Our very own flypast!

Cat was up very early and by 8am she had already painted the outside of one of the metal window frames. We are keeping these windows as bare metal on the inside, but they are being painted on the outside.

Blink and you miss her. Cat is now priming the landing window.

Dan is repairing the top step of the staircase. This has been broken since we moved in so he is replacing this back piece of elm.

This is the only place in the house that we haven’t uncovered and therefore the only place left to find any long lost heirlooms. Dan pulls out a pile of dust for us to go through.

The repaired top step. The modern screw here is just to hold it in place while the glue goes off and will get removed and the hole filled.

Before Dan sealed the step we buried a note in an envelope with a pound coin. The treasure under the hearth stone (buried 2 years ago when we uncovered the inglenook) is another note in a gin bottle and a pink squeaky pig of Jasper’s…

King of the hill!

Cat is now sealing the metal bars on the bathroom window, before painting the first top coat on the outside.

This is going to be a replacement for a rotten knot in one of the floorboards from Zanna’s bedroom. Dan traces around the knot with paper and pencil, then glues this to a suitable piece of board. Once the glue is dry it gets cut out with a jigsaw and fitted into the floorboard slightly proud so that the top with the glued piece of paper can get sliced off.

Piles of off-cuts of floorboards taking over Cat’s bedroom.

Mid morning and we were treated to our very own flypast by an aerobatic power glider! This literally made our day! It had been promised for a few days, but the plane took a little longer to fix… Was definitely worth the wait though 🙂 Directly over our scaffolded house and pretty low, many of our neighbours were outside and caught the display and some cyclists stopped to enjoy it too.

After the excitement of the flypast, sifting through decades of mouse nests almost came close.

Sadly no diamonds or gold, but some interesting finds nonetheless. Loads more pins (do we have mice with a pin fetish?) several ears of corn (?!?), part of a clay pipe, bits of broken glass, part of an old key hole, a button, some bones and a lovely turquoise glass jewel.

Some of the floorboards that we have fitted into the floor are a slightly different colour to our original ones. These are the ones we acquired from a local developer who was getting rid of them. Ours are slightly warmer in tone, so we ordered an amber tinted oil and tested it on some off-cuts. The top two are the amber oil, the bottom two are the clear oil. It is subtle but does make a difference.

Dan is in a rather fetching pair of hot pants today. It’s a hot day but that is no excuse. Don’t think he will dare wear them here again! Here Cat and Dan are selecting pieces of oak from our pile of old timbers to use for repairing the staircase frame. The carpenter selects a dead straight piece, the designer selects a wobbly piece… I wonder who will win?

Dan is fitting the new oak posts into the old purlin, ready to support the dormers when the purlin gets cut.

Dan cuts a deep notch in the purlin for the post to fit into so it won’t be able to move.

The first post is fitted into the notch in the underside of the purlin.

The notch gets fine tuned by hand with a hammer and chisel.

Cat is now working on the stairs. She wants to oil the stairs this week so has started to sand them. The elm on the sides of the stairs was painted and has remnants of the really hard bastard grey paint (that was on ALL the woodwork). It takes a great deal of sanding to remove it and is undoubtedly lead based. This small part of elm has taken a couple of hours to get this far and needs much more sanding to get rid of it all.

Today feels like the end of the summer, the weather is turning and rain is forecast for the rest of the week along with much colder temperatures. As we have no glass in the windows and we have wooden floors and window frames that are not yet fully protected, Zanna has devised some clever coverings for the windows to keep the rain and the wind out. They are constructed of heavy duty transparent plastic with wooden batons attached top and bottom. The top baton gets screwed into the window lintels and the bottom baton hangs down stopping the plastic from blowing up and allowing rain in. We added these to every window this afternoon ready for the autumnal weather.

From inside you can still see out and light still gets in.