All of the butterflies who overwintered in our house are now waking up. It’s a huge surprise anything survived in our house last year with all the building work, dust, soda blasting, plaster, etc. but I found this beautiful Peacock butterfly in the dining room. I imagine they have been sleeping up the chimney.
Our electrician Sam got a surprise last year when he stuck his head in the bread oven in the sitting room to size it up for lighting and said there were lots of little things that looked like bats hanging from the roof!
Some butterflies started to wake up early when the heaters were on over the winter, this is when I started putting them into the cardboard box which lived in the cool garage. We opened that up a couple of weeks ago and put it outside so they would be able to fly away.
Magicman are here to repair our bath and shower tray and if they can repair all the scratches and dents it really will be magic!
Bath before…
Bath after! In fact there were two dents in the roll top, although the second one was much smaller.
Tools for the job. The repairs involve a lot of sanding, filling and polishing. The actual process I didn’t stay to watch as it took around 4 hours in total (and cost £320!)
Shower tray before…
Shower tray after! Total magic!
The claypaints have arrived for the dining room, Fenwick & Tilbrook’s Still Norfolk and Sheringham Beach and I am so excited about seeing these on the wall, especially the blue.
The sitting room light that Cat had filled with lime plaster on Sunday where the plaster had crumbled. Once it is painted it should disappear.
Oiling the oak pattresses ready for the spotlights to be fitted on them at the weekend.
Summer was here briefly this week with a super hot 24 degrees!
Jasper refusing to come in.
The start of a long bank holiday weekend so Cat is back and has set her sights on getting the dining room finished…! There is A LOT to do and we don’t have help at the moment as Colin is quarantining in a hotel following a work trip abroad.
Cat finishing cleaning the plaster from the timber.
The flooring in the dining room is oak parquet and we had originally hoped to save this and use it in the study but the time and money involved just wasn’t worth it. It is not practical in this room as it is getting ruined with wet dogs and muddy wellies.
We have had this floor covered in Ram Board throughout the building works but this needs removing before we can decorate this room as there is so much dust and dirt in it.
We plan to temporarily cover this floor with a cheap lino until phase 2 (when this floor will be dug out and lowered, like we did in the study), but the parquet is so loose and lumpy they won’t be able to easily fit a lino over the top. So we decide to take it up…
A huge task but one that needs doing but as Cat starts we soon realise that the floor is rotten with signs of what we think could be woodworm and it is crumbling away. We have no option but to put it all in the skip.
Cat spent Easter Friday evening doing this!
I went to see my osteopath yesterday so was unable to help. This was as much as I could do, roll up the Ram Board and skip it.
The parquet had been stuck down with black sticky tar which stinks and there are decades of dirt that have got between the parquet, all of which Cat has to scrape from the floor. Yuk.
This floor needs to be clean and dust free before this room can be decorated tomorrow!
Something Cat lost down between the parquet when upholstering a chair.
Saturday morning and Cat has the last bit of flooring to take up that was under the extraordinarily heavy shelf unit. She moved this on her own!
Clean and dust free floor!
The last bit of parquet.
Super rotten parquet.
Underneath the parquet there is old concrete (circa 1930/40) that has been cracked and pushed upwards by roots from a tree that we had taken out as soon as we moved in 4 years ago. It was a Leylandii and was very close to the house taking all the light from the dining room and the moisture from the ground. The house is on a clay base with no foundations so it is not good to have trees that close to the house.
We will need to fill the cracks and holes with a levelling compound before the lino gets fitted.
This has killed Henry the Hoover (again), he spluttered and stopped working, and we are running out of hoover bags for our other hoover. We shall have to see if Colin can resurrect Henry once again. Well it is Easter after all…
Wow! I am super impressed by how well they were able to repair those chips in the tub/shower! I didn’t know it was possible to it so seamlessly!
I know right! Apparently the ones inside the bath, in positions where they will get submerged frequently, may need redoing in a couple of years annoyingly but for now they look great!