This has been an incredibly busy week, despite the rain (so much for summer). Progress in the farmhouse has been impressive – our builders came in on Monday to start the internal work (we’re taking the top floor ceilings out and giving the rooms pitched ceilings to give more headroom; and then adding a shower room). They started by tearing down the internal ceilings and plasterboard, and removing the cupboard that had housed our cold water tank. You can see the extent of the repair work the carpenter did to the roof beams – every single original beam has been supported with a new one (this wasn’t the roof that needs replacing). As soon as the internal bits were taken out, the two new rooflights went in too – one in the shower room and one over the stairs, which makes the area look a lot lighter. It’s fascinating to see the old stairs wall from the inside – wooden slats with cement sticking them together. The wood was treated on Friday to elongate its life – we’ve no idea what the used but you know it’s got to be good when you’re told not to go up there for 24 hours…
Our roofers have almost finished putting the solar tiles in on both sides of the roof. There was a small hiccup when the location of the rooflights didn’t match the design the solar manufacturer had got, but they came up with a couple of alternative options to choose from – one using the same number of tiles and one using less. As we’re looking longer-term to a future where we replace our oil heating and cooking with electricity, we went with the larger design in an attempt to manage costs. Both roofs look so smart! Now all we need is the ridge tiles back on, and the solar connected up sooner rather than later, and this part can be ticked off.
Scaffolding has now gone up around our garage building so the stonemasons can keep building up the walls. It also means the builders can put the ground floor ceiling in, and build the breeze block wall for the first floor. This is a time-critical part of the build – the scaffolding is exactly where we need to dig the trenches for the services (electricity, water and drainage) so either the garage work needs to be completed before the trenches are required (so the scaffolding can be removed), or the scaffolding will need to be taken down temporarily and put up again. Three months feels like a long time, but not when you consider just how much work needs to be done to that building.
In the shippon, our builders stripped off the old rotten roof beams and are gradually replacing them with new ones (in between cloudbursts). Now that the end steel is in place, they’re able to start building up the roof structure. There’s still a long way to go though, and not helped by the weather.
Our two-storey barn is coming along. Now that the internal woodwork at one end has been built, our carpenter moved to the other end and cut out a space for the stairs to go in. They also started making space in the wall for the kitchen window. It seems very high from the outside, but there’s a big difference in levels between the inside and outside.
As we’re starting to see a point at which we’ll have guests staying (at least in the farmhouse), we’re trying to test out different things they might want to do here. This weekend was our first ever Ley Farm Cottages Marathon pub crawl, which involved walking 26 miles and taking in 6 pubs along the way. Typically Saturday’s weather wasn’t great – we had raincoats on as often as we didn’t – but we still had fantastic views and got to visit all our local pubs without needing to drive. The uphill stretches got harder as the day went on, but we all managed to finish it – dog included (fuelled by too many treats to mention!). We finished at our local – The Kings Arms – in just enough time for dinner, before one extra mile home. A tiring but very rewarding day, and one we’ll definitely suggest to our summer guests.
Ley Farm Cottages 
A fascinating read. Gre
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