A very special gift

Today our plasterers Charlie, Alan and Mitch surprised us with a very special gift! This beautiful piece of Pyrography has been specially made for us by Alan’s partner, Martha, and when we opened it we both cried! Such am incredible gift, personalised to us and the house and a lovely keepsake preserving Pear Tree Cottage as it was when we first moved in. We LOVE it and can’t thank them enough. And a very special thank you to Pyrography by Martha.

Roger is finishing the roof today, adding the hogs back ridge tiles to the two dormer windows and cementing them on.

Dan is working on repairing the sitting room window seat.

Charlie wrestling with plasterboard in the awkward dormers!

Tom is fixing the granite to the steel bracket ready for the bathroom sink to be fitted next week, while Cat is busy painting the mist coats onto the walls and ceiling in the bathroom.

Sadly the original seat was in too bad a state to repair. There was a big hole in it where it has rotted over the years and much of the wood was too soft, so Dan has used the second piece of oak Zanna was given by Doug Hutsby (as it was quite badly bowed), planed out the curve and fitted it into the old seat. Once oiled this will look fab with the old oak.

The window sill was also not in a good state (and not sure it was in fact original), so Dan very cleverly fashioned a new sill and sides (where the shutters will sit) out of the old floor boards that we were given to us by the developer from Banbury (who was going to burn them) and it matches so perfectly you would think they had been there forever.

The old door and frame back in place between the sitting room and dining room.

The finished dormers with mortar added to the front to keep all the tiles in place.

We cannot wait to get the scaffolding down now and see these dormers and the new roof in their full glory.

Ancient roof tiles live to see another few decades/centuries?! 🙂

Now the roof is finished, Tom and George have added the coping stones to the top of the gable end wall and finished off the lime pointing. It gets covered and will cure overnight and Tom will return tomorrow to knock back the pointing.

3 comments

  1. Gosh! I nearly cried too. What a thoughtful thing to do (and beautiful!). The dormers look great – going with the hog’s back tiles was definitely the right thing to do – they give a much softer line. xxx

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