It was a quiet weekend with us both having a well needed day off on Saturday, sort of, we both need some time where we aren’t constantly thinking about the house too. A socially distanced dog walk with Laura and her new dog, followed by a night in front of the telly watching a film while eating kebabs, was suitably distracting.
Cat opened up the house on Saturday morning to mop the condensation from all the windows, she has been away for the last few days and was keen to see how things were progressing, but came back to check that the writing in the window had been made by a living person… Dan missed a trick there as he should have written ‘Save me’ (it was on the old oak window seat in Zanna’s bedroom that we are keeping and covering over with a new one), but it still had the desired effect!
The two new window seats for the two parts of the landing window are being oiled. We are so pleased with this piece of oak that we got from Doug Hutsby, the patterns from the burrs are fabulous and we have made three beautiful window seats out of it.
Sunday and Cat tackled the silicone around the bathroom tiles, something that no-one wants to do. The tiler wouldn’t do this and neither would our plumber, so Cat (who is very good at caulking but has never used silicone) has watched a few YouTube videos, gained some tips from people who do use it and has just added the silicone better than any professional I have ever seen.
There are a few stages: firstly you need to clean the surface of the tiles thoroughly so there is no dirt or grease; mask off the area leaving a gap slightly smaller than the size you want the silicone to be; add the silicone smoothly and evenly using a silicone/caulking gun; run your finger along the surface of the silicone smoothly in one direction only; remove the masking tape and run your finger along the silicone once more to remove the ridge where the edge of the tape was; leave well alone for 24hrs to dry…
F*** it up and it’s a mighty pain in the backside removing it all and starting again. Worrying about doing this right has been keeping Cat awake at night, unnecessarily it turns out as she has mastered it first time.
Cat is working on an Elizabethan drama based in the Tudor period and has found these details in her research that specifies our windows exactly, complete with leaded lights, saddle bars, rivets, tulip leaf pulls and turnbuckle closures.
And this details our old staircase perfectly. Our house is not Tudor, it isn’t that old, but styles of vernacular architecture didn’t vary that much for the next century.
We have a door at the bottom of our stairs but that still doesn’t keep Jasper the dog downstairs at night!
Useful tip about masking tape before silicone, I hadn’t read that before
I have never done it like that either, but it worked really well. You can just remove the tape and leave the pencil-straight line or, if the silicone is so thick it forms a ridge, smooth down the edges with your finger.