Work is progressing quickly in the Cow Shed. Our builder has been installing the plasterboard on the walls and the ceiling – so far he’s covered most of the ensuite, the entrance to the bedroom and around the main living area. He’s also insulated the space below the shower tray – with some nice cutting around the pipes! The cottage is really starting to come together now – with the plasterboard making it easier to imagine what it will look like once it’s finished.
We’ve asked our builder to use special soundproofing insulating plasterboard between our house and the cottage so neither property impacts each other. There are a few different types of insulation in the property so it’ll be good to check how effective it’s been!
We also received approval this week from Building Control to keep the top of the gable end of the Cow Shed as open stone. It’s a particularly nice part of the building as you can see the gaps where the loft beams used to be – we think perhaps it would have been a hay loft. The pointing needs tidying and there are a couple of spaces that need rebuilding, but it’ll look great once it’s finished.
We haven’t made a huge amount of progress ourselves this week – only managing to cross a few things off our list. We’re trying to stay one step ahead of the building work so this weekend I picked the stones for the woodburner hearth. Since we moved in we’ve been salvaging a big pile of dog-tooth flints from around the farm – we believe these were originally used for flooring so by using then in the hearths it feels like a nod to their original use.
Evie and I took part in the RPSB Birdwatch weekend counting the birds out in our back garden. Sadly because I left it later in the day on Sunday with constant rain, I didn’t see most of our usual birds as they usually come for breakfast (we have a regular blackbird who sits and waits for the food to come out, and a pheasant who follows quickly behind). We managed to see a huge number of sparrows and chaffinches though, and plenty of blue tits and great tits. They move so quickly and rarely stay still so it’s hard to count them!
And I finally managed to make a start on planting out our seeds. We need to clean the greenhouse before I can set up the propagator and fill the greenhouse with seeds, hopefully next weekend will be dry enough to empty it and get the hose on it!
Ley Farm Cottages 