It’s been another busy week at work so John has single-handedly kept the place going during the week. When the council approved our plans to shield the air source heat pumps from view two weeks ago he was straight on to buying metal feeding troughs to use as ‘in character’ planters. They arrived this week and he’s built them ready for our sloe bushes which are due to arrive in November. We’re hoping they provide a good source of sloes as well as hiding our air source heat pumps from view.
John’s been busy with more outside jobs too, weeding some of the kitchen garden beds and chopping back the undergrowth behind the old Elizabethan cottage. Now the clocks have gone back, we really need to get a proper handle on the kitchen garden and get it ready for winter – something we didn’t do last year and which has definitely impacted our produce this year. We had an unbelievable number of weeds so plan to try putting cardboard down underneath the compost before the winter as we’ve heard that works to keep them down. Especially since we managed to save a lot of cardboard from our building work – it’ll keep us going for years!
His next job was to try and fix the wooden external laundry doors. One of the more annoying snagging issues we’ve had is that the doors have swelled in the recent wet weather – it’s been really difficult to open them which isn’t ideal when we’ve got so much washing to keep up with. After a couple of dry days when the doors were back to normal, John applied some weatherproofing stain. Hopefully the doors will absorb the stain and be less responsive to wet weather in future although it takes a month to fully work. The last thing we want on a wet changeover day is to struggle to get to the laundry room doors – every minute counts.
We had our second same-day changeover on Saturday, which meant an early start getting everything ready in the morning before our guests arrived, and then spending most of the weekend washing ready for our next guests. This time our guests were celebrating a milestone birthday so we left a balloon and some prosecco in the fridge as a surprise.
It’s a lovely time to visit the hills at the moment – the farmers have been cutting back the hedges so you get amazing views across the valley. Since we spent most of the day on Saturday cleaning, we took the dog out for a walk afterwards and before the clocks went back and it gets too dark to be out late. We had some beautiful views and scenery as the sun was going down – it’s suddenly feeling more autumnal. Soon be time for our annual autumn colours walk!
We managed to make progress in the New Barn games room this week. John added shelving for the various electronic equipment and also for the DVDs/games we’re leaving in there. It looks so much smarter with everything tucked away into the corner. We also put the first four curtain poles up at the weekend. One of the uses we’re designing the room for is a home cinema so we want to make sure there’s enough curtain to stop light coming through any cracks. We’ve had to leave almost 20cm above the top and around the sides, which is much bigger than you’d normally leave – it feels unnatural! We still have to get one more pole for the front door – we wanted to test the width before we bought it, so decided to try one of the other poles and order it separately. We ordered some fabric samples a couple of weeks ago but wanted to double-check the actual curtain drop height once the poles are in place – not saying that we can’t measure but better safe than sorry.
Ley Farm Cottages 