Monthly Archives: May 2020

Moving things around

Not a lot seems to have happened this month – that’s because I’ve been busy!   The office is now mostly cleared out and the snug is now an everything room.   I really like it and I’m surprised how much furniture I could get in there.   It never seemed that big.

The door and windows are completely stripped and just a little more prep needed before linseed paint.

snug-with-furniture

Most of the plumbing in the house has been removed, mostly so I could remove the rest of the false ceiling.    The 10 inch beam spanning the room would have been quite heavy so I propped it up on scaffold and cut it into manageable chunks.

The ceiling supports around the edges were cross nailed into the lath and plaster supports.   They didn’t come out easily and there is more plastering to be done than it looks.

The walls are being a pain too.  They seem to have been re-plastered in the 1970s with cement and gypsum.  They have textured paint, then wallpaper, gloss paint, and finally lots of emulsion.   It is very time consuming to get back to the plaster so I’m thinking either a scabbler or just knock the whole lot off and try again.   It’ll probably be a bit of both.

ballroom-ceiling

First fix electrics on that side of the house is loosely planned in a month or so.  I’m having a rest and taking a week to tidy and organise the living spaces and then should probably get busy getting ready.

New roof on the car tent

The car tent roof was destroyed by the three weekends of winds in February.   The marquee was from Gala Tent and it had done brilliantly well having been erected as a temporary measure in 2014 – the willow has grown a bit since then.

Helen came over to help.   It was really hard work putting the new roof covering on and I’m still aching.   Normally you would lower the frame to ground level but the legs were siezed so we had to lift the heavy covering over the roof at full height using ropes and a scaffold tower.

car-tent2