Limited progress again

Another mildly-disappointing week, with so many jobs in progress that we’ve not finished much at all. Our big win was Stage 2 of ‘Project Lawn’ – with a day’s hire of one of the heaviest machines we’ve had to lift into and out of a car boot! Luckily this happened on a weekday so John was left to push it around the grass on his own and puncture holes throughout the compacted soil; less lucky is the fact that our mole clearly loved the vibrations and has popped his head up a few times since. 

The bathroom should have been finished this weekend too – but another case of dripping paint and cracking on the window ledge has put us back at least a week or two. I’ve no idea what substance has been used previously to cause the paint to crack but we had the same problem with the spare room and dining room – so lesson thoroughly learnt this time, and the ledges in the remaining rooms will be sanded back properly to start again 🙁 . 

We’re running out of weekends before our visitors start arriving again, so today we started on the en-suite bathroom too – our aim is to get the main rooms done by the middle of May. Even that didn’t go without a hitch, with our sander finally going pop (literally) at the first sign of yet another beam to sand back. Cue a dash to Homebase to replace it in time to finish the job today…

Two things have, at least, gone in our favour. We’ve dug up another couple of metres of the bramble bank we’re reclaiming, adding to our pile of random stones significantly and leaving just another couple of metres to go. And we took Friday evening off to support our fabulous local pub in Stockland, trying out a different evening-appropriate route down the back lanes to get there. It’s hard to know how busy the roads are around here as we’ve only ever lived here during some form of lockdown, but the back lanes are definitely ’Sat Nav Specials’ and bound to be quiet!! With the weather finally starting to warm up, we’re also looking forward to planting our various seeds out in the garden and reclaiming the conservatory – and finally being able to move in the greenhouse again!