RHS Harlow Carr

Nothing exciting this weekend, but good progress on a few things. We spent most of Saturday painting windows (a bit late in the year, but hey-ho), and have probably done a bit less than half. We had a day out on Sunday and went to Harlow Carr, which is looking lovely (as you might expect).

RHS Harlow Carr (© Ian 2017)

Most of Monday was spent with the bees, who are winding down for the autumn. And today was spent making a bit of progress on our bathroom renovation plan (ie, progress on making a plan), and measuring the garden paths. Having previously used forestry/hedging chippings for these, we're planning to upgrade to aggregate. It's more expensive in the first place, but shouldn't need replacing every few years, which is both a lot of effort, and ongoing expense. The trouble is getting a suitably large load here, given the access difficulties—and in deciding on a satisfactory type of gravel...

Houseguests

It's been a while, but we had many of our university friends here for the weekend; all on Saturday, and they left in waves on Saturday, Sunday, and tomorrow. It's been good to see them all!

Paint

So much paint.

It's been a busy few days, since David and Ann left, getting work done on the preservatory and workshop, mainly so that the dining room can be tidied (it's currently a warehouse of beehive parts, and some more domestic stuff that lives out there) before we have a house full of guests next weekend.

We've primed, painted, and top-coated the three walls of the preservatory that we've plastered, as well as painting the skirting boards. The floor, which was still bare plywood around the perimeter, is now also painted (in the same green we started with a couple of years ago). The two windows in the gable end of the room, which were still single-glazed, have been replaced by the ever-effective John, with double-glazed windows that match (kind of; they're landscape aspect ratio, unlike the rest, which are all portrait) the rest of the front of the house. They look really good.

In the workshop, as well as tidying and sorting, we've painted the breeze block walls, which were stained and sooty, and are now a lovely white. The ceiling, which especially near the boiler was horrible, was primed with some remarkably effective shellac based primer, and is now beautifully clean white. It looks so much nicer in there, especially after also painting the floor (concrete paving slab) with a green garage floor paint. It looks really nice, and will be a lot easier to keep clean, compared to eternally-dusty concrete.

We even got rid of a load of plasterboard scraps, which have remained unused since the big insulate and remodel, and are likely to remain so.

Lastly, everything came back in from the dining room, and the preservatory is starting to look really ordered, with a big stock of beekeeping parts and equipment arrayed along the front benches.

Visit

It's been a weekend of splendid relaxation, aided immeasurably by the company of Ann and David. There has been considerable coffee drinking, baked good crafting, game playing, and even a film (Monsters University, which was great fun).

Someone (who shall remain nameless) decided we should make eclairs. Chocolate and salted caramel eclairs. It was a fine plan. (&copy Ian 2017)

Frankly, more weekends should be like this.

Enjoyment only slightly dampened by a missing jigsaw piece (&copy Ian 2017)

In (belated) honour of Yorkshire Day, we had Yorkshire Puddings as all three courses of dinner.

Starter with gravy (© Ian 2017)

Toad in the Hole as a main (© Ian 2017)

And served with honey as dessert (© Ian 2017)

Plaster Progress

It's been a weekend of two main activities: working on the preservatory and workshop, and checking on the bees (which took most of Saturday, and a bit of Monday). The bees are doing well:

Bee hive entrances (© Ian 2017)

Work on the house is also going quite smoothly. We started by sorting out the workshop a fair bit— tidying, and moving things in order to build a stud wall dividing the workshop from the section that houses the boiler and where firewood gets stored inside before it's burned. We got most of the way there on Sunday afternoon, before finishing it on Monday afternoon, which let us get started with plastering. Both workshop and preservatory are done, barring the back wall of the preservatory, which we've had to store everything against. That wall will have to be last. Last thing was attaching skirting board—which always makes a really big difference to how 'finished' a room looks, I find. (Attaching it was a lot more fun with my nail gun. For the record.)

Dividing wall between workshop and boiler room (© Ian 2017)