After a week of almost-constant rain we’re very grateful to have avoided any damage here, bar the usual blocked drains and water overflowing down to the lane. We’re getting more practiced about spotting this and clearing them regularly enough to limit how much of our driveway gets washed away. Even so, just over 50mm of rain in 24hrs is a lot! Thank you to everyone who checked in on us – we’re very lucky not to have seen the same effects as other parts of Devon. And we have been rewarded with plenty of beautiful rainbows in seemingly every direction.
We’ve been very impressed with progress in the Cow Shed so far, and this week is no exception. The whole building has now been plasterboarded (save for two small sections in the ensuite and bedroom) and our plasterers have already started work in the open-plan kitchen and living area. Our builder has put in the internal door frames and topped the gable end of the plasterboard with a lovely ledge to neaten it up.
It’s very strange but the more the building progresses and the rooms form, the bigger the space looks, even though it’s a smaller space. It can’t be too long now before we need to get in there and start painting – it’ll definitely feel bigger then!
Our builders have also been working hard getting through the snagging list from the first phase of work. In our laundry the electricians have started relocating the extractor fan and the light switch to allow us to add in new storage cupboards. We’d designed the laundry to have a wall of cupboards and then all the white goods on the other side – somehow we all missed the fact that the fan and light switch were right in the middle of the cupboard side and would have limited the amount of space we’d have for all the bedding and towels. The electricians went through two boring bits creating the new hole in the stone wall!
They’ve added a new beam light in our kitchen which has really helped to brighten up the space. We’d installed LED light strips along the beams in the corridor previously but for some reason we’d missed the beam in the kitchen. With the pitched ceiling it’s hard to get enough light inside so this addition really makes a difference. And our builder also replaced a shower panel in the Farmhouse shower room. The fittings that had come with the shower riser had rusted and permanently stained the shower panel. It looked old and uncared-for, instead of a fresh and new room. It was a bit of an effort replacing the whole panel but we’re glad we did – it looks so much better now.
John has been looking at our options for the repair work to the Elizabethan cottage lean-to this week. For now the acroprops seem to be doing their job but we really do need to repair that back wall. Our planning permission for the full conversion has lapsed as we didn’t start any work within 3 years of it being granted (back in 2022) – so we’ve been looking at either getting this reinstated and carrying out the repair work as the start of the overall conversion, or doing the work as an “emergency repair”. Because this is a listed building we need to follow stricter approval processes than a normal building, and involve the council at each stage. The benefit of reinstating our planning permission means this would be live forever once the work is started. However we think we will need to complete the pre-commencement conditions associated with the permission, which means more upfront cost and making decisions now on something we may not progress with for another 10 plus years. Who knows how building regulations will change by then, and how much work we might need to redo…
We’ve had a good couple of days outside this weekend despite the rain showers and have made great progress with our January job list. We emptied and pressure washed our main greenhouse, getting rid of all the algae and moss that had taken up residence on the glass so it’s now nice and shiny. We put the bubble wrap back up to protect everything from the cold so it doesn’t look as great as it should do; plus pressure washing in the rain is not much fun! The propagator is now up and running and already full of the year’s first seeds, although as most of them are old seeds we’re not expecting great germination rates.
We cut back a few more branches from the tree across the lane to lift the branches above the vallley view and open it up a bit more; and cleared the remaining dahlia tubers from the pots that we hadn’t managed to get before winter. They’re pretty damp so I’m hoping they dry out and don’t rot. The front of the Cow Shed looks nicer now we’ve removed the empty pots into the shed. And we harvested and tidied up the chilli plants that are overwintering (along with our resident ladybird!) in our new greenhouse. It’s been hard to keep the greenhouse both ventilated and warm so some of the plants succumbed to mould from the damp environment. One to think about for next year.
Ley Farm Cottages 