Renovation Blog

7 March - It's a lovely day

...but there's a lot to do. This is my proposed boiler house for my wood chip boiler. I will need to put a roof on it and probably substantially rebuild it. However, my wife is keen that I don't take my attention away from the house as we've been promised the scaffolding will go up soon and then I need to restore and repaint all the windows while the roof is being replaced. I optimistically reckon I'll do a window each day for about 20 days and then I'll be there. Doesn't sound impossible does it...?

15 March - Today is even lovelier
We get our Listed Building Consent to do the roofing and repointing works, with some minor conditions attached. So it's back on the phone to ensure everyone is set to start as soon as possible. I am assured it's all fine and they will be here in a couple of weeks...

16 March - Some demolition
There are various things internally that we are having trouble living with, so I remove some rather nasty-looking fitted cupboards. The room proportions will be much better without them.

Before:

After:

24 March - We plough the fields and scatter

A very kind local friend (and farmer) comes to turn over our vegetable patch for us which will save me many hours of back-breaking work, and free me up for more renovations.

26 March - ...the good spuds?

I leave my wife and eldest son to do the hard graft of planting the spuds while I continue with the demolitions. We are all very excited at the prospect of all this food we are growing, and the sun makes everyone feel happy. The Good Life here we come. No doubt my friends will be expecting me to be knitting my clothes out of nettle leaves shortly. But living off the land used to be a lot more common before our modern age of convenience supermarket shopping, and dare I say that somewhere along the line we've lost our connection with where food actually comes from?

30 March - Scaffolding
Just as we are setting off to go away for a couple of days a vast lorry full of thirsty men and scaffolding turns up. No warning or phone call to let us know they were coming. Never mind, I leave them 400 tea bags and 8 lbs of sugar and tell them to get on with it. Now the real work can start...