Our first diy weekend!

How lucky that our first overnight visitors arrived the very day we started our first DIY projects 😊 

This weekend was all about three projects – the first was laying a better floor in the ‘shed’; the second was getting to know the garden and creating a list of maintenance tasks for those of us less horticulturally-minded; and the third (not my job and yet my favourite) was practising with the Aga. Perhaps not the relaxing weekend our visitors had hoped for! 

I love using a cement mixer at the best of times, but attempting to create a flat floor in a confined building with a slope on two planes was a reasonable Saturday challenge. The ‘shed’ itself is a stone walled building built in the same style as the farmhouse and barn (likely dating back to the early 19^th century) so we wanted to retain the corner of the old rock floor that had survived, blending the concrete into the edges with mostly reasonable results. My favourite outcome was finding remnants of an old flint floor beneath parts of the shed, and digging out most of the stones to reuse somewhere else in future. Preserving as much of the history of this farm as possible is really important to us. 

Delegating the garden (and the puppy-sitting!) to my mum worked wonders – we’ve ended up with 4 sacks of weeds, and a location plan and instructions for the main plants/trees that need regular attention. It’s the perfect tool to help us amateurs make the most of what we have! Plus, I don’t think the puppy’s slept so well in months! 

Our weekend culminated in a beautiful Sunday roast cooked in the Aga, and then sitting outside with a glass of wine and watching the bats fly around the garden. This weekend has definitely shown that it’s going to be hard work – but moments like those are worth it. 

I’ll be putting more photos onto our Facebook and Instagram pages later this week, so keep an eye on those if you want to see more of our journey!