This has been a restful weekend, the first one I've felt reasonably well in a while. I've tried not to overdo it, and spent plenty of time just sitting around with a nice cup of tea. The big event of the weekend though, was new chickens, and so most of our activity has been focused on that. We spent Friday afternoon building a partition in the run to keep the new chickens away from the current ones. The current chickens watched all this activity with indignation. On Saturday, Peter stayed at home to finish putting the final touches to the run, and I drove to collect the new ladies. We're still under bird flu rules, so there were strict biosecurity precautions in place. I wasn't allowed to get out of the car, so I didn't see the new ladies until we got home. I talked to them all the way back in the car, telling them about where they were going, and the beaky footsteps they were going to follow in. Skippy is smaller - she came out of the box curious, and it didn't take her long to start digging, scratching, and pecking everything in sight. It's such a lovely sight, knowing these ladies have never seen soil or the sky before, to see them scratching around and staring out of the window. Daisy, on the other hand, was quiet, subdued, and if one of our current chickens had looked like she did, I would have been carting her off to the vets. But rehoming day is always traumatic for these girls. They're pulled out of their cages, put into crates and into a van, driven to the rehoming centre, out of the crates and briefly into a barn, then into boxes, into cars, and driven to their new homes, all in one day. I know I'd be tired and subdued after all that. She does seem a lot brighter today after a good rest. We're keeping the old and new ladies separate for a few days, so they've got their own little house to sleep in, but of course they don't know that's what it's for, having never had a separate house to sleep in before. Last night, we went to the run just after it had gone dark to find Skippy on top of the house, and Daisy up on a perch. We tucked them in nice and cosy. Tonight I went in to find them both on the perch together, cuddled up next to each other. I'm hopeful that tomorrow they'll find their way into the house. The older ladies are, of course, unimpressed. Sunshine and Budgie did a lot of shouting, and even Bessie, who's usually quite placid, joined in the chorus for a while. Things do seem to have settled down a little today - possibly they're reassured that their own treats supply won't be diminished by the intruders. Poor things. We've never had any that had lost all their feathers, but they do usually look pretty moth-eaten and ragged when they arrive. The story is that they're moulting, and that may well be the case, but ours have moulted every year and yes, there are feathers all over the run, but they never look like this. I can't wait for them to start preening and dust bathing. Anyway, this weekend hasn't all been about chickens, although the majority of it has been. I've finally got round to making soap, for only the second time since we moved here - I'll report back on the new recipe once I know it's properly worked. I've finally finished painting the second coat of yellow onto the kitchen walls - I started the first coat in November 2021 so this is quite an achievement! It's not quite felt like there's a hint of spring in the air, but my thoughts have started to turn a little towards the garden (in between torrential downpours), and I managed to plant out the hellebore my sister gave me for Christmas. And yes, a cafe trip or two, and a bit of plotting and scheming and letter writing. All in all, a most satisfactory weekend.
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Our builders are coming in 36 hours. We are both excited and a little daunted. There has been a lot to prepare. One of my jobs has been sorting out this floor. These are terrazzo tiles, buried for years under a layer of stick-on vinyl tiles. The glue and general grubbiness has stained them, and I've spent a lot of time investigating how to restore them to their former glory. There is a way, but it involves industrial machinery and a lot of fuss and mess. We don't have time for that on top of everything else right now, so made the decision to clean them up as best we can for now, and reconsider in the future. First job was to move everything out of the way. You'd think this would have been easy - this room, after all, has been 'empty' for two years. But empty doesn't always mean empty round here, and it took an hour of shifting plasterboard and tools and washing up before it was truly empty. Second job - cleaning. There's a lot of advice about cleaning terrazzo tiles out there, and having tried quite a few suggestions, I can confirm that when your tiles look like this, very little will either help or hinder you. Baking soda, washing up liquid, kitchen cleaner - none of it made much difference. Lithofin Power Clean, £12 a litre, also didn't make much difference. I resorted to using Pink Stuff, and probably somewhere on the internet there are dire warnings against using this mildly abrasive cream cleaner. I stuck with it anyway, mostly because by that point it was quite late at night, and it didn't smell too bad. It removed the general grime, but didn't do much for the stains, and left a slightly gritty residue over the floor when I didn't rinse it off properly. Anyway, on to the next stage - grouting. The gaps between terrazzo tiles are small, but they are there, and these ones were filled more with grime than grout. Another evening on my hands and knees, scraping the muck out of the gaps with a knife, and another quick clean, and a second trip to the DIY shop after we decided the white grout I'd bought would just make the tiles look even more grubby, and we were ready. Grout on a couple of strips, wipe with a big sponge, rinse sponge, wipe again, rinse again, wipe again, hope for the best. It was a long evening, but eventually I got there. I was very grateful for my kneepads by this point. When the grout was dry, it was time for another clean, this time with Tile Doctor Pro Clean, a rather stinky product which apparently removes all remnants of grime, stain, and previous sealant. I bought a mop, applied liberally, followed the instructions to 'agitate after ten minutes', and spent the longest time trying and failing to rinse away all the suds. There was no appreciable improvement in the stains, but at least I hadn't made anything worse. Next up - sealant. This was another stinky substance, a solvent, and soaked into the tiles to provide protection, rather than sitting on top like a varnish. I was grateful for having bought a long roller pole to paint the side of the house a few weeks ago - it saved me from another episode of crawling round the floor. Three coats of sealant, applied then wiped off after half an hour, and the floor looks... not really any different to how it did at the start. A little cleaner, grouted, but not really any shinier, and I suspect the builder will still offer to replace it again like he did on his last visit. But we're quite fond of these ridiculous tiles, although I confess I do wish the red ones were in the middle, as they'll mostly be covered by the kitchen cupboards, leaving the stained cream-coloured ones exposed in the middle of the floor. Hey ho. Our other main job before the builders arrive was removing the bedroom ceiling. Not strictly necessary - it would have taken the builders about ten minutes - but we wanted to remove the cladding carefully so we could keep it for a future project. Even so, it only took us a couple of hours, and is now stored safely in an outbuilding, and will probably be used to clad the bathroom some time next year. Peter has also created me a little office area for me in the temporary kitchen. The builders won't be doing anything to my study, but it's right in the middle of the building work, and this will allow me to be separated from the noise and kerfuffle just a little bit. We'll see how that goes.
I did try saving a few weeks of annual leave so I wouldn't be trying to work when they were here, but they were delayed, and my leave year ended, so here we are. As a last resort I can always go to my actual office, which is open now after being closed since March 2020, but that feels a little drastic, and I won't do that unless things become unbearable here. So there we are. Tomorrow is my final day of a fortnight off, and we need to make sure that all the rest of our stuff is out of the way. Somehow the dining room end of the kitchen is still full of tools and plasterboard and the old oven. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your minimalist tendencies, we have plenty of outbuilding space to store everything. Then on Monday morning we'll take a deep breath and see what the next few weeks bring. We're going through quite a bit of upheaval round here at the minute. It's like some kind of epic spring clean, except the weather is not very spring-like, and so far there's not been much cleaning. But there has been an awful lot of sorting out. This is our loft. Well, one of our three lofts (the other two contain mostly mouse droppings). Neither of us have minimalist tendencies, and as we've gone through life, we've collected many things that 'might come in useful one day'. Many of them have, and our propensity to buy things when we see them cheap and squirrel them away has saved us a fortune over the years. Still, times change, and we're getting to a point where carrying round old projects and endless tubs of beads, paperclips and crayons just doesn't feel quite so appealing. Many of those projects have been unfinished for a decade or more, and now feel more like sources of guilt than sources of fun. With our new decision to get the builders in to sort out the kitchen and bedroom, we're looking forward to a more organised space, and it feels like a good time to start clearing some stuff out. Of course, it does mean that things become yet more chaotic in the meantime, piles of boxes and bags for the tip collect near the back door. We're fortunate that we have two relatively local household recycling centres, and between them they have recycling bins for metal, plastic, wood, clothes, books etc, so not much is going to landfill. In another time, we would likely have donated to charity shops, but they are all closed now, and many of the donation bins have been removed. We might also have put stuff on Freegle, but that feels like quite a daunting task (and also we're not in a town, so I wouldn't want to be encouraging a flurry of special trips out here to collect individual items right now). It feels odd to be getting rid of this much stuff. Ornaments I've looked at for 15 years are disappearing, shelves are emptying, and the amount of space in the loft now is really quite shocking. Peter's been doing most of this clearing out. I'm focusing on the kitchen ceiling for now - but the more he clears, the more obvious the rest of my stuff is. I certainly won't be throwing everything away, but I've got a decent stash of fabric that I've probably had for 20 years and not done anything with for a start... The other activity at the minute is planning the kitchen itself. This has become more of a fun activity now we don't have the prospect of figuring out how to fill massive holes in the walls, and can instead thing about paint colours and tiles and where to put the kettle. The kitchen/dining room has four windows now, and I am loving the way the sun streams in. Can't wait to sit at the table with a cup of tea and a jug of flowers. It's a bit daunting making choices though. We've spent so many years making do with what we had, picking up what we could for free or cheap, that our decisions have usually been along the lines of 'how can we make good use of this?' rather than 'what do we want?'. 'What do we want?' feels like such a big question. (I should point out that I'm fully aware how fortunate we are to be in a position of deciding what we want, and I'm not remotely complaining about it - it's just interesting how difficult it is after years of having decisions bounded by other factors). This is the kitchen in our old house - it looks so empty because it's taken on the day we moved out. We just had one strip of work surface, and the fridge was round the corner near the back door. There never felt like enough space. This is the temporary kitchen we've been using for the last 18 months. It's pretty tiny, but if it was properly laid out as a permanent kitchen, it would still be a reasonably useable space. As it is, it's a bit of a nuisance to do anything in.
So what do we want from our new kitchen? We can't move the drain without a big faff, so the placement of the sink is already decided. We want a four ring hob and a full sized oven (what luxury!), and I want plenty of worktop space, and enough storage day to day things and also empty jars and bottles for preserving food. Of course there are other decisions too. What type of kitchen? Should we have a tiled splashback above all of the work surfaces, and what colour? Shall we re-do the dining room floor now, or wait until later? Where should we put an extra radiator? I do know I want it to be a productive and welcoming space. I want to make cheese, preserve food, bake cakes, and batch cook dinners. We already have a big table, and I'm looking forward to having people sit round it. Maybe there'll be a window seat too, and a breakfast bar. Right now the prospect of other people in the house feels a lifetime away, but I do hope it'll come round eventually. The builders are coming in July, and in the meantime we'll keep sorting and tidying and passing things on. Between the building work and the space-clearing it'll be like having a whole extra house. If you haven't been round in a while, you might get a bit of a shock... It feels like it's been raining forever, and apparently I'm not imagining things as it's been the wettest February in the UK since records began, and the fifth wettest month overall. I feel like I've spent most of the month inside, trying to stay dry. Still, there have been one or two non-soggy days, and a couple of outdoor things have been started. Tackling the quagmire On one of the few dry days I decided to tackle the quagmire that appears outside our front gate when the rainwater washes down the driveway and creates a giant puddle, which we then reverse the cars into, creating a muddy, soupy mess, which expands until we have to put wellies on just to get to the car. It's interesting, this puddle, because it sits and settles and eventually the grass grows over the mud. All that grass you can see in the picture, both inside the gates and outside, is growing on just a couple of inches of mud - underneath is all tarmac. I suspect if we left it long enough (and didn't drive over it), the grass would keep expanding until it reached the top of the drive. There would be some advantages to that I suppose, but I'd rather not wade through mud when I'm trying to get to work at 6am. So I needed a solution. My solution wasn't complicated, or pretty, and probably won't be long term, but it's solved the immediate problem without creating a new problem (and it was done in a very short break in the rain). The chickens helped. The water now runs through my new little channel, away from the house and into the field. Not perfect, not elegant, but good enough for now (which is my general aim in life). Compost bins We must have had another dry day at some point as I made a start on the new compost bin, which I mentioned back in January. So far all I've done is retrieve wood from the pile of old floorboards removed during the building work, and lay them out in order to make sure I have enough. I've measured where I want the compost bins to go, and now need to do a bit of sawing and screw everything together. It's not raining today so perhaps that's a job for this afternoon. Plastering Some things have been happening inside too - not much, I should add, but I have made a start on plastering the new bedroom. Not a very good start, I admit. Either I let the PVA glue dry too much, or the plaster has gone off, and quite a lot of it didn't stick to the wall and had to be scraped off. What a fiasco. Still, it feels good to have made a start, and by the end of March I'm hoping this room will be beautifully plastered and ready to move in (ha, fat chance). Growing Not much is growing in the garden yet. Snowdrops, and I glimpsed the first crocuses the other day too. I did spend an hour clearing old ferns from the bed in the garden, so that looks a little tidier (although it would be even better if I'd not left the offcuts lying where I cut them - but in my defence it had started raining again). The rhubarb has sprouted though and is coming on nicely. Rhubarb crumble before March is out I reckon. Things I didn't do I made the mistake of looking back at January's post to see whether I'd made any progress on what I'd started then. I've started the compost bin, but other than that... no. No walling (far too rainy and windy for that), no progress on the fence, and we've not even taken that giant pile of rubbish to the tip (although we have added to it). The snow hasn't helped - it's not been constant, but every few days there's a flurry being whipped up by the wind, making me not want to set foot out of the door, let alone spend an hour lugging stones round in a field. Even the chickens aren't impressed. Oh well. The nights are getting noticeably lighter now, and that always makes me feel more energetic. I'm off work at the minute (we're on strike, again) so theoretically I should have plenty of time to be getting on with all these things. But somehow there's always someone to visit, or something else to do (that involves staying warm and dry).
But I'm going to declare a few things (which I reserve the right not to achieve). By the end of March I would like to have
Let's see how far I get... The builders have left, and while I'm glad to have our house to ourselves again (as cheerful as they were), it does rather mean we're on our own now to turn this space back into a kitchen. It's been pretty exciting to see it develop (slightly nerve wracking at times too). Having all the ceilings ripped out was interesting, but I was relieved to see the new ones going back in. Ceilings do make it rather darker downstairs though. It's all very exciting having ceilings (or rather, having rooms upstairs that we can walk in), but for me the most exciting thing about all this is the new windows in the kitchen. This didn't even require anything structural, as both had had windows in before, a long time ago. The bigger one had been bricked up, and the smaller just had a sheet of ply nailed over the outside, with the kitchen cladding covering the inside (no wonder it was always cold in there). Both are now proper windows, and while this room, nestled within the wings of the house and with low ceilings and thick walls, is never going to be light and airy, they do make quite a difference, and it's nice to be able to see out across the fields. Hmm, possibly not the most picturesque view of our tumbledown barn... The house is quite low compared to the height of the land, and so we're going to have to keep on top of the grass or pretty soon we won't be able to see out.
Anyway, we'll worry about that later. There's plastering to be done first. |
Hello!Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Jenni, and I write here about our new foray into country living, which includes growing food, knitting, baking, wandering around the fields, and seeing which local cafe serves the best cake. Categories
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