In an effort to keep down the costs of furnishing our holiday lets, we’re collecting and storing high quality furniture from family and friends when they’re replacing items. This week we took delivery of a three-piece suite which will be a massive help for us. However it also takes up quite a lot of space! It took a bit of work and some measuring, but we’ve managed to make space in other parts of the house to move the sofas we had before (which are smaller). Now there’s a sofa or armchair in almost every room, and it’s a bit of a squeeze! At least it’s only temporary…
A lot of the week has been spent going through additional details with our architect before we start build. We’ve all been working towards February 6th as a start date, but halfway through the week it was agreed to delay by a week because there are still too many questions outstanding – in particular around the M&E (mechanical and electrical) designs. Trying to find a subcontractor who is willing to take on our project, and who has the right experience across the different renewable elements, hasn’t been easy. It feels like we’re getting so close!
We still have things to finish on site too – including a few remaining boxes to clear in the barn that we’re bringing up gradually and sorting through. And we received another window frame paint sample during the week to try and get to the right shade of green. Annoyingly there isn’t a standard RAL colour that matches the colour we want, and the sample we received this week was just too light (it’s got to work against the stone walls and cream render). So we’ve decided to go with the lighter of the samples from the previous week, and hope it looks ok.
We’ve also started planting for the season – our snowdrop bank is looking a little forlorn so we bought another 100 bulbs and planted them this weekend, after clearing most of the bank of the various weeds and three-cornered leek that had taken over. They already look a little lost in the space though, so we’ve ordered a few more – we’re determined to bring that flower bed back to life! We also started with our first set of seeds – mainly broad beans, the first peas, some cabbages and chilli seeds. We had some fabulous chillis last year, so bought a few new varieties of seeds this year. Fingers crossed they grow!!
Ley Farm Cottages 