A week of bathrooms and lawns and other things

This has been another hectic week, as we’ve tried to cram in various big gardening jobs alongside planning for our build and for our future business. It started at 7am on Monday when we had an appointment at a second bathroom showroom to talk through our plans and understand the different options available to us. It’s surprised us just how many different choices there are when designing a bathroom/shower room – and in particular how much you need to think about when you’re designing rooms for other people to use. Our top priorities are to find solutions that are comfortable, stylish and within our budget, but equally we need something easily cleanable for us, and flexible enough to work for different people who’ll hopefully be staying.  

We’d also arranged a visit from a holiday cottage company one evening to talk about potential earnings and get advice about design considerations for the cottage layouts to make sure we maximise their appeal and bookings. We got some great pointers that we’re acting on – including adding wood burners in all three properties to boost winter bookings, and using zip-and-link beds in a couple of extra bedrooms so the cottages work for different guest situations. We’re still undecided about whether to use a holiday cottages company or whether to try and rent them ourselves – the companies take quite a large percentage of takings but then they’re likely to bring a lot more business in than we can attract ourselves, and the extra bookings are more than likely to offset their commission. At least we have a bit longer to decide. 

The main job outside this week has been to try and clear the moss from the grass in our wooded area. We laid grass seed last autumn and watched over the winter as the moss and weeds took over and the seed didn’t take (we think it was too cold). The fertiliser we put down last month started to make a difference, but we knew we’d need to completely remove the moss. So, Tuesday started with scarifying the ground and removing the moss – not an easy job given the slope and uneven surface, or the number of trees to work round. John then spent Thursday and Friday laying grass seed and blending it into the ground with topsoil and a drag net to limit the amount stolen by hungry birds. Hopefully in a few weeks the grass seed will have taken, and it’ll be lush and green! 

We’d meant to finish filling our new veg bed as well – it’s intended for our squashes, pumpkins and potatoes, which have been ready to plant out for a few weeks now. However, with everything else going on plus a couple of previous commitments, we’ve only managed to fill a very small part of it. A large proportion of our other seedlings are ready to go out too – we just need to create more time somehow! 

The other bit of good news is that both our third and fourth planning applications have now been received and validated by the council, and the public consultation period has opened. Unless the council have any major concerns they want to discuss, this means we should know their decision within the next 4-6 weeks. Annoyingly, our bat licence application is due to be submitted in two weeks. We’d hoped to have our listed cottage planning approval by then so we could include our entire plans in the same licence (saving us c.£2,000), so we now need to see if we have any alternatives to get around this.