The final push before lockdown eases

It’s been a pretty stressful week – with an extensive job list hanging over our heads, and a crazy week at work, everything was pointing to the likelihood that we wouldn’t get the critical jobs finished before lockdown eases and we start to catch up on all the visits we had to cancel last year. 

But snatching a few late-night hours mid-week to catch up, and early starts at the weekend has helped – by some miracle we seem to have finished almost all the major jobs and even caught up with some of the outdoor jobs too. The master bedroom has been mostly finished – save for the window ledge that must have cracked at least four times now, and really needs to be sanded back and restarted. We’ve freshened up all the paintwork, replaced the light and various fittings and cleaned the curtains – and moved the furniture around to make it more open, although when we move to our cottage we’ll take it with us and refurnish the room. And after waiting three months for our delivery from Germany, our new landing light is in place too!

The kitchen also has a fresh coat of paint. We chose to stick with the existing white (there’s not much natural light), although it must have been coated in years of kitchen grease, because it still looked like a different colour when it went on! As the aga’s being serviced tomorrow, it’s been off for 24hrs to cool – a chance to take it apart and clean it as well. No mean feat getting 6 months’ worth of spills off it – luckily it’s so hot normally that most food burns off, but it’s also far too hot to clean properly so we just have to cook carefully! 

As our first ‘visitors’ next week will be helping us lay a new greenhouse base, the other priority was to plant out as many of the seedlings in the greenhouse as possible to clear it; as well as tame the lawns that seem to have appreciated the scarifying, aerating, feeding, and recent rain showers – the grass is pretty jungle-like! So, between cloud bursts this weekend, we’ve been planting out in the kitchen garden, and mowing. One of our lovely neighbours has given us cabbage seedlings in place of our failed attempt to grow them, so they’ve mostly gone out too (second photo) – the kitchen garden is suddenly looking colourful! Although I have a feeling we may not have spaced the plants out enough – ah well we’ll learn for next year!!