Actual, visible progress

Decorating is all about the preparation. It generally takes longer to prepare surfaces for painting than the actual painting itself (unless you are using bloody lime wash of course) and our house needs more preparations than most with the lime plaster and all the timber details, but finally we are making progress with all the rooms on the first floor (in the older side of the house) nearly finished! It’s a good boost for us and just what we need right now.

Colin is back to help Cat paint the second coat on the landing and stairs.

This Jawbone Mini Jambox Cat has had for years and it has travelled all around the world with her (I bought it for her one Xmas and was so impressed with it I bought myself a blue one which has also been all around the world with me). It has been blasting out music to keep us going throughout the house. For such a small speaker it packs a real punch. We are currently listening to Colin’s entire back catalogue of music alphabetically by song title.

Déjà vu.

Cat has painted right around to her bedroom doorway now. We couldn’t paint this until the leaking roof was fixed above the doorway as the plaster was getting wet. All fixed (we hope) for now.

Looking up the finished stair well and it looks very smart. The last thing to do is paint the steel plate black that is just showing under the beam on the right.

The next room we are going to paint is the sitting room, so Cat and Colin are repairing the lime plaster where it has been knocked or needs patching. The plasterers left us with a few buckets of ready mixed lime plaster for repairs. It is very easy to repair, you squish it into the repair with your hands and wipe off with a damp sponge. It’s a good job it is easy to do as there will be many repairs needed; lime plaster is very soft, a small knock and there is a hole, especially around the edges, so I think we will be repairing the walls for years! (The lime plaster lasts for years in buckets, it only sets solid when it is exposed to air).

The lime plaster around one of the sockets in the sitting room wall had been knocked out a bit too far, so this needed repairing. Tricky as it is at the top of the hole for the socket so had nothing to adhere to… The engineer solved this problem though, using some cardboard and plastic (not sticky backed).

Saturday evening and Jasper comes around to tell us to stop and have dinner.

At least there is a sofa in the house for Jasper now.

We had large gaps in the plaster on both sides of the window recess where we had repositioned the oak repairs to the window seat, so these are being filled with lime.

The temporary crutch built to support the plaster repairs above the socket.

Cat filling cracks and finishing off edges of the plaster around the window, while Colin repairs the plaster near the floor.

There won’t be any skirting boards in this room so the plaster meets the stone floor, yet when this room was plastered the temporary floor coverings were down making it difficult to finish the edges. Also when they were removed the plaster inevitably got damaged. No problem though as it is easy to repair!

Repairs made and looking good.

Sunday morning and I have brushed and hoovered the walls and floors in here, before continuing to scrub the stone walls.

The repairs to the window recesses.

Can you spot the plastic pipe? Thank you to our old plumber for this (another job done badly to add to his list). We will cover this by curving the plaster over the top of it in the corner.

Beautiful. Just need to clean the stone floor up a little…

One of the buckets of lime plaster we have for repairs. This will last us years!

Colin is working around the wall, finishing off the bottom where it joins the floor.

The stone walls in the corridor near the old front door were particularly orange and splashed with plaster. This has taken me a while to clean up and I’m getting through wire brushes! You can see where I have got to on the pointing here, it does clean up well.

An expanding foam incident.

I thought we had found all the old newspaper in the house, but this has been under the oak parquet flooring in the dining room where everyone has been walking in and out of the house for months. 1985! More recent than we thought.

Turns out Colin is quite good at lime plastering.

Cat cleaning the plaster from the ends of the ceiling joists with a knife and wire brush.

Our lovely old elm staircase.

The quirky landing window, finished and looking amazing. Just the window seat to fit. The original window seat has been oiled to protect the wood but will be covered with the new oak one (it is very rotten and will give you splinters if you sit on it!)

The end of the cold weather. Now it is raining heavily. Joy.