Category: Uncategorized
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The Grind
I spent a day finishing off the plastering on the kitchen wall, starting with the remaining areas surrounding the bare stone wall. I would have like to leave more of the stone bare but the position of the wiring meant it wasn’t possible. Still I think what’s remaining will look nice. Once the lime plastering…
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White out
It’s been a windy week here in the hills, with 50 mph gusts howling round the house. Having installed the roof ourselves we’re always a little nervous when it gets windy, but for the last few days we’ve been hearing a knocking noise whenever the wind blows. Other than being very annoying we were worried…
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Shoulders, knees and toes
This week I’ve been planting 100 tulip bulbs. We planted some tulips in our old garden but they never really had enough impact, so this time I’m going big. Inside, Chris has installed a hand towel rail and door handle, both a little bit vintage. The door handle came from the house, but the towel…
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Tortoise and the Hare
This week brought our first touch of snow, though none of it settled. The roads are really icy however, and it seems the gritters don’t believe in salting little roads like ours, so getting plenty of ice skating practice on the morning dog walks. I finished off the bathroom coving this week, painting over the…
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Draining
We have drains! The digger drivers did a fantastic job digging a ditch along the side of the house, installing a new pipe and refilling it with gravel. The pipe now pops up on our boundary and has been constantly running. We can’t be sure yet if this will solve all our drainage problems, so…
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Filling gaps
Having thought the plasterer wasn’t returning for two weeks he was able to continue this week, getting the rest of the ceiling and most of the back wall finished. I spent too much time with a few fiddly jobs around the glass bricks, grouting and cleaning them, then sanding the wooden support below them, before…
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A backwards step?
Our plasterer appeared this Saturday. He’s a landscaper who is looking to move into plastering and so is taking jobs on the weekend to improve his skills before making the jump. As he’s not a trained plasterer he’s charging a little less, on the understanding we might not get perfection. Given that we’re doing the…
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All about Edges
Weekend plans, plus a touch of winter sickness, have made it a relatively slow week. Even when we have got going, the fiddly nature of the jobs has made progress feel particularly sloth-like. We’ve been borrowing a chop-saw from one of Chris’s brothers, but as we need it for quite a while, and he has…
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Stripping back
In our last house I spent an absolute age sanding decades of paint off a salvaged door. With four doors to get back to wood I thought I’d try the paint stripper we used on the floor to see if this might do the job a little quicker. We decided to strip back the landing…
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Let it grow
We are at a stage of the renovation where it seems the house is full of little fiddly jobs. The type of jobs that take all day but you can’t even really tell you’ve done them. Frustrating jobs. On top of this we made the mistake of going on holiday without getting magical elves to…
Ruined 