Farmhouse painting commences

It’s been a pretty stressful week with so much to do at home and a busy few weeks at work, so this weekend it felt like the pressure was on us to make proper progress and start getting our to-do list back down again. We had three key things to focus on: (1) painting; (2) choosing various materials; and (3) making a dent in the fruit from our orchard that we picked and is gradually going off as we haven’t had time to use it.  

We’re on a deadline with the painting as the electricians are coming on Monday and the carpet fitter on Wednesday, and we want to avoid having to take electrical items off to paint behind them and do all the jobs that will be harder with the carpets down. John did an incredible job during the week – sanding and priming both bedrooms upstairs, the bathroom ceiling and ensuite ceiling, and painting the first coat of one bedroom ceiling. This is no mean feat given the amount of edging around the bedroom beams that’s required, and the fact there’s no electricity in any of the rooms so he’s only had daylight hours.  

With that done, this weekend we sanded everywhere again and – prioritising based on our deadlines – painted 2 coats around every electrical socket, switch, and light fitting, as well as doing the first coat of paint on the ceiling in the second bedroom and in the bathroom and ensuite. We also caulked the gaps between the beams and skirting boards and our non-straight walls – for first-timers I think we did a pretty good job! We massively misjudged the amount of paint we’d get through – cue a Saturday evening dash to B&Q to top up and also invest in a bigger caulk gun as the one we had wasn’t big enough for the caulk tube we’d bought. As much as I love a trip to B&Q, I still fondly remember when Saturday nights were a bit more exciting!! 

On the materials front – it feels like we’re making more progress. We’ve been looking at flooring for our new home for a while and had settled on bamboo flooring until we realised how it wasn’t as scratch-resistant as we’d thought, and on Monday picked up some Karndean samples from a local flooring shop after a friend’s recommendation. We didn’t really have time to consider them in different locations throughout the day as the company suggested – but it didn’t take us very long to choose between the samples. We also picked the flooring for the top floor shower room on Monday at the shop.

The farmhouse lighting is now all sorted too – the lights we ordered last week arrived on Saturday and we ordered bulbs and the remaining light fittings (for the landing – we couldn’t decide last week) over the weekend. It’ll be exciting to have them fitted!

We’ve made a concerted effort since Thursday to make jam or chutney every evening – making 27 jars so far this week (and with another batch of chutney on the go tonight, hence why this blog is late). Hopefully we can finish the pears and plums this week, as the medlars are starting to fall off the tree and having another fruit on the go would be a bit too much!!  

Our builders have spent most of the week working on the other buildings – although we did notice the shower tray go in on the top floor, and the radiator went on (and then off so we could paint) in a bedroom. They’ve made a lot of progress in the shippon – the party wall between our cottage and the one-bed we’ll be renting out is now up completely, and they’ve added a second layer of insulation and VCL (or Vapour Control Layer for the uninitiated which apparently stops moisture getting through into the roof). This sounds like an easy job but as every piece of insulation needs to be cut to shape, I’m sure it’s far harder! The roofers came with the new tiles on Tuesday and finished the last part of the shippon roof – it’s great to see it finished and have another thing ticked off the list.  

The other consistent progress is on our garage unit – with the walls going up a bit more every week. The stonemasons must have nearly reached as high as they can do with the current scaffolding levels, so next week I think the plan is to move the scaffolding from the shippon to the garage unit so the walls can be finished and the roof can go on. The steels arrived this week so hopefully that might happen soon!