A lot of nearly-finished jobs

A few weeks ago, we had grand plans to get the last room in the farmhouse (our bedroom) decorated this weekend – at least, the last one until we get the alterations made to the top floor, which won’t be for several months based on our current experience of planning. But – as seems to be pretty common now, our 4-day weekend was taken up with countless other jobs – still critical but by no means as exciting as finishing the bulk of the decorating! 

We have managed to get a couple more rooms closer to completion. The woodwork in the lounge is now completely painted – it’s amazing how the colour of the walls seems to darken alongside white woodwork rather than the previous faded yellow. And our new lounge light unexpectedly arrived on the Thursday before Easter, so we managed to get that in place too. Previously a pretty dark room with a single pendant and a lampshade that funnelled the light downwards only, our new LED bulbs spread the light far more throughout the room. It’ll make such a difference when we have the sofas in place ready for renting the place, as there shouldn’t be any seats with limited light. 

And we’ve finally made progress in the bathroom! It took four weekends to sand the paint off the beams (you may remember we started at the end of February), but two more weeks and we’ve given it almost a complete refresh of paint, changing the walls from white to Timeless, which is more in-keeping with the tiles. A few more weeks, and we should have woodwork completed and a new towel rail installed, to finish it off. 

The nice weather on Saturday and Sunday gave us a chance to catch up on garden jobs too. The front of the property was overgrown with brambles and nettles, and the shrubs were practically taking over. So, spurred on by words of encouragement from our lovely neighbours, as well as the two cyclists who passed us at the start of their ride, and then four hours later as they returned, we turned the jungle into a more manageable state – digging up brambles (in the hope they never return!!), strimming the shrubs back, and removing most of a dead tree that was covered in thick ivy and clogging up the drainage channel that goes from our courtyard beneath the shippon and out down the hill. Our boundary is actually the wall of the shippon – the area outside the front is Highways property, but they’re never going to maintain it, and we want to show more of the old farm buildings and make the place look welcoming as people drive in. Although we did also find a large crack in the shippon wall behind the dead tree, so hopefully that can be repaired with minimal additional cost! 

The clearance did leave a rather large pile of garden waste (6 foot tall at its peak!), so John took advantage of the calm weather and burnt it, while I dug out more brambles to create our new vegetable patch. It’s back-breaking work, stopping every second spadeful to pull up roots or remove giant rocks and stones that stop the fork from going any deeper. But it’ll make such a difference when it’s done – instead of a giant hedge of brambles, we’ll reclaim a metre of grass back in the orchard, and have a rough-and-ready bank to let pumpkins and squashes trail down. At this rate though, it’ll be a good few weeks before it’s finished, little and often seems to be the way to stay motivated!