It is May Day, Bank holiday Monday, and in sharp contrast to yesterday when we were gardening in the sunshine, today it is bucketing down with rain and even hail.
F***ing hail.
Colin finishing off painting the ceiling in the corridor from the sitting room.
Cat has been cleaning the old stairs, removing all the protective sheets on the walls and timber templates on the stairs (these have protected our ancient stairs throughout the renovations), and we get a glimpse of how it is going to look when we are finished before the protective sheets and templates get put back on. The light cast on this lime plastered wall is gorgeous.
Our old elm stairs getting a hoover and a wash.
These will need another oil once we have finished with all the building work and one of the steps needs some attention as it is a little wobbly. Not bad as these have had masses of people (falling) up and down them with heavy things for months.
HENRY IS BACK! He had already had two heart bypasses, but this time he had a complete heart transplant and he is better than ever, working super hard on the house again. Henry is very pleased he doesn’t have to clean up rubble and stone dust again for a while, it was nearly the death of him!
Colin has sourced some brass dome headed nuts for the brackets that hold the new radiators on the walls. Currently the threaded rods of the brackets need cutting down to size, then secured on the front with these. Andrew the plumber will do this when he next returns.
We have Tom, our amazing builder, returning next week to finish off. He will be pointing various bits around the house inside with lime, so we have wrapped everything in plastic to make it a bit easier for him (and to protect our precious lights, sockets, rads and floors!)
The light fitting had to be shifted a little so the pointing was dug out to be able to move the cables.
The copper water pipes for the rad here had to be moved as they were fitted in the wrong place by our old plumber, so Andrew had to dig out the pointing around the edge of the floor.
A couple of the sockets in the stone wall in the dining room need a little bit of pointing added where it has fallen off when Sam fitting them.
Colin has finished the white mist coat on the epic ceiling in the study, he has now started cutting in with the top coat… The top coat is Farrow & Ball’s Wimborne White, a creamy, warm white.
He will also be touching up the walls with the green claypaint, painting the bits where the plaster has been repaired, like the top left corner here where we had to dig out the electric cables trying to find an earth problem with the socket ring main a few weeks ago.
He is wondering why his arms are hurting…
All the oak for the banisters in the attic bedroom have been moved up here, ready for the carpenters to return to fit these next week.
Our silk lampshades have been wrapped up to protect from dust next week.
The Co-op bag looks rather fetching and gives off an interesting green glow!
Colin works into the night, cutting in around the joists in the study ceiling…
The carpet (well half of it, the other half is too heavy for us to move) that our neighbours gifted us for Cat’s bedroom has been moved there from Zanna’s room, ready to be fitted at some point…
Our precious stone floor covered and protected.
Cat has had a tidy up in the dining room, the room where everything gets dumped at the moment. We can now walk across the floor again.
All our decorating equipment and multiple portable heaters (some of which are still required due to the sad demise of our boiler) have been tidied into the corner.
We are taping up the edges of the floorboards around the chimney breast on the landing, ready for Tom to point the bottom of the wall.
This was pointed months ago but it has since cracked and there are bits that need finishing. We didn’t tape up the floorboards the first time around so the ends of the boards have lime mortar ingrained into them. Thankfully it is easy to remove with a chisel.
Henry (and Colin) cleaning up the dust.
The floor around the chimney breast in Zanna’s bedroom has been taped up at the edges and protected with plastic.
A hole that needs filling with lime. At the moment you can see the edges of the high tech sound proof matting that is fitted under the floor boards.
Colin spent Tuesday and Wednesday evening painting the study ceiling late into the night…
He is also still finding bits of blue tape left over from the plastering that need slicing from the edges of the beams.
The cutting in is finished, it just needs to be painted with a roller, something Colin will do at the weekend (he didn’t finish until after midnight on Wednesday!)
