With deadlines looming, we’ve taken every opportunity we could to get out into the shippon and carry on painting our new house. A date for starting to lay the flooring has been confirmed (early Feb) which means we need to have finished with the platforms we’re using to get up to the top of the ceiling, as they’ll damage the flooring. Plus we need to allow ‘platform time’ for the electricians to come in once we’ve painted so they can hang the lights and various alarms/extractors.
Other than the bedrooms and the lounge side walls, everything else is too high for a ladder, so we’ve got to get a move on! Last week we finished the kitchen area – so this week we focused on the living area and corridor ceilings, the boxed-in beam between the kitchen and living area, and the ‘service cupboard’ (with the hot water cylinder, underfloor heating equipment, and doubling as a storage cupboard). The boxed-in beam turned into a bit of a nightmare – it’s not easy balancing at height and painting clean lines between a very dark colour and white. Needless to say there was a reasonable amount of touching up afterwards…
Somehow we got it all done – including a test of the steel beam paint we bought to see the suitability of the colour, and the start of priming one of the bedrooms. It’s not been the most pleasant experience with the cold temperatures – it’s too expensive to run the heating properly before the air source heat pump is in, and there’s nothing in there to retain the little heat there is. At least the builders’ lights mean we can keep going beyond daylight. Time to wrap up warm!
We took advantage of a day off on Friday to visit a stonemason and choose our kitchen work surface and the vanity unit top for our bathroom, after a failed attempt to get a cheaper one from Easy Bathrooms (the space is so small we need a shaped surface to make the most of it). Not only did they let us take the pup in, the person helping us made such a fuss of her. She hates being in the new house with all the noises at the moment so we tend to leave her in the farmhouse while we paint, so any other opportunity to spend time with her, we very much appreciate.
Our builders have had another busy week despite the cold, doing the final preparation for the major jobs next week. Our solar install was delayed but is happening on Monday now (exciting!!) so our site manager added the final coping stone on Friday (for some reason we were one short). They’ve also built more of the plant room for the three-bed air source heat pump equipment (there’s not enough room inside the building so we’ve added a shed-like building around the back. It’s looking really smart now with the wooden cladding on the sides. We’re doing the same for the one-bed cottage (subject to planning permission) although this is a little further behind, as our builders this week put the shuttering in, ready to pour the concrete base. We’re still waiting for planning approval to come through – and we think this week the Conservation Officer and Planning Officer paid us an unexpected visit, as later in the day that John saw two people hanging around outside, the Conservation Officer uploaded comments to our application that suggested she’d come to site. Hopefully once John provides additional drawings and we determine the nature of the screening already requested on a previous application, the approval will come through.
The other exciting bit of progress is with the three-bed barn – the two big barn doors came out and our builders have been putting in the lower layer of bricks to replace them with large windows. It’s going to make such a difference having all that natural light in there, instead of just relying on the skylights. Next week we get a crane on site to put the windows in – this was always my favourite part of Grand Designs so hopefully everything fits!!
Ley Farm Cottages 