Fixing things to walls

It feels like we’ve spent a good chunk of this weekend fixing things to walls and doors. Our [very lovely] third guests are staying with us for two weeks so we’ve used the time to catch up in our house and the garage and laundry. I’m most excited about the laundry which – save for a bit of filling and paint touching up – is now complete! I had a very particular vision for the laundry and with the shelf up and the sign on the wall, it’s exactly what I wanted. We have realised though we need a laundry basket and airers in the cottages as well as in the laundry, so that’s been added to this week’s shopping list.

In our house we’ve finally put up our coat hooks (no more hanging coats off the steel beams) and started getting the spare room ready for our first family staying, arriving in just over a week’s time. We’ve built the spare bed, cut to size and put up the curtain rail (never as easy as it sounds!) and installed a bolt on the bathroom door. We’ve been liaising with Building Control for a couple of weeks now trying to get to a decision on a fire escape route in the spare room – building regulations state that you either need a door between the kitchen and your route out of the building, or you need a window no more than 1100mm from the ground that you can escape out of (the bottom of the spare room window is 1362mm from the ground). Closing up the gap at the end of the corridor into the kitchen would have ruined the design of the house, so instead we need to create a permanent ‘floor’ (i.e. large step) that means the gap is no more than 1100mm between the top of this and the bottom of the window. It seems to be a grey area when you can’t meet the regulations to the letter – there is no preferred size of ‘floor’ – the guidance we’ve been given is that standard wall-furniture fixings are not acceptable; we need to think of anyone who might be in that room (suggested an 8-80 year old); and the ‘floor’ needs to be large enough that someone can stand on it instead of step on it. We’ve submitted another proposal to Building Control so let’s see where that gets us to. We need to get the building signed off to claim VAT relief on our house. Self-build properties are not charged VAT on building materials but you have to pay as normal and reclaim the value once you’ve gained Building Control sign-off. One of John’s jobs this week has been to prepare all the documentation ready for this point – every little helps at the moment so we’re keen to get this paid as soon as possible!

Our final ‘fixing’ is in the garage, where we installed the first shelf to the wall above the workbench. It’s already made such a difference being able to put things away properly – and the best thing is that we reused a shelf from the farmhouse so it didn’t cost a thing! We ordered the shelving for the other side of the garage this weekend too – I’m so excited to turn that room from what feels like a dumping ground into a proper usable space. In particular – all the homemade jam, chutneys and jellies are in boxes and hard to access. Once we can store them more accessibly it’ll be much easier to offer them to our guests.

We were able to spend some time outside trying to catch up on jobs. John caught up on some mowing in the gardens, and we cleared the rhubarb patch, which had been dismally covered in buttercups. Most of the rhubarb crowns seem to have died this year in the wet spring, but somehow ivy had established itself and started growing up the farmhouse wall (why is it that weeds grow but plants don’t!). We chopped back the rampant bushes, bindweed and the pyracantha that had taken over the rose – it’s such a relief to get at least one tiny bit of the garden looking better.

Our farmer neighbour trimmed the top and their side of the hedge we share between our wood and their sheep field this week which has really opened up the view across to the west. It also means John felt the need to trim our side of the hedge – not as easy a job given he only has a hedge trimmer rather than a tractor with a hedge-cutting arm. Still – it might take longer but it looks neater now than it did before. John also filled the trench in front of the air source heat pumps with soil – we’re still waiting for the council to confirm what we can plant there but at least the soil is ready.

We’ve also harvested a lot of our fruit and veg. Even though we had a terrible year generally for growing our own food, we’ve managed to get a reasonable crop of onions, apples and runner beans. We pulled up some of the beetroot which were mostly tiny but at least we have plenty of stalks and leaves we can use; we had a grand total of four carrots that were left by the slugs; and two meals-worth of French beans. Not wanting to waste anything, we’ve made pesto from the celery / celeriac leaves – we’ve made pesto out of leftover lettuce before but using celery leaves is new to us so I hope it tastes nice! And we made our final batch of crabapple jelly to sell – the remaining crabapples just about made one jar. As we get through the various fruit from our orchard it’s a definite sign of autumn and winter coming – we try and cook everything before the end of the year so we maximise the fruit before they spoil.

We completed our final spray (of three) of nematodes in the orchard this weekend. It’s not the most fun job – it involves spraying 10 million nematodes (roundworms) onto the orchard fruit to eat the codling and plum moth larvae before they eat their way through the fruit – but this year we managed to pick reasonable weather days which means we’ve not had rain (or nematode-infused water) dripping onto our faces. It’s always a race against time – you need to do it in the evening and ideally spray onto wet trees and ground as this means the nematodes remain active; and you also need to ‘agitate’ the nematodes throughout the spray. You basically end up shaking the sprayer or bouncing around with it for an hour to keep them moving in the water. We’ve seen such a reduction in the spoilt fruit with this and with the moth larvae traps we put out in the spring so at least it feels worth it.

The steel fabricators arrived at the start of the week to replace the metal anchor plates in our new house with black steel crosses. They had come previously but it was too windy for them to use their arc welder safely. The anchor plates that had been put in at the start of the build looked so unattractive and not in keeping with the age of the property, so we asked our builder to replace them with black metal crosses instead. Not only did our steel fabricators do extra work to add an extension onto the steel rods (there wasn’t enough steel sticking out to attach the crosses to), they also took the most amazing photos of their work and sent them to us, knowing we wanted to use the photos for our socials and our blog. Now that’s what we call service!!

Finishing the games room hasn’t really been a priority but as the weather changes and the nights draw in, we want to be able to open this up to guests. There’s still a bit of painting to do and then the heaters to go in, and of course we need to furnish it too, which is looking expensive! We’ve measured and ordered a pool table that comes with a top to turn into a normal table, and measured up for curtains, although might wait to order those. We’d hoped to get a table tennis table but we don’t think we have the room for everything. Especially as John’s created a cinema space at one end with the sofas that were too big for the farmhouse. It’ll be a fantastic space for people to use once it’s finished.