the edge of the windowsills and the worktop for the understairs cupboard.
I then spent a long day cutting and fiddling with the cupboard shelves so they fit. With wonky walls and wonky stairs it was a real pain to get it all to match up. But it’s finally all in and just needs painting so we can stack the books that have sat in boxes for two years.
In the garden the tulips are appearing, and a large number of self-seeded primroses. We’ll split and move the primroses once done flowering, and they should multiply and spread.
One thing that did make me sad was visiting my old house to collect some post, and seeing the meadow we made paved over for parking (despite the fact there’s space for two cars on the drive). The meadow had so many wildflowers including oxeye daisies, black knapweed, meadow vetchling and Dartford pink. It supported so much wildlife and was gone in an instant – for a car. It makes me more determined to create meadows wherever I can, including my new garden
On a brighter note we took the campervan out for its first test run. The bed was nice and comfortable and I was pleased with my magnetic curtains. It gave us a good idea what remains to be done.
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Van 6: Transformer
Having not had much to do with the van over winter, other than Chris sorting some mechanical bits, the countdown to the next MOT moved it back up the To Do list. Added to that, with nice spring weather, and the house more in order, it’s about time we actually used it.
Chris spent the day replacing the breaks and trying to fix a faulty engine warning light, while I got on with jobs inside the van. It was in better shape than I remembered, which is always a pleasant surprise. Even just sitting on our drive it was very nice to be inside it looking out at the sunny view.
While we had built the U shaped bench, which forms most of the bed, I now needed to build the table/central bed support. I measured up a piece of worktop and cut it to size. The piece we had wasn’t quite long enough so I also cut a piece of plyboard to fill the gap.
To support the boards I attached some wooden planks to the front of the benches.
To transform it into a table I used a kit Chris had bought, attaching one pieces to the bottom of the table, and cutting a hole out of the floor to attach the base. A removable pole the slots in to each to complete the transformation.
In the kitchen I used the jigsaw to cut out a hole for the sink.
Now Chris has finished his mechanical jobs, hopefully next weekend we can both work on the inside. Apart from the shower, I think most jobs won’t take us that long. The hope is to try out the first overnight trip this month, to test our work and see how cozy it is.
Apparently doing up a campervan is the millennial version of a mid-life crisis sports car… I think it’s the better option personally.
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Flattened
Having said I would leave the final piece of hedge laying along the back of the house till next year, we had some sunny evenings and I had some energy, so I decided to get on with it.
It was a fiddly bit of ground to work on, being high and narrow. I managed to cut out the old fencing before starting to lay the trees. There were fewer than the other stretch, and they were much thinner, making it a quicker job. One of the coppiced hazels we decided not to lay, as it sit lower down and will need to come out when we repair the wall.
With this section complete we now have a long run from the section myself and Monika laid last week, leaving only the hedge at the side of the garden to lay at some point in the future.
With the good weather it seems destined that we get on with jobs outside. Chris’s brother had kindly lent us his cement mixer to do the shed base, and we’d kept hold of it in the hope of getting the patios done before he needed it back. However, the time has come when it needs to return to its owner, so we decided we’d better get on with laying our slabs.
Originally we’d thought we would need to dig down to lay a bed of gravel and sand for the patio. However, the ground is so hard and compacted from when the drainage was done, that we decided we could get away with a quick bit of clearing, and go straight to cement.
We dug out some small tiles which covered part of the area and put them to one side for future use or sale.
As always, the first few slabs took the longest, with Chris carefully getting them to slope away from the house, while I was on cement mixer duty.
However, once we had a good line, things sped up as we could both be on slab laying. Once we’d run out of cement we’d completed most of the side area of the house. Next week we’ll hopefully get onto the front patio, as well as finishing off those little gaps at the side.
As well as the big jobs, I’ve been getting on with a bit of weeding in the front garden. I was pleased to find some self-seeded flowers, including primrose/cowslip hybrids, coltsfoot (one of my favourite spring wildflowers) and lady’s mantle. Another nice find has been a number of chrysalis’, which will hopefully still hatch out into butterflies this spring, despite being disturbed.
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Katie’s Big Fortnight
Switching from one job to another I took a fortnight off, both to free up time for some IVF appointments and to push on with some DIY projects.
Unexcitingly, I spent good amount of time filling the edges around the wall on the stairs. Still it was nice to tidy up a rough edge.
There was a scratty bit of hedging alongside the car parking space. To rejuvenate it, we laid the remaining hedge plants and filled in the gaps with new whips.
Now the spikey blackthorns were out of the way, I tidied up the drystone wall and shifted a pile of stones off the bed to allow the wildflowers a chance to grow.
I also rebuilt a bit of the drystone wall along the back of the house.
In preparation for laying the back hedge, I removed an old fence that was in the way. Chris also wheelbarrowed gravel up to lay a path through the garden.
All our radiators were installed before we had a clear idea of how to set up the rooms. Having lived with the radiator in its current location for a while, we’ve decided to move it to the other side of the room, under the window and behind the sofa.
The first job to achieve this was to lay the pipe. As the fireplace is in the way this meant creating a hole through the base and fitting the pipes through it. The remaining pipe I attached to loose skirting board, as this will allow us to raise it once the flooring goes in.
The pipes in, the next job will be to move and attach the radiator, but as this means draining the system, we’re going to hold off till the weather warms up.
Having made templates for my windowsills, I got the chance to cut out the first two when a new piece of worktop arrived. Now they’re in place we just need to round the edges and stain. I’m itching to get onto the rest of the windowsills, but these are going to be made from elm planks and we first need to decide how to join the planks together.
On the stairs I filled, sanded and painted the wood above the spindles. I was sad to cover over the original wood colour, but in order to fit in with the lounge it all had to be brown.
And on the stairs themselves, I stained and sanded the spindles and the edge closest to the wall. We’d been debating whether to paint this edge the same colour as the wall, given there’s some staining from the lime plaster, but in the end we decided it wasn’t very visible.
We’d discussed for a while creating some kind of coat rack/ shoe storage unit on the side of the units in the utility, both to hide the gaps, but also to give us more practical storage.
Mostly we wanted somewhere to store our wellies, however building a unit from the radiator to the edge of the units only created storage for two sets of wellies. Pondering on it, Chris decided we might as well move the radiator, as it wasn’t in a great place anyway, being stuck behind the cupboards. With that moved we could build storage wide enough for three pairs of wellies.
Using inspiration from other coat racks online, we cut out the pieces and joined them together with pocket holes – a fancy way to drilling at an angle so as to hide the holes internally.
The pieces went together pretty quickly with the two of us, and I then filled, sanded and painted the structure with a primer. The final coat will have to wait till we’ve managed to paint match our existing units. Then there’s another radiator to move before everything can fit in snuggly.
Before we got too far into spring I wanted to lay a line of hedging at the back of the house. To give me a hand my friend Monika joined me to learn the ropes. This section makes up roughly half of the hedging at the back of the house, but the other half sits on top of a 0.5m wide bank on top of the crumbling walls of the old toilet block. While I would like to do it at some point it’s going to be a fiddly balancing act, and I didn’t fancy it this time round.
The next bit of construction was to start on the storage under the stairs, a set of pull out draws with a bookshelf on top. Chris and I worked together on the base, before he headed to work and I messed around getting the worktop and the bookshelves in.
As straightforward as it first appeared, as always the wonkiness of everything in the house just makes things more fiddly and complicated. I need to make some final adjustments before I can join the bookcase all together, then it’ll be onto the drawers.
In the garden, Chris requested I paint the frames of the old windows, and fill and paint the old door. It’s need another coat to make the yellow a little richer.
One of the jobs on my to do list was to sort the junk cluttering up the study. To do this I picked up a second hand set of draws to fit under the desk, and myself and Chris went through the boxes we’d moved from the old house.
With those bits tidied away I took DIY bits out to the shed, and took other bits and pieces to the recycling center. Finally, all that remains is a second hand mattress Chris bought to cut into beds for the dog, and a few pieces for the attic. But despite that we are now ready to get a carpet for this room, which will make it feel significantly more finished.
Spring has definitely sprung here, but I’m still hopeful we can get the inside of the house done before summer, mostly because I want to spend the summer in the garden and on the campervan. Feels like we’ve made a good step forward recently, and my list is getting a little shorter each week.
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Beautify
We had spent a long time thinking about how to design the stairs to maximise space. In the end we settled on a banister attached to the wall, with slats on the otherside to stop people falling off the stairs.
Chris ordered oak slates and a pine beam to attach the slats to. We then cut them roughly to the right length and screwed them into the beam at equal distances.
Together we lifted it up and attached the whole thing to the ceiling beam. We then checked that the beams were the right distances apart and Chris screwed from behind the stairs, while I held them in place.
The final step was to trim down the ends to match the stairs. It’s amazing how much the slats change the feel of room, one more thing to make it look finished.
Another small change to the lounge was that Chris’s mum gave us some nicer, thicker curtains. They were a bit big so I trimmed them down to size.
In the utility I attached the skirting, as usual it was a pain finding the studs to attach it too, but I managed it in the end. The final job will be filling the gaps.
While Chris worked on the van breaks, I cleared the area of the garden immediately in front of the French doors. We look out onto this patch from the kitchen, so I thought it would be nice to have something a little prettier to look at in the spring.
The area was filled with wild raspberry canes and bramble, so I spent a good amount of time digging out the roots. I also had to move a big pile of stones taking up one corner. We’re going to replant the raspberry canes somewhere more suitable to see if they will give us a crop next year.
As well as some new plants from the garden center, I also planted some of the plants we moved from our old garden, that were struggling in pots.
The next step will involve finishing off the drystone wall, putting in steps and a path. But at least we’ll have some flowers in the spring.
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Chris’s Big Week Off
Chris is changing jobs, and wisely decided to take off a week between. This has given him some time to focus on some of the jobs that he’s been wanting to get done.
Unfortunately, as I’ve been working, I don’t have many photos of some of Chris’s work, as he doesn’t take any.
He spent a good deal of time on some mechanical mysteries, fixing a broken chainsaw and working on the campervan’s brakes, fan and windscreen wipers. His final bit of mechanics was clambering into the attic to connect up the ventilation, which is nearly ready to go.
His big priority for the week however was finishing off the shed, including adding a few final boards, attaching trim to the corners and installing guttering. He also used some old wood to create a lean-to wood store, which he filled with wood from the garden that he’s cut into logs using the chainsaw. Inside he installed the final window and my new swallow nest box.
Inside the house he properly installed our final kitchen cabinet, though he’s now given himself an added job of cutting down some spare worktop to make a top.
On my lunchbreak I managed to get enough enthusiasm to prime and paint the kitchen doorway.
I also spent a long time playing with wood stain. Having cut half the skirting for the utility, and then run out of wood, I’d stained it with some wood stain from our collection. Recently having gotten more wood and cut the final few pieces, I looked for the matching wood stain. But after much trial and error I had to conclude it had been thrown out.
So then I started to see what colours I could combine to make the old and new skirting match. I’ve settled on a reddish undercoat for the new skirting, and then going over everything with a brown stain, not ideal but hopefully it’ll be fairly close to matching.
My other indoor job was filling, sanding and staining the architrave at the back of the kitchen worktop, a fiddly and time-consuming job.
I also spent some time cutting out templates for the downstairs windowsills, which will make the job much easier given all our wonky walls.
Having slowly accumulated a lot of rubbish in the garden we decided to have a tidy, filling up the car with as much as we could and heading to the recycling center. With most of the rubbish gone, we moved to tackling the piles of wood. While some of the wood was being saved for fires, we had plenty of brash from hedge laying, trimming and tree clearing, so we decided to have a bonfire.
We managed to get through the huge piles, scattered around the garden. What remains is wood to be cut up for firewood, and another pile I saved to keep for a habitat pile, as it was full of fungi and other interesting things.
At the back of the shed I gathered together our various pots, which have been scattered around the garden since moving, and often go walkabout during high winds. Hopefully they’ be a little more protected here.
There’s a long way to go with the garden, but it’s nice to start seeing it looking a little more orderly and less chaotic. The real change will come when we build our patios, but we need some drier weather to start that job.
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Timber
One of the biggest disagreements myself and Chris have had about the house renovation has been how many trees to take out in the garden. Having been abandoned for forty years, the majority of the garden was covered in tall trees or scrub. Personally, I would prefer not to take out any trees – as having mature trees in the garden is something money can’t buy, and great for wildlife.
Chris’s argument was that trees are healthier and happier when they aren’t too crowded, which is also true. In the end we agreed to take out two of our line of overgrown plum trees, and coppice a third. The trees were struggling under heavy crowns of ivy, and very close to their neighbours, but it was still kind of sad to see them go.
We have planted a small plum tree in the gap, but a little further into the garden, so this will one day fill the space.
Down the side of the garden we had a line of scraggly blackthorn. We were keen to lay a hedge along this line, but because of the poor condition of the plants, it was better to cut them down to the ground. While they regrow, we can also plant some more mixed species to make the hedge more diverse. It can then be laid a few years down the line.
Unfortunately, clearly the blackthorn also means we can see more of our assorted mess (made up of things we don’t need and things we don’t need just yet). But it’s motivated Chris to make time for a few more tip runs, so that’s no bad thing.
Down the back of the garden we cleared out what must once have been a group of three plum trees. At some point they collapsed, and rotted, then became tangled with huge mats of ivy. Removing the stumps and ivy matting means we can now get in and lay the hedge along the back wall.
With all this felling, we now have a huge pile of logs to be chopped up for firewood, and an even bigger pile of branches to be burnt in a bonfire.
I was pretty pleased with a vintage bottle that turned up amongst the foliage.
In the house, we’ve had a few unwanted guests scuttling around the walls. They are very cute, but not very hygienic, so they are being removed to the garden.
I haven’t had much time for anything inside the house, but I’ve started stripping an awkward bit of varnish below the radiator in the bathroom. The sander we used couldn’t quite reach. It’s incredibly thick paint, meaning I have to keep adding more layers of paint stripper to even begin to get to the wood.
There’s plenty to do inside the house, but with bird nesting season not far away, it is worth getting any major garden works out of the way. We both have a little time off soon too, so hopefully that will be a boost to the inside workload.
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Strip and Paint
It’s been a busy start to the year, with Chris off skiing, and me having two house guests, in the form of Chris’s brother’s dog Ned and my friend Becky.
With an extra doggy guest arriving, we wanted to protect the stairs from damage by staining them. I did two coats, with a sand before and between. They are definitely much more protected now, if a little slippy for doggy paws. I also added the lime plaster coat on top of the rough plaster along the edge of the stairs. While I had the mix out I also plugged some gaps in the kitchen walls.
Having flipped our bedroom door to open the other way, I was now staring at the green side most nights, so as I’d done with the bathroom door I using paint stripper to take it back to the wood. Unfortunately, the paint stripper couldn’t quite get through all the paint layers, so I ended up hand sanding as well. But I’m happy with the end result.
Before Chris headed off on holiday he decided to polish out some accidental stain marks on the concrete kitchen floor. They’d happened when he’d spilt wood stain from the worktop on the floor. Luckily they polished out fine.
In the utility I cut the final pieces of wood for the skirting. I need to stain them and then I can attach them. I also cut the final piece of architrave for the back of the worktop.
Chris bought me some bird boxes for my birthday, and I finally got round the attaching them to the shed. It’ll be lovely if I get some house martins in my house martin boxes, but the more generalist bird box is probably more likely to get a guest. I’d also like to put a swallow nest box in the shed itself.
Becky had previously made us a plant hanger, and another had been bought for us by Chris’s cousin for Christmas. Chris requested that Becky make us a third to complete the set, which she obligingly did.
It feels like lots of bitty jobs at the moment, but that’ because we’re building towards some bigger ones. Still the house has stayed warm and comfortable in a cold and snowy week, showing how far it’s come since we started the renovations.
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Stairs
The very dull world of installing skirting kept me busy for a good week. Even once it was attached there was the filling, sanding, second filling, second sanding, caulking and of course first coat and second. It’s done anyway, aside for the doorway, which is complicated as it currently catches on the door.
With the shed watertight enough to move our tools into I’ve lost all interest, as I’d like to finish off more of the inside of the house. Chris carried on however adding some of the corner pieces and a missing panel or two. He also moved in the majority of the tools, though I was left to sort through the mess and dregs that always seem to be left behind once you’ve move the more straight forward bits. Managed to locate a few missing bits, and throw out lots of rubbish we’d just chucked back into the tool room when busy.
Having boxed in the pipes on the floor with wood, we couldn’t figure out how to attach the boxing for the soil pipe. So in the end I filled the gap with expandy foam and cut it back and filled. We can then paint it the same colour as the wall.
Early on in my filling odyssey I didn’t realise some fillers could only be used on stone and some on wood. I filled a load of holes in the study ceiling, only to have the filler crack and new gaps open up – very annoying. So I spent some time scrapping off ruined caulke and filler, to then refilled and recaulked. With all that finally done I did a second coat of white paint on the study and bedroom ceiling. A very unsatisfying job, but it needed doing before we get a carpet.
While the paint was out, I redid the wood in the landing. A proper job would have been to strip the old paint first but that seemed like a lot of work so I just gave it a light sand and repainted.
Outside Chris also had an unsatisfying job. I’d mortared around all the new windows I could reach, but some were too high for me even on a ladder. Chris finally got round to the remaining four windows. A slow job and one we’d forgotten we hadn’t finished so it feels like lost time to go back to it. But still, nice to be watertight.
In the utility I finished filling and sanding the walls and door, just need to finish the skirting so I can paint.
The big job, however, was replacing the old stairs. The new stairs arrived in one piece, from a bespoke online dealer. The delivery man, though at first very pleased that he didn’t have to carry them into the house, couldn’t believe I was the person carrying them with Chris instead of him. I often get this attitude from delivery drivers and I have to explain that I’ll be the one shifting them around in the house, however far they carry it to the front door.
The old stairs came out very easy and someone took them away to use for a two story shed. The new stairs were a little more tricky. We were keen to widen them to full width of the gap, but while Chris checked carefully, the stair manufacturers added an extra 3mm, making them incredibly tight.
We started off with Chris lifting at one end while I moved the other end towards him, but the tightness of the gap made it impossible. Rethinking, we remembered the pulley system we used to get the steel in place. Using the wooden beam above the stairs, Chris used the pulley to winch the end of the stairs up while I moved the base forward from below. It was still tight, but eventually we got it into place. Annoyingly, I had some great photos of the process, but I broke my phone and lost them.
Chris filled the edge with expandy foam, and added some screws into the wall. I used the leftover mortar from Chris’s repointing of the windows, and replastered the walls beside the stairs.
Next we need to add wooden slats along the gap, and a banister.
With Christmas here we have a few days off, but looking forward to getting back to it in the new year. For now Nadolig Llawen from Wales!
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Touch of Paint
With guests coming to stay soon, I wanted to tidy up the last few bits in the guest bedroom. This meant filling and sanding a few areas, and then painting the window reveals and coving.
I bought a second curtain and put up the curtain pole on the second window. Because of the wonkiness of walls and ceiling, the curtain pole looks all askew, but it’s actually the only straight element.
Having covered the lintle in the study, I added the coving and filled, sanded and painted around it. The coving around the windows has been a painful job, with the odd angles and wonky walls making it difficult to line up. I’m glad to have the last one done.
In the kitchen I painted the bare plaster with a watery paint mix before painting the section blue. Soon the whole kitchen will need a second coat but at least it looks passable for now.
In the utility I covered the very old and unattractive lintle with plasterboard and filled the gaps. Another bit of plasterboard will need to fill the gaps above the door but first we’ll need to add architrave.
In the downstairs toilet I started to build the boxing around the pipes. The verticle soil pipe we’ve decided will be covered in expandy foam, filled and painted, as we can’t see a reasonable way to box it in. At least the horizontal pipes were a fairly easy job.
One small but satisfying job was to start organising the shed, so all the wood that’s been sitting around in piles in the house could be moved into it. We’ll need to install the windows and door before we can start moving the tools in, but getting the wood out of the house is a nice first step.
Chris focused his attention on finishing the electrics for the extractor fan in the kitchen and adding edging to the bookcase.
He also did the fiddly job of lowering the kitchen lights. We hadn’t had enough cable when we originally installed them so they’d ended up close to the ceiling. They’re much more of a feature now.
The next job that really needed to be finished was the skirting in the kitchen, but its a horrible job and both myself and Chris had been trying to avoid it in the hope the other person would do it. In the end I caved in. I’d avoided it in part because all the skirting upstairs had been a nightmare to attach, but actually this lot went on without a problem. Having filled the gaps the next job will be sanding and painting.
We got treated to a winter wonderland this week, with a heavy dump of snow that blanketed everything for days. It certainly made the building site of the garden look a little more appealing.
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