Asparagus

We've managed to pop out most of the evenings after work this week, and have finished the deep-weeding of the herb garden beds that we've been getting ready to plant asparagus into. These arrived yesterday: compost-block grown plants (which are easier to plant that bare-root crowns, and which can be planted any time of year) from Victoriana Nursery. They're a variety bred in New Jersey called Jersey Knight, and we're hoping their origin will mean they're well equipped for our weather. They're meant to be a heavy- and long-cropping variety, producing thick stems; and they're an all-male variety, too.

We've thoroughly weeded the beds, and tonight we planted them out, putting a thick layer of mulch down. We can't crop from them this year, and only very lightly next, but in two year's time, we're hoping that they'll make a big difference during the hungry gap between the last of the over-winter veg coming out, and the new annuals being ready.

House History

We've had a lovely weekend, not doing an awful lot until this morning, as we had Katherine visiting us, and it's been a marvellous reason to sit around, chat, and drink a lot of tea and coffee. We also made use of Katherine's considerable social history knowledge, and made some real progress working out some aspects of the house's history. We looked back at the census records from 1841 to 1911, and managed, eventually, to pick out the house, and find out something of who was living here until a century ago. More on that when I've had a chance to pull it together, but we're hoping to fill in some of the next period, from 1911 until about 1970, when we once again have some idea of who's lived here. As the census data won't (all) be released until I'm nearly 90, we'll have to resort to other methods, I think.

Orchard Maintenance

A day off, for us both, and we've had quite a varied day, on the hillside and in the garden. We've sorted out most of the patio pots, and planted up a number of things that were a bit crowded. The mulch that Liz moved onto the hillside a while ago has now been spread; on top of cardboard in the nursery bed and apple walk, and under the membrane around the small Hessle, and the mulberries, sweet chestnuts (which didn't actually have membranes, we realised...), and walnuts. We've then used some part-rotted chippings to cover the rest of the nursery bed, so the whips don't get swamped. These have been really succesful: there are three Hessle pears, two each of Crabbie's Seedling, and Crimson Superb (that's 100% of the apple and pear grafts, as I took three of each of these, and one of each apple went straight into the apple walk); as well as one of each quince Ivan and Vranja, and a medlar Dutch. That's not bad: I need to decide whether to try again with the medlar Royal, or buy a Flemish Giant, instead.

The quince in the garden is coming into leaf: I have hopes it might not only flower (which it did, lightly, last year), but perhaps set some fruit.

Tubers

We've had quite a busy weekend, and spent almost all of yesterday weeding the long border, and the herb garden, both of which are looking a lot tidier. While Liz was starting with this, I mowed the lawns, and pulled a couple of areas of moss out of the wood shelter's green roof out. The lawn, after a rather shaggy-looking winter, is much smarter now. I need to find some edging shears that work, in order to tidy up the boundaries, though.

We've also planted out the potatoes: Lady Christl and Red Duke of York. We're only doing those two this year, though more of them—two bags (40&ndash50) Lady Christl, and one bag of Red Duke. Maincrops have been a bit blighty the last few years, and we've had disappointing yields, so this year we've got the Jerusalem Artichokes (Fuseau) and early potatoes, instead. We also planted out the onions: about 200 Red Piroska, and 200 Stuttgarter. I had to re-cut a membrane to plant them through, as the one we used last year was ruined when deer more-or-less danced on it.

The dahlias we potted up a month ago (22nd March) have now gone out to the greenhouse, as the weather seems warm enough overnight to allow this. Some are starting to show shoots, but not all. I'm not, really, expecting them all to come up. One border-planted specimen was badly eaten last year, and I'm not sure it was strong enough going into winter. Similarly, six pots are new garden-centre bought tubers, and while I hope at least half will come up, the shop-bought ones aren't utterly reliable, so I expect some losses. We'll take more side-shoot cuttings, and increase stock. That way, we can afford some losses each winter.

The last thing was a load of seed sowing, meaning that the windowsills are, once more, full.

Kentish Spring

We drove back up this afternoon from several wonderfully relaxing days in Kent: filled with brioche, games, a couple of films, and a daily walk, including one longer one along part of the South Downs way, past an episcopal palace (Otford) and through some pretty, vernal woodland. Sadly, it's back to work tomorrow.

Watered In

It's been dry for a week, and having moved a lot of earth around, things are actually pretty dry, so, having planted out a lot of plants yesterday afternoon, I've watered everything again. We're now about to drive down to Kent to see David and Ann for a couple of days, calling in to see the cats' friend in Cambridge on our way.

Bobcat

Last bits today for our week of work, as we're off to visit David and Ann tomorrow. We started by moving the last of the topsoil we needed down to the veg garden. There's still a small heap on the driveway, but not very much. There's a mound of mulch on the hillside for the nursery beds, apple walk, and trees, which we'll need to top up with chipping mulch. The rest of the driveway heap is probably going to be used topping up the two beds to the sides of the beech bench.

That done, we had just enough time to plant up some of the herb garden extension and the colour wheel beds, though it did mean we were finishing off, watering in, by moonlight. The box that remained in the herb garden (having moved several into the long border) have neatly delineated the corners of the colour wheel beds—there are similar plantings in the herbaceous borders at Harlow Carr, which I've long admired, and this mimics that. The Tail Feathers grasses (Pennisetum macrourum) that we sowed in January 2014, and grew on all last year, have gone around the outer edges of the beds, to give some boundary and height. We've then planted out a lot of perennials that, mainly, we've been growing on from plug plants for the last year or so, and which overwintered in the greenhouse in 9cm pots. We also put about nine Deschampsia cespitosa that have outgrown the beds near the beech bench (planted 27 Mar 2014?). As a result, the beds are looking much less empty, but there's space we're planning to grow some annuals in, particularly ones that can be useds as cut flowers.

Mid afternoon, though, we also had to say goodbye to Bobcat the mini-digger, after seven days of hard work. It's let us come on leaps and bounds in the garden construction—in fact, structurally, the garden is now all but complete, as the beds are all where we want them. A little more work in the copse, the laying of the patio, and the construction of the pergola around the access ramp, and the Big Things will be done.

Last Excavations of the Pond

Back to the pond today, with a lot of time spent sorting out the edges, and making sure I'd taken out enough for the various levels. We wound up needing to take out about a dozen more 'scoops' using the minidigger (now affectionately known as Bobcat, after all its hard work), but I think the depth is now right. There needs to be more work getting the footings of the retaining wall properly placed, but that is, necessarily, careful mattock/crowbar/spadework, rather than excavator.

Building the Colour Wheel Beds

We took a break from the pond, today, and have spent the day, mostly, moving topsoil around. First thing, a delivery of 6m³ of topsoil arrived from the ever-dependable Tommy Topsoil. Unfortunately, the ground's still pretty wet, so it couldn't all be delivered onto the access ramp into the garden, and two-thirds are on the driveway, instead, which means barrowing it further. Never mind.

Before getting the topsoil moved, though, we first marked out the edges of the new beds in the corner 'Colour Wheel' garden. For this, I bought hand-cleft chestnut stakes, 15" long, which we've put in the ground every 2'. Between these, we've woven cleft chestnut laths—they're usually used to create a matrix onto which lime plaster is applied, in restoration work, but they've worked beautifully here, four courses high, to make 6" edges/retaining walls.

We've then barrowed in topsoil, to cover the soil we've moved from digging the pond. It's actually reasonably good, but a couple of inches of new topsoil will, if nothing else, be less prone to weed germination, and will help to gradually enrich and build the soil.

Once the four new beds were made and topped up, we had enough stakes to mark the intersections of the edging in the herb garden, which is, following Saturday's work, now twice as large. That, in combination with some sticks marking the edges (as well as the intersections), means that the layout is a lot clearer. We've added topsoil here, too, to the squares that will be planted, but not to the areas that will form a path. We still need to decide on a planting plan for the edges: our original plan of box made way to a combination of box, lavender and apples; and then to lavender and apples; it might yet become just step-over apples.

The other place we've moved topsoil to is the vegetable beds, which need an annual topping up. Still need to spread it around, but it's heaped in roughly the right places.

The Bulk of the Pond

We had to use the headlamp, mounted on the side of the digger's boom, in order to get there, but we've finished the main digging of the pond tonight.

It's taken all day, but we've made the ramp from the apple, the deep section across the middle, and the large shelf around the back, as well as cutting the planting pocket that will soften the retaining wall, and tried to create the shelf on which the wall will be built. It's going to take, probably, most of another day to check the levels and tidy up the sides, but the bulk of the hole is now dug.

Working on the Pond

For most of today, we've been working on digging the pond, which is going well, and I think will only need one more day of digging in order to have the basic shape completed. We took a break for a couple of hours to dig over the bed we started creating in the games garden. This runs alongside the septic tank (where it's already planted with hazel, willow, achillea, geums, daffodils and snowdrops), round the corner, and in front of the lower bank of shrubs up to the path and steps down into the kitchen garden. We ran out of steam when digging this, several years go (June 2012), and only got as far as the end of the septic tank. We've now done the wider bit round the corner, and along the back as far as the rhododendron...and it's been considerably faster than the day spent digging about a quarter of the area. Needless to say, the micro excavator pulls big stones out of the ground with, essentially, a wave of the hand. We've lifted several really large rocks out of here, and the pond, which would have each taken hours to extract, if we'd managed at all, so it's definitely been worth it.

Digging Over the Herb Garden

Having got the land-drains in the new garden sorted out yesterday, we were able, this morning, to break ground on the pond. My plan has been to dig it out from the bottom apex, near the apple tree, and work back to the top corner, at the entrance near the sweet pea bed. I've had to change my mind, though, as the reach and depth of the digger, and the risk of overbalancing, are problems. Instead, I'm going to do the bottom corner, then the far corner, and work back to a position roughly half-way up the side (basically, sat next to the plum). I think I'll have to then take the digger along the path next to the long border, to finish off, before driving out.

We only got a bit of this done before Katrina and Dan arrived: they're up for a wedding near us, and we're B&B'ing them. After lunch, Dan was immensely useful in helping us dig over the herb garden. We did the first half of this by hand last summer, and it turns out we did the harder half. The remaining area, we'd covered with weed-suppressant membrane, and it's actually had all the rubble from the house renovations sat on it. This has totally wiped out the grass, which has rotted down into lovely topsoil.

Dan ran the digger, turning this over, and we picked out the stones we found. We've also moved the last of the big stones from last time down to the growing piles around the pond, where I'll build them into the retaining wall we need behind the pond (the path along the long border is about 60cm higher than the apex at the apple).

The herb garden's now completely dug over, and tomorrow we'll return to digging the pond.

Draining the Colour Wheel

The minidigger arrived yesterday afternoon, and as the evenings are lighter now, we managed to make a start. We discovered that we'd made the path down the drive wide enough, which was good, and got the digger down the ramp, turned (first bit of lawn chewed up!), and over into the corner of the new flower garden. I started by digging up the topsoil and turf, depositing it in the newly marked beds, which revealed the expected clay subsoil. I then moved the heaps of hardcore/rubble, which had been sitting in the beds, back into the corner. We wound up doing a lot of this by hand, as the digger—in my inexperienced hands—was picking up a lot of soil as well as stones.

Once we'd got the stones into the corner, I took the digger to the back of the furthest bed, having dug up the soil in the other sections, to level out and dig over. It sounds quick, now, and in many ways it was fast to do, too: the topsoil there isn't very stony, and the digger made quick work of it.

However, the messy work was only just starting, and unfortunately, so was drizzle. The rest of the day has been tiring, wet, muddy work, digging three trenches across the garden and laying land drain (in geotextile sock, as before), to improve the drainage. This corner of the garden's always been really wet, with standing water and waterlogged soil through the winter, which has always limited its usefulness. The landdrains are the first part of trying to fix this. There's an old clay pipe land drain, which is broken off at the top end (we think, at the site of an old milking parlour), but does drain away into the lower parts of the garden. It goes into the copse, which, if anything, is drier than needed, so diverting water to here is no bad thing.

We managed, before collapsing inside, to get an L-shaped pipe along the top of the beds, and down into the old pipe; one across the garden just under the bottom edge of the patio, and one two-thirds of the way down the garden. Between them, they should sort out the drainage, but we'll also be raising the ground level with the spoil from the pond, which we anticipate being gravelly (that is, better draining) soil.

Marking Out

This weekend hasn't brought anything particularly exciting, but we've managed to get exactly through the list of preparations for the mini-digger's arrival that we drew up at Christmas, which is pleasing.

The last of the patio flagstones are out of the way, and the arbour has been dismantled and moved to the seating area in front of the beech hedge bench (well out of the way). It'll be there for some time, and the arbour is far too heavy to move intact: stacked neatly there, it won't kill any grass, and we can give it a good clean, and a coat of paint, before reassembling it once we get the patio relaid.

We've moved the two dustbins and packing crate, which have been filled with water in an attempt to keep a number of wet/pond plants going since being pulled out of Jenny's pond when she filled it in. The irises are clearly alive, though I remain unconvinced about the others.

Once these were out of the way, we've used a number of poplar rods to mark out the planned edges of the pond, and flower beds in the new colour-wheel garden, and the patio that will form the corner of this. We're happy with how they're all looking, but we've got a few days to consider them from different angles, before the digger arrives on Maundy Thursday.

We've had a bit of a potting up session, putting tomatoes, peppers (sweet and chilli), and cauliflowers into pots from their sown modules. The caulis always look quite sad for a couple of weeks after transplanting, but should be fine, and we've got more of the others than we need. There's a third sort of tomato (Black Russian) still to go, but these two (Maskotka and Alicante) are ready to pot on.

Finally, we've sawn the wood from the shed base (mostly requiring sawing, rather than splitting, as it's drier than we usually split wood, and I think it's oak, to boot), and that's allowed us to lift the base (sawn up and flung into a corner of the orchard, where I'll make a compost bay later this year). It's a relief to discover that there are just three cast-in-situ concrete beams on which the base was supported, and not a whole slab of concrete.

Having got to end of our excavation-preparations, we've been able to do a bucket-worth of plastering, meaning that our bedroom's back wall, and most of the sewing room's bathroom-wall, are now done. Slowly getting there!

Stones

Liz had today off work, and has done sterling work clearing the last of the stones from the pond location (now forming a growing stack around the periphery of that garden, between the fruit trees), as well as lifting almost all of the patio stones (I've helped with the last, heavy, well-adhered/trapped-by-grass ones) and putting them well out of the way. She's even managed to move all the pots off the grass in the herb garden, so we're onto the last bits and bobs to be ready for the mini-digging in ten days.

Planning to Dig

Over Easter, we're hiring a micro excavator (mini digger) to dig the pond, and also do some heavy (quick) work preparing the base for the arbour patio, turning over and creating the beds in the colour wheel, and—time permitting—break the ground for the last of the herb garden.

That's lead to us spending a lot of this weekend (and, for me, today) clearing the colour wheel beds, and the pond, of the collected detritus. For several years, although the colour wheel beds were briefly marked out in April 2012, it's not been much of anything, and has had several heaps of brushwood, a few bins of rescued pond plants, and gradually amassing heaps of stones dug out elsewhere. The pond was, for a while, a huge heap of brush from the trees and cotoneaster we took out, until we shredded that over the weekend of the Royal Jubilee later in 2012. It's been misused in the same way, to a smaller extent, since, though, and Liz has spent a good bit of the weekend running things through the smaller Archimedes Screw chipper we have.

In incredible news, we even managed to mow the lawn, with Liz raking ahead of me, which has really helped, and the lawn looks almost respectable for the first time in months. The wet but mild autumn meant that my hoped-for 'last cut' of the year never happened, meaning a scruffy lawn since September, really.

Inside, we've potted up our various dahlias, and chocolate cosmos. When we were weeding in the herb garden, I discovered that the runner beans tubers (or are they corms, or rhizomes?) had survived the winter. They're a perennial, strictly, but not that hardy, so they're usually grown as an annual in the UK. However, we thought we'd pot them up, too, and see if they come into growth as the year warms up.

We've had to do some more wood chopping, too, to clear a path down the drive for the mini-digger. I think it's wide enough, now, but we shall need to do some more, including a few last pieces on the old shed base. If we have time, digging that bit over with the excavator is on the list, which means I need to clear the firewood off it in advance, and check there's not a huge slab of concrete hiding under the timber...

Rearranging the Fruit Beds

Over the last couple of years, pruning the gooseberries, and then picking the fruit, has been a rather painful, thorny proposition. In addition, the plants have always tended to grow out into the path, which has made the journey along the fruit garden a little perilous when wheeling a barrow, and the wide handles almost always bring you rather close to the gooseberries spines.

Enough of that: we've dug up the nine gooseberries, and replanted them: the three red and green are now spaced out along the centre of the bed where all nine were previously, meaning they're much further from the edges. The three golden/yellow ones are where the bottom blueberry was. It's never really got going, in many years, so we're cutting our losses.

At the same time, we've lifted all the raspberry canes, and replanted the strongest along the centre of those beds: we were finding that the double row wasn't cropping well, and was a pain to weed and pick.

The revolution hasn't ended there, either. We've taken off all the nets, too. Over the next couple of months, I'll be replacing the wires which ran between the posts to support the cages with timber bearers. The roof is then going to be chicken wire, and the sides will either be netting, or wire. However, we're going to have doors at each end of the passage, making it one big contained cage, rather than four. It ought to make weeding, mulching, pruning, and picking an awful lot more pleasant, which seems sensible.

Today we've sawn, split, and stacked a load of wood, and spent this morning sorting out the garage, which now looks like a room once more.

Tidying the Green Roof

I've had a day off today, though Liz has been working. I started by making a couple of trips to the tip, taking the old bathroom suites, and some other bits. I tried Freecycling them, but there weren't any takers, unfortunately. That out of the way, I did a bit of spring maintenance to the green roof, using a three-pronged hoe on the end of my 4m extendible pole. It's usually deployed for pruning trees, but is equally effective horizontally, for reaching across the green roof, rather than walking on it. That's allowed me to dethatch a lot of last years dead and dry material, with minimal disruption to the new shoots coming up, and has avoided the need to climb on to the roof myself. The green roof's looking an awful lot neater, now, and is starting to come back to life. There were only a few small clumps of grass, which is good, and I was able to uproot them.

This afternoon, I've finished connecting the ethernet cabling, and tested it all, so we now have functional Cat6 ports in the rooms I wanted them, and a few of them can be connected to the four switch ports on the router, meaning faster wired ethernet when needed.

Mulching

As planned, the mulch arrived on Thursday, although it had to be left on the drive proper, rather than the ramp into the garden. That'll make it easier to shovel, as it's on concrete, not gravel/sawdust/woodchip, but does mean further to take it with the wheelbarrows.

My time's been split between helping Liz weed, and moving and spreading mulch: suits me better, as I'm quicker at shovelling mulch and spreading it, and Liz is much better at weeding. It's a long weekend's work, but we've spread two thirds of the 6m² load, and the long border, quince, sweetpea, copse, willow arch, and herb beds are all looking massively improved for it.

As part of the mulching, we've planted out the three variegated and one spiky-looking hellebores we picked up in Thirsk around my birthday, and a three sedums (S. spectabile 'Crystal Pink') that were much reduced in the garden centre in November. The former are in the copse bed; the sedums are in the front of the sweetpea beds.

Clearing Rubble

A day off, and we've spent it on the ramp, more-or-less, shifting several tractor buckets of rubble with Chris, which has really broken the back of that job. The remainder we've managed to bag up into the bags from the gravel for the land-drains, and it should now just take a couple of hours more with Chris taking the tractor back and forth, and we'll have reclaimed our herb garden.

After lunch, we've sawn, split, and stacked a load of firewood. It appears we still know how to do it, fortunately, although this is only the second load in months.

Mulch Preparation

We've got a load of mulch arriving this week, ready to spread on the beds. That means that the first weeding of the year is now urgent, because the mulch does an excellent job of reducing new seedlings, but just gives existing weeds a boost, which isn't quite what we want. As well as weeding, we've also pruned the apples and pears on the hillside, tying in the slow winter growth in the apple walk as we go; pruned the fruit bushes; and admired the emerging snowdrops.

We also potted up ten new hellebores that arrived this week, which are now in the front garden growing on; six Chocolate Cosmos; and the 20-odd tender yellow things I can never remember the name of. Argyranthemum/margeurites, possibly. We take cuttings of them each autumn to over-winter, and they're out-growing their modules, now.

The other thing we managed was to tie together the willow growing down the sides of the septic tank, to start forming the arched tunnel over the mini-sheds. There's some way to go, admittedly, but you finally get an idea of what it will eventually achieve, which is nice.

Seeds

It's been a long weekend off, enabling us to spend Friday in Scarborough with Liz's grandparents, and then staying with my parents until Saturday evening. All very relaxing, and set us up well to get back into some wood chopping. We've been burning wood all winter, but haven't been tackling our backlog of firewood for some time, distracted by work on the house, and put off by bad weather (swinging a splitting maul in the snow isn't the safest activity). The weather's been better, though, and so we spent a few hours yesterday sawing and splitting a couple of cubic metres worth, and stacked it today. We're also making progress on getting the rubble from de-plastering the house walls bagged up and carted away, to build a terrace/silage access ramp for a neighbour.

We've also started sowing seeds in earnest: I did a load of sweet peas at the start of the month, most of which have come up well, so today we've sown all our RHS seeds, some cauliflowers (All The Year Round), some more sweet peas (Orange Dragon, more Fragrantissima, Cream Southbourne), and the broad beans (Witkiem Manita and Green Longpod). We also potted up some bareroot shrubs that have arrived: two Viburnum 'Bodnantense Dawn', two winter honeysuckles (Lonicera fragrantissima), a mahonia 'Charity' and a winter box (Sarcococca confusa).

The RHS seeds:

• Orlaya grandiflora or white laceflower
• Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea
• Agastache rugosa or Korean mint
• Angelica archangelica
• Cephalaria gigantea or giant scabious
• Chaerophyllum aureum or golden chervil
• Erodium manescavii
• Scabiosa columbaria
• Succisa pratensis or devil's bit scabious
• Succisella inflexa
• Thalictrum delavayi or Chinese meadow rue

Lastly: the snowdrops are doing pretty well, considering that it's their first year. Quite a few are up, but still small, so we're hopeful that this year will be them establishing themselves, and they'll be even better next February.

Land-Drains Completed

Having got the dining room wall plastered, we've got it painted: a watered down sealing coat on Friday night; a proper coat of white base on Saturday morning, and the 'Timeless' topcoat last night. It looks really good, and Liz's plastering is excellent. You now wouldn't know that that wall was newly insulated, boarded, and plastered, when compared to the two unaffected walls next to it.

Almost all the rest of the weekend has been spent installing proper land-drains on the hillside, to drain the orchard. When we planted the trees, two years ago, we only had time (and money) to dig open trenches to drain the ground, and they've remained so. That's been a little unsightly, but also made it awkward (even dangerous) to walk around the orchard, so it was only ever a temporary measure. The winter's the ideal time to do something about this, as the grass is dormant and shorter, the mess of sorting it out will be grown over in a short while, and the ground is wet—making it easy to check things are working.

The land-drains comprise an 80mm pipe, which comes with 15mm slits in it (two opposite each other, offset 90° with the next pair, about 10mm apart). The pipe gets covered in a polypropylene geotextile sock, which stops large particles getting into the drain and blocking it. Small silty particles pass through and get carried away, and the idea is that a permeable layer of larger particles builds up, improving water flow. Once this is laid in the trench, we've partly backfilled with 10-20mm gravel, and then covered it over. It looks a bit of a mess now, where the spoil stacks next to the trenches have been removed, and the trench is obviously bare soil. However, the grass will start growing quickly soon, and soon the lack of trenches and hummock-y spoil heaps will be a massive improvement. More important, practically, will be the much safer footing as I cut the grass with the brushcutter!

While we've been out, I also popped up to the birch clearing, and saw that a number of the snowdrops we planted last year have started to come up. Hopefully there'll be even more by next weekend.

Ethernet

Before we plaster the walls, it's an ideal time to mess about with wiring in the house. We've sorted out switches and sockets as we've insulated the walls, meaning that there are more sockets (and in better places), and more logical switches. However, I also wanted to install ethernet cable, wiring the house up for a working LAN, because the walls (two feet thick sandstone) have always made wifi signals too weak to penetrate into the kitchen, or out to the garage (more of an issue now that's converted into a living space). That's been compounded by the insulation, which appears to have the effect of a Faraday cage (it is, after all, metallized PET), and has even caused problems with the wireless doorbell and smoke alarms. I had considered using Powerline adaptors, and using the power circuits to propagate ethernet connections, but our multi-fuseboard wiring makes me fear that this might never work well.

Secondly, although we have a broadband connection, it's not exactly broad broadband, as we're on the edge of a rural exchange. Because of that, I'm keen to maximise the capacity of the connection we do have, rather than throttling it by passing data through mains wiring, or too many wifi repeaters. It seems to me that the best way of doing so, long-term, is by hard-wired ethernet; and the best time to do that is now, before plastering the walls.

Thus, I've spent today, and we've spent this evening, putting in UTP cables emanating from the back of our dressing room and running to the landing/study, sewing room, sitting room (front and back), dining room, and towards the garage (to be finished later: I've taken them as far as the porch).

I need next to punch the cables into Cat6 sockets in each room, and then I can fix all the cables into a patch panel at the back of the dressing room. From there, I'll patch a few of them into the router, which is also a four-port switch—and later, when we need more than four active ports at once, I'll add a 24-port switch. The sockets in the sewing room, dining room, and garage will mean I can put wireless access points in these 'compartments', if range extenders can't get to them, so that there's wifi throughout the house. Similarly, the Cat6 cabling to the back of the sitting room and to the landing mean that fixed equipment (putative future smart TV, or NAS and printer in the landing office) can benefit from a fast, stable connection.

Now I just need to check that the cables all work...

Plastering

Over the last couple of months, we've done a bit of plastering here and there, but normally only a batch (~10kg of plaster, pre-water) at a time. This weekend, we've both been plastering (instead of just Liz), and we've made good progress. The sewing room is now finished, the external wall of our bedroom is done, the external landing wall is done, and all the external walls of the front and back guest rooms. The external wall of the dining room is also finished, which will be the first bit that we paint. That's only because our new sideboard arrived this week, and we want to get the wall around it plastered and painted before positioning it, as it would be a pain to unload, move, paint, replace, and re-fill.

Houseparty

We weren't able to schedule it for Advent, or for Epiphany, which were our first choices, but this weekend's been one of our biennial houseparties. Only David & Ann, and Philip, Rachel & Luke were with us (Katherine had last-minute travel problems, and Liz, Robert and James were in Florida), but we had a wonderful, relaxing time with them all. I was worried that the snow would cause difficulty getting them here, but it was rained away on Friday evening, so it wasn't too bad.

Snowy Weekend

We've had a weekend at home, with a couple of short trips to see people, as we've had Liz's sister staying with us. There's been a lot of snow in the last week, and everything's looking very picturesque—although it does always make travel that little bit more trying.

[photos from top circuit walk in snow]

Christmas 2014

???

Quick Trip

At about this time last year, we went for a quick weekend trip to Cambridge, and we've done the same again. We stayed with Philip and Rachel, and had a nice time with year-old Luke, who's grown again since we last saw him. I'm told they do that. Very relaxing, and we called in to see our old neighbour on the way home, too. We're back to work for a short week, and have made our cooking plans for the holiday...we're doing quite a bit of entertaining, actually, so it's going to be fun.

Decorating for Christmas

We've had a long weekend, with a very pleasant two-night stay in Scarborough, before coming home yesterday morning. We've turned our attention to decorating for Christmas, which is always a two-day affair, and which is now finished...it did involve wiring up the new outside socket, in order to put lights on the acer in the front garden, and also replacing the double light switch on the hall wall with individual pull-cord switches in the cloakroom and downstairs toilet. That's been on the to-do list for years, so it's nice to get it done. It means that the little bit of wall where the switch was, which is about the only hanging space in the hall, can now have something attractive on it, instead of a two-gang switch. While were in Scarborough, we visited the excellent Stained Glass Centre, where Liz's grandparents have bought her a lovely stone-effect arched mirror, which now graces the space—the final impetus to moving the switches.

Master En Suite

Yesterday we connected the new bath in the master en suite (waste and both taps), levelled the tub and fixed it down, and then tiled around the bath. That was followed, this morning, by grouting the tiles, which now look really good; we've also attached a shower-curtain rail that doubles as a normal curtain, and installed the glass shower screen.

While Liz grouted, I've properly hung the door between the guest room and that en suite—it couldn't be done until the blockwork wall was down, because the door couldn't open. That's now up, and allows access as intended. On the landing, we've put up the last section of plasterboard in the lobby, as well as finishing the stud wall separating the side guest room from the en suite, and plasterboarded the unfinished guest room side. That also meant hanging a wall light (reusing the cabling for the shaving light from its bathroom incarnation.

That really does bring us the end of major operations, which has meant that we've been able to clear the dining room, which has been the staging arena for tools, consumables, and building material for months, now—since August. We've been able to return tools and the small remaining amount of materials to the workshop and garage (as was), and collect up the waste, which is broadly either scrap metal, wood for recycling, and a small amount of 'domestic' waste. It's lovely to have the dining room back, which now feels like a big room again.

We've also resorted to turning on the central heating, as the stove is starting to struggle as the only heating in the house. Not bad, turning on the boiler right at the end of November.

New Hostas

New hostas arrived today, barerooted and looking more like multi-tentacled aliens. I've potted them up, and popped them in the greenhouse to overwinter. Although they don't need the protection, I prefer having them there, where I can keep a better eye on them.

They are:

• Wide Brim
• Sieboldiana 'Elegans'
• Francee
• Halcyon
• Pizzazz
• Snow Cap

Front Guest Room

This weekend's been a bit of everything, getting the front guest room more-or-less finished. There was some electrics (moving the lobby light; adding a wall light above the head of the bed; and getting a switch wire from inside the stud wall into the ceiling space of the bathroom, ready for the electronic lock).

We wanted to put a little niche into the side of the chimney breast, instead of a bedside table (there's not room in the alcove created by the chimney for the bed as well as a little table), which meant propping the wall, taking out some brickwork, and replacing with a lintel and wooden frame. These things take time...

Once that was done, we put up the wall cupboards, which in turn meant we were able to get the contents of the room a bit more rational. With the space that created, we've been able to put up the plasterboard on that side of the dividing room, and do the electrics in it (the PSU for the locks; the lightswitches, and sockets); as well as the plasterboards in the en suite that were missing. We've also put up the plasterboard missing from the sitting room wall, and the kitchen, which have been long overdue. Slowly getting there!

Last Walls Insulated

It's a little frustrating, really, how long it takes to get electrics sorted. It took a long while yesterday, finishing the wiring in the new guest room: new sockets, changing the light switch to a rocker switch (it was a bathroom pullcord), removing a wildly unnecessary coax cable that passed from ceiling to floor, disconnecting the old cable for the shower, and re-routing a wall light (necessitated by removing the wall it used to live on).

Never mind. One advantage of doing this room's work, and having the floor up in several places (and no shower monolith) was that I could rectify a design error in the kitchen. Since re-designing it in 2010, we realised that when stood at the sink, you were in your own shadow, which made washing up out of daylight hours (the sink's under the window) rather gloomy. Our solution has been to add a recess mounted LED light above and slightly right of the sink, which entirely remedies this.

Pleasingly, it's the only thing we've wanted to change in the kitchen, after four years.

Back in the new side guest room (old pink bathroom), we then set to insulating the room, throwing up the battens, insulation, and plasterboard rather quickly, actually—it's showing, now, that we've done some 250m² of this stuff. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it: because we wanted to start plastering today, we wanted to give any dust kicked up by demolition as long as possible to settle, and the two messy jobs we knew we still had to do were the fireplaces in our bedroom, and the front guest. (There's some plaster removal in the front guest, but it's minimal, and the room can't be plastered for ages, and only one wall is plasterboarded.)

Our bedroom's fireplace is in the same stack as the working sitting room fireplace, but obviously off-set. It was an extremely unpleasant job, but I stripped the breast of plaster, and broke out the stone/brickwork blocking the mouth of the fire. I looked as though I'd been coal mining when I was finished, as there was an enormous amount of soot, ash, and dust in the chimney. I was working in a confined space; a tent we'd put up to protect the room. It worked to protect the room, but I was horrible by the end.

The front guest room's fireplace was a lot better, partly because I knew what to expect, and had the vacuum to hand to suck up soot as I went. I found, unexpectedly, a letter lost in the stonework, which was from the summer of 1937: more on that another time, but it gives a date around which the fireplace was probably last used, before being blocked up.

That drew to a finish a long (0430 finish on Sunday morning) day, but the last of the mucky work. Today, a comparative lie-in (we only started work at 11: the laziness!) was followed by putting up the triple wardrobe in the side guest room, doing a variety of sorting and cleaning, and then, while I used expanding foam to finish the landing and master bedroom's walls, Liz started to plaster the side guest room. It's amazing, the difference it makes, even though it's only 70% done. We hope to finish it tomorrow evening, or at least get another bucket of plaster onto the walls.

This weekend sees the end of major operations, in a way, with the remodel/insulation. After this, the job list has the following, which, compared to what's gone before, feels much more manageable. I misquoted Churchill a while ago, but now I think we're able to say that we're at the beginning of the end.

• Plaster everywhere (sounds awful, but each room should only take about three hours, making about 27 hours work);
• Skirting board everywhere (ditto: there's only 90m or so to do);
• Paint everywhere (yes, this is awful, I admit);
• Tile the two bathrooms;
• Wire up the electronic locks for the bathrooms;
• Put up the cupboards in the front guest room;
• Put in the sockets in the diagonal wall dividing the guest rooms;
• Strip the last of the wallpaper upstairs (not much of this, in the master bed, and front guest);
• Single last plasterboard to go up in the sitting room, the landing, and kitchen;
• Window reveals & boards in the front guest room.

And I think that's it. By the end of our Christmas break we should be there, or thereabouts; the painting will probably take us beyond that, realistically, but let's say 'by my birthday', we'll be done.

Last of the Old Plaster

In preparation for the weekend's work, which is mainly focussed on the old house bathroom, we spent some time this evening stripping the old plaster off the old chimney breast. We hadn't really registered that this existed, until we started work on the other en suite bathroom, which it jutted into, just, next to the toilet.

Before we did this, I had to finish up some of the plumbing, removing a few pipes that were connections to the hot water cylinder, when we had one, and which ran up the front of the fireplace. Once these were out, we dismantled the brickwork blocking the mouth of the fire.

After doing this, I removed as much of the old toilet waste pipe as we could from inside, and rebuilt the wall where it came through. There was a bit of a cavity, which has been filled with mineral wool batt, and I've used expanding foam to consolidate the section.

The Pink Bathroom

After, I think, five years and three months bemoaning it, we've finally demolished (as it were) the pink 'house' bathroom. Tiled lovingly from floor to ceiling in a pink rose pattern, with monolithic shower plinth, and 'cosy' loo in the corner (tucked between said plinth and the wall), it's never been much loved. The tiles were augmented with two mismatched white tiles at some date, too. Anyway, it is gone.

We started on Saturday by taking out the sink, and then took the ceiling down. It sounds drastic, but it was a false ceiling, with the 'real' ceiling hidden a couple of feet above it. We're not entirely sure why it was put in: it's got some quirkiness to it, though. The upper ceiling is higher than any of the other first floor ceilings, with a sloped section at the front/back of the house. However, the finish matches the ceiling material in the far end of the house (~15cm T&G planks)—where, in fact, the ceiling is lowest. The lower ceiling, which is at the same sort of level as the middle compartment of the house (master bedroom and landing), matched the finish there, which is a kind of long panelled effect.

We decided we had to take it down, because, oddly, the master en suite and house bathroom had the false, dropped ceiling, but the airing cupboard, between them, didn't. Because the new guest room was going to absorb the bathroom, airing cupboard, and a slice of the master en suite, the ceiling had to be consistent; and as it was, it was carried on a beam affixed to the wall we were going to take out.

Down it came, in not too horrible a fashion.

Next, we started to dismantle the walls: the walls separating the bathroom from the master en suite, and forming the airing cupboard between them, were all coming down, replaced by a new stud wall that made the en suite slightly smaller, but the soon-to-be-guest-bedroom a better size.

Eventually, by mid-morning today, we had all the walls down, generating a huge heap of cement blocks (breeze-blocks) outside the kitchen. It revealed a number of pipes and cables we'll need to sort out, that were previously hidden in the airing cupboard. We've then taken out the toilet, and attacked the shower plinth.

I described it as monolithic above, which proved unexpectedly accurate: when we took apart the tiled ply exterior, we discovered that the shower tray had been set into a three inch slab of concrete, itself held in a timber frame and on top of a foam base. Why, I have no idea. I managed to lever it up, and then break it into lumps, but it must have weighed around 200kg. In combination with the high-density cement block walls, the floor was carrying an unexpectedly enormous weight, which, to be frank, I'm glad it won't have to support any more.

By early evening, we had the contents of the room removed, now forming an absurd glacis of bagged plaster, tiles, and cement blocks outside the kitchen window, waiting an eventual skip/grabber truck plan. We then set to work stripping the plaster from the walls, with the remaining pink tiles. Eventually, we finished about ten, and the room is bare.

I'm going to try to sort out the pipes in evenings this week, and next weekend we'll insulate and plasterboard the room, and, with a little luck, start plastering first floor walls.

Christmas Cake

We started soaking the fruit for our Christmas cake earlier in the week, and it was ready, this morning, to make the cake. Last year, we used Mary Berry's recipe, instead of the Delia Smith recipe we've used for many (nine, I think) years. We've tweaked it slightly.

Dried fruit:

• 6oz glace cherries
• 1lb 2oz currants
• 7oz raisins
• 12oz sultanas
• 2oz mixed peel

Soaked with 150–200ml strong tea for three days.

• 9oz butter
• 9oz light sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1tbsp treacle
• 4oz flaked almonds
• 3tbsp marmalade

All beaten together, before folding in:

• 9oz plain flour
• 1tsp mixed spice
• 1/2tsp cinnamon
• pinch salt

The fruit is then stirred in, before it's spooned into a 9", double lined and greased tin. It cooked for 4:45, at 140°, covered from the start with a greaseproof paper lid.

Compost Turning

I've had a day off today, getting a few bits done around the house while Liz works from the sitting room. It's been a useful one, with reasonable weather, too, and we finished the day with a trip to our local garden centre's Christmas preview evening (with 15% discount on everything...irresistible).

A lot of this morning I spent getting the plumbing and worktop in our bathroom sorted, and now the sink is properly connected, and the worktop is in place, attached, and sealed. This is rather necessary, as the plan is to dismantle the pink (house) bathroom at the weekend, so we wanted a working toilet and basin, even though we'll be using the guest en suite for showering for a while yet (until we can tile ours).

I've trimmed the old hollow-core back door, ready to re-use in the doorway between the master en suite and the new guest room. For now, it's just secured in the frame: the existing wall prevents it opening, so (as I can't, therefore, get to the hinges) it can't be screwed to the frame until the wall's taken down.

I've finally got round to labelling the plants we bought at Tatton in July, before they die back and vanish for the winter—unfortunately, I've lost track of a eupatorium, and the two echinaceas ('Secret Love'), so I'll have to hunt again for them.

Over lunch, we set soaking the dried fruit for our Christmas cake, which we'll make at the weekend. It has loads of dried fruit, nearly three pounds, which we soak with a mug or so of tea for a few days.

Before dusk fell, I managed to turn the compost heaps, thus freeing up (kind of) the first bay, which promptly half-filled with the mound we'd formed nearby. It has let me empty the bin outside the kitchen, though, which is good. Hopefully the space will suffice until spring, when we'll start needing compost again, thus emptying the third bay, and creating trickle-down space in the system.

I also managed to knock a long-standing job off The List, and cleared a silted up corner of the drive, and the drainage channel between it and the track, so the drive will, hopefully, flood less badly this winter.

This evening's shopping trip was good, with a few Christmas decorations, including a long string of lights for the acer in the front garden, and a half-priced holly (the variegated form, 'Silver Queen'), which will go on the hillside, to complement the pure green hollies already well established.

First Frost

This morning saw our first frost of the winter—coincidentally, on the same date as last year.

Fortunately, it wasn't a hard frost, hitting only the windscreen of the car, and not quite reaching the ground, which is as well, because we've not lifted anything. A frost was predicted for Wednesday morning, but not last night, so we were lucky. The house, too, protects the front garden, where the zonal pelagoniums are: we only have a limited number of non-hardy perennials, and these are a high fraction of the total.

As a result, we went out after getting back from work to lift the other vulnerable plants, as well as the geraniums in the front garden. The variegated agapanthus, Tinkerbell, and tulbaghia from Tatton last year, the three chocolate cosmos from this year, and the Queen Victoria lobelia (also Tatton Park 2013, I realise) have all been potted, and are in the greenhouse. That extends the time they can stay outside, before we have to find windowsills for them to go on, although they can't stay out there over winter, as the greenhouse isn't heated.

We've left the dahlias (Bishop of Llandaff, Twying's After Eight) for now, as they can wait until a proper frost kills the top-growth, before we lift the tubers for the winter.

Solid Door

Yesterday, we spent a bit of time getting on with the 'left behind' insulation in the kitchen and sitting room. In the former, there's a patch of wall near the old front door, which is partly an internal wall (dividing kitchen from sitting room), partly a cross-section through the old cottage wall, and partly a cavity'ed external wall (part of the kitchen extension from 30–40 years ago). In previous years, it's suffered from condensation, and been quite cold, although it's not a proper solid external wall, so we thought it worthwhile insulating it. It's been left to do, though, as it's just a single metre width of wall, which we're not insulating to quite the same standard as elsewhere, due to the scale of the problem (limited), the stone arch that's adjacent, and the limited space. The insulation and electrical bit of this is done, and the plasterboard will follow: the stash of plasterboards is currently buried under adopted furniture in the garage, so it has to wait.

We've also put up the roller blinds we ordered: new, more durable ones for the kitchen, matching ones for the bathroom windows, and a very wide, insulated blind for the patio doors. That also required us to get round to putting back the curtain poles in the kitchen, and to hang the curtains, which are now back up, which is good.

Today—a short day because Cath and Jason came round for dinner—we've replaced the utility room door with a new one. The old one was, bizarrely for an external door, a hollow-core door, which was neither secure nor warm, so we've replaced it with a solid wood door. The hollow-core door will serve in the short term as a bathroom door upstairs: we hope to replace all the first floor doors with attractive natural wood doors in a few years.

The solid wood door came blank, so it took me a while to mount the hinges, cut the recess and holes for the handle and lock mechanism, and re-mount the rack bolts, as well as hang it. Fortunately, the size was off-the-shelf, so I haven't had to trim it down, which would have been fraught with peril.

Logs

Just a short note: after several months of not doing so, I've spent this afternoon sawing, splitting, and stacking a load (or thereabouts) of logs. Several loads have built up on the drive, and we needed to clear some space. Secondly, as we're now running the stove, we're starting to burn wood for the winter, so it's time to start filling the shelter as it's emptied. Liz was working today, but helped with transporting the wood down, and stacking. Light ran out after 19 barrows (25 is a full load), but there we go.

In other news, Jenny and Philip have properly moved out, their sale/purchase completing at noon, and the new owners beginning to move in.

Of Cheese

After a frankly hellish week, the contrast with a delightful weekend couldn't be starker. Although we've had a couple of hours each morning helping Jenny and Philip load their removal van—the culmination of their relocation to Shropshire—while Ann and David enjoyed a well-earned lie-in, the rest of both days has been entirely relaxing. We've made far too much food, played many games, and enjoyed a film or two. They've been excellent company, and we've all benefited from a revitalizing rest. Although we're back at work in the morning, they're still with us, and will make an early start too.

The work to get to this point's been pretty tough, and taken a lot of energy. However, we're glad that we had something to aim for, and a motivation to get to where we are, without which the work might have dragged on. The end, now, feels in sight. Still to come:

Finishing off both bathrooms: the en suite needs some worktop fiddling, a couple of bits of plasterboard, and tiling on walls and floor; the master en suite needs basin and worktop attaching, bath plumbing in, and tiling throughout.

The locks for both en suites need installing.

We need to dismantle the pink/house bathroom, including taking down the walls making the airing cupboards, and insulate the external walls. That, including some electrical work, is the best part of a weekend.

The cupboards in the front guest, and the new guest room replacing that bathroom, need to go up.

There's a few small patches of external walls to finish: behind the cellar door, in the kitchen, and a plasterboard that's mysteriously missing on the landing (the mystery is why we never put it on).

The back door from the utility needs replacing with a better one: that door's being recycled upstairs.

Skirting boards, and a lot of injectable foam insulation, need putting up.

Then, we need to plaster the whole house, ready to paint. The next deadline is a visit by Jenny and Philip just before Christmas (when we need two rooms, two bathrooms, which have working locks); and then late January, when we need everything to be functional ready for a Cambridge-crowd house party.

However, comparing the list above with what we've managed since July, I hope that things can slow down somewhat for the next two months, and we can have fewer 15-hour days, no more 18-hour days, and certainly no more 42-hour marathons.

Forty-Two Hours of Madness

(This is retrospectively posted, as I was in no fit state to be writing at the moment it's time-stamped, but posterity calls.)

David and Ann have long been scheduled to visit for this weekend, which has given us a key milestone and deadline to aim for in our work. Quite reasonably, I think they'd expect a functioning bathroom, and a live-able bedroom.

They were due about 2300 Friday night. Unfortunately, as of 0800 Thursday, neither bedroom nor bathroom were ready.

Also unfortunately, the tiles for the bathrooms, which I ordered some time ago, have been badly delayed (they need to all come from the same batch of stone, for consistency), and instead of arriving last Wednesday, were eventually due to turn up Thursday morning.

Perhaps predictably, the delivery didn't go smoothly, and they ended up arriving 1745 Thursday evening.

In order, then, to get a guest bedroom and working bathroom, we stayed up from 0700 Thursday morning, until about 0100 Saturday morning, working basically non-stop for the forty-two hours in between. I was functionally narcoleptic by then, and we collapsed in to bed as soon as we'd had a cup of tea with Ann and David, after they arrived at about half-midnight (a much delayed journey on the M1).

It has not been fun.

In the last couple of days, in the new en suite alone, we've:

• installed the cabinets;
• connected the bath to the drain;
• levelled the bath;
• affixed battens to the wall;
• tiled the critical few square metres around the shower (the rest will have to wait);
• grouted the tiles;
• silicone sealed the bath;
• constructed the toilet cabinet;
• built the cistern into the unit;
• plumbed it in;
• modified the door to attach the pan through--both flush connection to it and soil pipe from it;
• connected the flush button;
• attached the water supply to the basin;
• built the trap and drain;
• cut the worktop;
• mounted the sink and waste; and
• made a frame for the small worktop at the foot of the bath.

In the guest bedroom, we've mounted four wall cupboards above the bed, and two full-height units on one side. One full-height unit is up in the front guest (the old study), but that's it: the wall units will wait.

In our bathroom, taken out the suite, and installed the cabinets, repeating the toilet cabinet work, and cut the worktop. I've not plumbed the toilet or basin in, yet, though.

A massive tidy-up of the house has made the dining room passable, and the living room is now basically normal; the master bedroom is fine, the landing is tidy, the old house bathroom (the 'pink bathroom') is less cluttered, thanks to the new wardrobe/cupboards; and although the garage is pretty full, the house is actually miraculously straight. Thanks to this go entirely to Liz, who's been madly tidying while I stumble in a sleep deprived haze through many of the construction jobs.

We just about managed to hoover, too. So, when David and Ann rolled in after a particularly messy journey up the motorway, we had a respectable suite to accommodate them, and I'm delighted that's the case.

To paraphrase Churchill: this is not the end; it is not even the beginning of the end; it is, perhaps, the beginning of the middle.

Cabinets, Bathrooms, and Blinds

On Tuesday, the order of cabinets arrived. Nominally, they're kitchen units, because this, for whatever reason, is the most economic way of obtaining cabinets with hardwood doors, even for bedrooms or bathrooms. Anyway: they've safely arrived, a collection of eighteen or so cabinets, with extra packages of shelves, side-panels, shelf supports, and a massive, 4m piece of worktop, which had to go all the way round the house and in through the patio doors. That was rather hairy, as the weather on Tuesday was atrocious, with high winds and heavy rain at the time of delivery...and peace to either side.

It's since been cluttering up the downstairs, although we're gradually taking cupboards up. The 'broom cupboards' that we're re-purposing as full length wardrobes are slightly tricky to manoeuvre: they're 210cm tall, 40-50cm across/deep, and not light. We're getting there, though, doing a couple in a sitting, then taking a break.

Once upstairs, we've positioned the two cabinets for the new en suite, with the basin and toilet placed 'dry' with them, to get a feel for the room. Actually attaching everything is next.

We've also ordered blinds, one for each bathroom, a big one for the patio doors (which are as draughty as predicted), and two for the kitchen, replacing those on the big window behind the sink, and on the old outside door.

It took the best part of a day, but I've also done the plumbing and wiring works for the shower, ready to install the bathroom suite.

Window Reveals

For the last three days, we've mostly been putting in window reveals and heads, and, in a few cases, windowboards. Because of the difficulty installing the insulation foil into small thicknesses, many of these have been foil laminates, and they've all been plyboard sheets, rather than plasterboard. It's given the windows quite a consistent, and nicely-framed feel. Also advantageous has been the way it's really well sealed the windows, which were previously very draughty. There's still some improvement to be made, as I shall go around injecting insulating foam behind each board, to fully seal it.

The best one has been the big window in the master bedroom. When we stripped off the plaster, we found that what appeared to be a square lintel had only been 'regularized' with the plasterwork, and was in fact a beautiful wonky shape. We were loath to lose this behind squared boarding, so for this one window (and the dressing room, to complement it), we have used plasterboard, and followed the curves of the reveal, rather than box it in. It's worked really well, to our delight, and this one window has a uniquely organic shape.

While doing these, we've also put the planks (curtain boards, we're calling them) above each window, onto which are mounted the curtain rails. These can't be reliably supported by the plasterboard, and there's never (a quirk of of the design of the battening) an appropriate batten, so we have to have a board to span several battens and carry the load of the curtain to them. They're almost all up, now, and Liz has begun re-hanging rails and curtains.

Plumbing Woes

I don't enjoy plumbing. I much prefer electrics, despite their greater inherent danger, because I know what I'm doing, and I can normally tell if it's not working properly. Plumbing, with the potential for leaking pipes (worse, leaking pipes sealed behind expensive tiling), troubles me more.

Partly, of course, it's because it often takes me a while to get things nicely sealed up. Today I've been getting some of the plumbing ready for the new en suite. That's meant identifying the cold water supply where it runs through the room, breaking into it to install a pair of equal-tees (one to feed bath and shower; one for sink and toilet cistern), and getting pipe and valves to roughly the right places. Trickier was identifying the little-used hot supply, and doing the same. It's all done, but I'm sure that something's not quite sealed properly, as there's a bit too much water around. Some's inevitable, as I'm cutting into pipes that are full of water, and they won't drain fully, even with a low-level tap opened. But I think there's too much...

Other than that, we've finished insulating and dry lining the new en suite with plasterboard, now that the drain is in, and I've made a big shopping list of the last (hopefully) things we need to finish the bulk of the work, starting on Saturday.

New Drain

On Wednesday last week, work started on the new drain for the new en suite. They didn't manage to get it all done in the day, unfortunately, as access to the drain was more concrete-y than expected, for one thing. Today, though, they arrived after lunch, connected up the soil stack and diagonal drain, and waited for us to arrive.

Once we could let them into the house, they were able to diamond core drill the hole through the gable wall, and add the exit pipe. As the light had gone, they'll have to pop back in the morning to make the final connections, but all being well, we'll have a complete drain by this time tomorrow. It's just as well, as the bathroom suites arrived last Wednesday evening, and so we can now finalize the last few orders.

All being well, we plan to catch up with a lot of the part-insulated windows on Wednesday, before starting work on fitting the bathrooms next weekend. That might take a while, but we've got seven days (Saturday onwards) to get to the point of having at least one functional guest room, and two working bathrooms, before David and Ann arrive...

Finishing the Dining Room

We insulated the front wall of the dining room in two stages, having started in early August, but breaking for other rooms. We've now gone back, and yesterday insulated the back wall of the room. This was relatively simple, with just a couple of sockets, a light, and the big patio window; but there was also the old cellar landing, which we have bookcases in, and which is a slightly awkward shape. Anyway: we stripped most of the plaster off on Friday night, and finished the insulation by relatively early on Saturday night (midnight, or thereabouts...which is a definite improvement on some days).

We discovered that there was, at one point, a back door at the top of these stairs.

Unfortunately, I accidentally screwed a plasterboard screw through a cable, which necessitated a thirty minute delay while I repaired it and replaced the fuse.

We got there in the end, though. Today, we've insulated our walk-in-wardrobe in the corner of the master bedroom, thus completing the master bed. This afternoon was spent putting up the new stud wall that will separate our en suite from the new small bedroom that the house bathroom is becoming, and plumbing in the two radiators that go on this wall. One will be replaced by a towel radiator later (probably in the spring, really), but the other's permanent.

Finally, this evening, we've put up the removable insulation on the gable end of the dining room. Removable because we want to retain the stone wall, so we've come up with a way to insulate it over the winter, but have our stone wall back for the summer. We'll have to see whether it works: if not, we may have to sacrifice the exposed stone wall.

Division

This weekend's work has been focussed on dividing the end compartment of the first floor, which contained the two spare rooms, into more equally-sized rooms, and an en suite bathroom. We had to start by taking down the rest of the stud wall dividing the two (Saturday morning), and stripping off the remaining plaster from the guest room, and the back of the study (Friday evening). Although that meant a late night on Friday, it did pay off in a much pleasanter start to Saturday.

Once we'd stripped the room back to bare stone, we were able to put up the insulation on the back wall of the guest room, and the gable end a bit further than where the new wall of the en suite was going. It went reasonably smoothly, not least because that stretch has only one window and one radiator; and we added some sockets, as normal.

Messing around with the electrics took, as normal, a little while. We had to separate off the light at the end of the study, which will now be the light in the bathroom; add a switch for this light; and add double-throw switches for the lights in both bedrooms, so that they can be controlled from next to their door to the landing, and to the bathroom. It was a little complex, but we got there. We also added one ring main looped socket, which we shall extend to further sockets later.

The stud wall itself was reasonably straightforward; two roughly 2m walls defining the bathroom, with a door into each bedroom (we're recycling doors for now, with the intention of getting nice new ones when we can...), and then a slightly longer one joining the square bathroom with the square lobby diagonally opposite.

It was a little hard, without the wall, to get a sense of the two rooms, but they've turned out really well: they both feel ample for double guest rooms, or permanent single rooms.

On Wednesday, work on the new drain for the en suite starts: they'll be drilling through the gable wall to create a 4' drain, taking it across the gable end of the house, and dropping it into an existing septic tank sewer behind the greenhouse. While they're here, they're going to reline that sewer, which has been damaged by the berberis growing straight over it.

Wiltshire Cured Ham

As I noted, we collected the half-pig from the butchers after getting home from Ludlow yesterday. As normal, we're turning some of it into bacon and hams, and leaving some as joints for casseroles or roasting. There are also a number of chops (which, it turns out, are huge), and we've also got a bag of 'bits' (tails, trotters, kidney, heart, liver), which need different processing.

In previous years we've also made sausages, but we've actually still got loads left from last year, so we're not doing that. (It must be said, we also don't really have time for sausage-making at the moment.) Instead, we're mincing the trimmed scraps of meat (about 5lb), mixing them into sausagemeat, and freezing them in patties. If we do run out of sausages before next autumn, and want to, we can always make them as needed, after all.

The sausagemeat made, we mixed up the curing brine for the bacon and hams. We're repeating the Wiltshire cure, which is a beer-based brine:

• 4l beer (again, the Harvest Mild I brewed a few months ago)
• 1900g salt
• 1000g black treacle
• 65g saltpetre
• 50g black peppercorns
• 50 juniper berries

Once mixed, that's brought to the boil, and simmered for 10–15 minutes. I'll chill it overnight, and add the joints in the morning. They're refrigerated, stirring whenever I remember, for 36 hours (the bacon) or 3.5 days (the hams).

Malvern Autumn

We've had a weekend away, visiting Ludlow, and spending Sunday with Liz's grandmother at the Malvern autumn show, which we've not been to before.

It's less of a garden show than, say, Tatton Park, with only a few gardens, and a lot of 'country living' stallholders. However, there was a very good apple pavilion, with an impressive display of apples from RV Roger (who supplied all of the maiden trees for our apple walk earlier this year). We watched a very entertaining, and pertinent, 'conversation' between Joe Swift and Monty Don in the Good Life theatre, and spent a lot of the afternoon browsing the plant nursery stalls, and wondering over the size of the mammoth veg. The prize-winning pumpkin was 472kg, which was, frankly, astonishing, but only slightly more so than the 152kg cabbage, or the 6.3(ish)m beetroot and parsnip, each, apparently, world records. How one digs up a 6m parsnip root, I know not.

(Why, I know not, either.)

Anyway, we managed to fill grandma's not insignificant boot, with thirty-five plants of our own, and a number of hers, and we added a few from her garden to take home, meaning our little Corsa was well loaded for the return journey.

• Two Crocosmia 'Sunglow', and two 'Buttercup'
• a 'Twyning's After Eight' dahlia
• Three white Japanese anemones, 'Honorine Jobert'
• Two giant scabious
• Three new heucheras, 'Fire Chief', 'xxx' and 'xxx'
• A pair of variegated sedums, 'Frosty Morn'
• A painted fern, 'Burgundy Lace'
• Three Panicum grasses, 'Squaw'
• An astrantia, A. major 'Lars'
• And a tray of obscenely cheap Cyclamen hederifolium; fifteen at a pound apiece.

We finally, definitively, learnt the reason for the riduculously low end-of-show prices. Apparently, the nurseries want to offload the last of their stock at almost any price, because for the quantity involved, the cost of transporting them back to the nursery exceeds the market value—hence selling things at a pound/pot is actually financially better than transporting the stock 'home', and selling it at market value later. I'm happy to help.

We got home about five, and I nipped out to pick up the rest of our pig, having collected the bucket of blood last Wednesday, before planting everything out.

Autumn Cut

We've enjoyed the wildflowers in the orchard this summer, which is one reason why I've left large swathes of it uncut for some time, only clearing paths through it. However, as autumn enters, I've now gone over the entire orchard, cutting it back as close as I can, so that it stays neat, and walkable, over the winter. Heavy work, even in the milder temperature, but it actually only took about three hours, which isn't bad. It looks a lot neater, even with the strewn vegetation.

Before doing that, though, this morning I've painted the arches of the apple walk, coating the steel rebar with cream-coloured metal paint. The arches now really stand out, and will stand the weather much better.

I've planted out the autumn-planting onions (100 Radar) and garlic (30-odd Marco) in the herb garden, through weed-proof membrane.

Last thing, I managed (just, before the light faded and drizzle set in) to mow the lawn. I managed to do the games lawn a while ago, but it's been some time since the rest has been done, and it really needed it. Hopefully, as the weather cools and the days shorten, it'll be a while until I have to do it again. I am hoping to manage to keep trimming it through the winter, weather permitting, this year. I do still need to take the brushcutter to the copse, though, and tidy the verges of the lane, so my grass-cutting isn't over for the year...

Fitted Furniture

As hoped, I've been able to order the cabinets today. There's a lot of them, because it includes cabinets for both bathrooms, and wardrobes for all three guest rooms. All being well, they should arrive in late October, ready to go straight in when we have a few days off. And in two weeks, the drainage works will happen, meaning there's actually a pipe for everything to plumb in to.

Doors & Studs

Moving doors took longer than expected. The doors into the guest room and study have always had a relatively large lobby outside them, which is another example of space we'd rather have in the rooms, rather than the landing. Today's first work was taking them, and the bit of wall they hung in, down, and rebuilding the walls in a more efficient position. It took a while, though, to get the doors straight, level, and latching, which meant it was late before we got on to the other part of today's work, removing the stud wall dividing the two rooms.

As a result, it's not entirely down. 90% of the plasterboard is out, and a good fraction of the timber frame. With a couple of sheets hung up, the eventual feel of the front room is there, but the remaining frame makes it harder to get a sense of the back room. However, it seems to be working.

Getting the wall down, and the front wall insulated, has allowed us to finalize the measurements of both, which means I'll be able to order the fitted furniture this week.