Cat is on a mission. She is cleaning all the rooms working from the top down, ready for us to move in on Sunday (!!), removing any Ram Board, hoovering, washing the floors, dusting all the shelves, window seats and radiators. This is Zanna’s bedroom, cleaned up and ready for furniture!
We haven’t seen the elm floors in months and had almost forgotten what they looked like. This is the first time we have actually been able to walk freely across this floor and it is a thing of beauty!
There are so many quirky features in this room, I could sit for hours and just look at them. In fact I will as this is my bedroom.
Scraping and scrubbing.
Hoovering and dusting.
Andy has returned to fit the new radiators in the attic now that the carpet has been fitted.
Slightly challenging as the existing pipes are (of course) not where they ideally should be to join up with the valves.
To be fair on our old plumber (and I really don’t want to be) he couldn’t get these in the right place as there are supporting double joists underneath the oak posts just where the pipes needed to sit.
Our new carpet on the stairs covered up with Jasper’s dog towels.
New fence posts have been delivered by Red Horse Vale for straightening up and supporting the hedge on Monday.
The existing light in our dark kitchen is so rubbish and old we are going to replace it with one that uses spotlights. I have found this cheap brass effect light in B&Q which looks pretty smart.
Annoyingly they don’t have the one with 4 lights in stock, they only have double or single ones. I have ordered it online so will have to wait until it is delivered next week.
I popped into Cash & Carry Carpets in Banbury where we bought the kitchen lino back in October 2017, a polished concrete style, hoping they still had it in stock for the dining room so the rooms will match. After some hunting around I found it with the help of the lovely owners Kev & Angie. They will be over next week to measure up.
Sorry Cat (not sorry).
We have a bit of lime mortar to pick out of the edges of the landing floorboards, this is something we can do later on but Cat has a go at the worst bits.
Cleaning and hoovering the bathroom which was covered in a layer of plaster dust as we accidentally left the door open when the stairs were plastered…
No wellies allowed on the wooden floors.
Wow. We love the way this floor was put together in odd strips, and we love that these ancient boards survived a bad attack of woodworm.
No sooner is it all cleaned then it gets covered over with dust sheets again, ready for the move.
Andy’s smart copper pipe work.
We have super hard water here so we looked into getting a water filter fitted but decided against it for a variety of reason including what they do to the water (and remove from the water) and that they also waste a lot of water. Andy recommended this Aquabion water conditioner system as a much better alternative. The unit is not much bigger than the pipes, whereas water softener units can be the size of a kitchen cupboard! It uses a zinc ionising process which reacts with the calcite to create lime that doesn’t stick to anything. This is going to prolong the life of our shower, taps, pipes, kettle, etc. and is worth every penny (450,00 of them to be precise).
Our boiler is working again! The heat exchanger is on its way out and loses pressure in the system, but Andy has shown us how to increase the pressure when it does this so it will continue to work. It will leak a little around the bottom but this is not a problem.
We have booked a heating engineer to fit us a new oil boiler but they cannot do this until the end of July so we have quite a wait! The old one should be able to limp on until then, we won’t be needing the heating soon anyway.
This is what the pressure gauge should display but if it drops I will need to turn the black tap here until the pressure increases. It’s as simple as that!
Andy has also fitted our new Google Nest Thermostat so we can control the heating and hot water.
A very cool bit of kit, small and discreet. Once fully set up we will be able to control everything remotely from an app on our phones. It also ‘learns’ your heating habits and adjusts accordingly apparently. Looking forward to getting this all set up but no time right now!
Cat has cleaned and washed the staircase that has been hidden and protected for months.
This also needed another coat of Osmo Polyx oil as it has had a great deal of traffic. This is left to soak in and dry overnight. One step (the third one up) has developed a wobble and is loose, not surprising with workmen and heavy items going up and down it for months. Another job for you, Glynn!
It’s looking amazing xx