The next deadline is to get the skirting boards caulked and painted before Tuesday when Andrew arrives to fit the radiators.
Cat has caulked them and is now painting a line of the wall colour along the caulk, where it joins the wall. Normally you would paint the wall with skirting already on, so you do need to do this or it will look odd.
I spent the afternoon hoovering all the floors, before removing the Ram Board from the landing outside the bathroom. It has been down for so long, throughout all the building work, it is filled with dust. Now we are painting and finishing we need to minimise the dust. It was very satisfying chucking it in the skip, revealing more of our lovely old elm floorboards.
Cat has spent hours and hours like this and it makes my back hurt just watching her. Cat fell down a hill fort running after her lunch at work last week straining her knee and leg so this is not the best position for her right now. I am unable to help as my back is properly wrecked now, I can barely bend down after the hoovering so am taking a few days off the physical work.
The skirting on the landing, caulked and waiting to be painted. Brand new, clean dust sheets are now protecting the floor.
The first coat of our woodwork colour goes on. We bought this months ago and can barely remember what it looks like as we haven’t yet used it anywhere. It is Farrow & Ball’s Purbeck Stone, a warm mid grey that coordinates beautifully with all our wall colours (we hope!)
Cat worked into the night painting the first coat on all the skirting.
The plumber cannot make it today, a job has over run but he did tell us last night. It’s very nice to be notified rather than be waiting, wasting time trying to get hold of them (take note, old plumber). This is actually great as it means Cat doesn’t need to get up at 5am to paint the second coat.
Wednesday and Thursday, Andrew is here working on fitting the rads. This is one of the two rads in the study. They are being fitted higher than they would be, on wooden blocks, as we don’t now what height the floor will be when we finish it (we have yet to find the slate/stone to fit here). This then means that the copper pipes can be cut down to size when the floor is finished. A clever hack that Tom our builder showed us.
The wooden blocks (bits of modern floorboard from the attic) used to raise the rads up higher than the floor level will be.
The pipe work for the rad in Zanna’s bedroom was also not in the correct position. The old plumber had made the same mistake as downstairs in the sitting room and only calculated the width for one valve, not two… Andrew has made a very tidy fix with two right angled bends, finished off with a brass base plate on the skirting. It looks very smart.
The largest (and heaviest) rad in the house in Zanna’s bedroom being fitted.
The small rad on the landing above the stairs sitting in place and surprisingly these pipes are roughly in the right place!
The wall stays have to be very carefully fitted to the wall. Andrew does this very slowly so as not to pop the delicate lime plaster.
Fitting the brass valves to the copper pipes.
The smallest rad in the house on the landing outside the bathroom. It is super cute!
It was blowing a gale today so the morning walk in the woods was not advisable. I drove Jasper to Ratley, set out from the pub (sadly still closed) and came across a couple of spotted pigs. Jasper was so freaked out/scared/excited he didn’t know what to do so he sat down on my foot.
Super friendly spotted pigs who came right over to the fence to say hello, nearly blowing Jasper’s mind.
Happy Jasper: “I love a field!”
Happy Jasper: “I love a puddle!” He lay down in this up to his chin.
We ordered some oak pattress plates to mount the brass spot lights on to. There needs to be a hole dug in the plaster for the cables behind the base plate and we know this will not work with the lime plaster as it will crumble, but the pattress plate has a hollowed out back where the cables can go.
The brass Rowen & Wren Edgar spot lights. The base will be screwed to the oak pattress, which is then screwed to the wall and the cables will fit into the back of the pattress.