Monday, 19 October 2015

Finishing the Sitting Room

October 2015
 Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,John Keats, Ode to Autumn

It may well be Autumn but our main effort is still focussed on the inside of the house and the Bramley apples loading down the branches of our ancient apple tree are being left to their own devices at the minute.

The plasterers have made a great job of the walls and even managed to keep the beams and the floor reasonably free from splashes of plaster.  So our task is now to paint the room to allow the electricians to complete their job and then hopefully we can have the wooden floor fitted - its already looking like a room rather than a  building site but see what you think..................


The back wall which has the wiring for three picture lights along the top and various socket points at  floor level.
Partially painted in the upper sections as we have not yet worked out how we can get to the top sections as the long handled roller won't quite stretch that far.  Note that the beams are still wrapped in 'cling film' to protect them from plaster, paint and the like.



 Corner of the room beside the oven where eventually we plan to put the log burner.

The white walls around the folding doors - there is an oak plinth on head of the wall to provide the link up to the ceiling.



'No varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself'

 Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 The time has come to lay the floor - the electrician has not quite finished so it's not the 'last step' in completing the Bakehouse but certainly the penultimate one for the 'workmen at least.

 The wood has arrived and is aclimatising in the Bakehouse.
 Chippie at work - with a glue gun!!
 The rather large, and probably expensive, chop saw in the midst of it all.
 Straps pulled the floor together to make sure the boards were glued together as close as possible. 
 It's finished, a bit dusty and needs to be oiled but it looks good.
 In the process of oiling the floor - well what else woould one do on a cold November day!
It's now a 'thing of beauty' - on that basis I had to find a quote and the Dickens quote at the start of this section seemed particularly apt.


 All we need now is some furniture............................ oh and the Log Burner, and, and!

Well we now have light and even better coloure lights.  The blue glow is from the LED strips that arelaid along the head of the side walls and along the cross beams of the trusses - oh and in the old oven as well of course!

We can even change the colours so how about pink!!
 



The photo on the left is how the Bakehouse used to look (September 2013)and perhaps worth reminding ourselves how far we have come as the photo below is how it looks now (November 2015).






 

Its been a while and Christmas has come and gone and it's now 6th May and i do believe spring is finally here  -well almost.  As we have started to do some more work on the Courtyard - will detail that on a separate post - I thought I should update the photos of the Sitting Room as we have now bought some furniture for it, although nowhere near complete as yet.



New settees with 'tartan' cushions.  Hopefully one day we might even get the family tartan fabric!  We have bought a coffee table that matches the sideboard in the dining room so some continuity between rooms.  We are hoping that a friend can do something with an old piece of wood that was topping my potting table which we have discovered is actually Elm.  More to follow on that one. 

Saturday, 12 September 2015

Going Green

Solar Power has arrived!

Although we had aspirations to install all sorts of 'green' energy systems when we started renovating the Old Shop  none of them appeared to have a pay-back period that was acceptable given the initial outlay.

SO, finally we decided to 'Go Green' and install Solar Panels on our new garage roof.  As usual the timing was not ideal as the Government in it's wisdom has decided to reduce the feed-in tarriff again so they had to be fitted and registered before the end of September 2015.

 
The south facing elevation of the garage is now covered with 8 photo voltaic solar panels and it wasn't long before we were generating elecricity as the weather improved and the sun came out.

The control panel is in the man-cave which actually means there is now electricity in the man-cave!!
The fuse box and the panel where we can see how much electricity we are generating - dishwasher and washing machine are now operated during the day for free!!

The Bakehouse becomes the Sitting Room

August/September 2015

The electrician spent a couple of days laying the cables so that the builders can come back and put the insulation and plasterboard on the walls.

The plumbers have been in and connected the pipework in the Bakehouse to the main system so that the underfloor heating can be commissioned - so at least we have heating in the sitting room in the event that we dont get it all completed for the winter months.

As the summer (if we ever had one) starts to wane the builders are back to start lining the walls of the Bakehouse with plasterboard

The plasterboard is in between the purlins and there is 40mm of rigid insulation behind that - cosy!!
 The rigid insulation in the space above the bread oven.
 The gable end wall of the Bakehouse above the bread oven is next to be insulated and boarded.
 Lots of rigid insulation under the archway awaiting installation.
View from the mezzanine which shows the scaffold tower supporting the platform that the builders are using to insulate and plasterboard the gable wall above the bread oven.
Close up view through the beams......... 
 View from the mezzanine and the top sections of the ceiling are now plastered.
 Moving the scaffold platform around to plaster the various sections and levels.
 View from the far end of the sitting room towards the mezzanine - which will eventually be the ensuite!

 Wiring awaits the next visit from the electrician to connect it all up
 View through the roof trusses towards the gable end of the sitting room.  The 'cling film' wrap is saving the wood from plaster and eventually paint!
 View at floor level looking towards the old bread oven.

View through the folding doors into the courtyard.

Tuesday, 30 June 2015

Courtyard

The Courtyard emerges from the mud!

Although we have pressed pause on the next phase of the Bakehouse we have decided that the Courtyard will be the next area to be completed - one of these days we would like to stop clearing up the yard after builders and cleaning the layer of dust in the house - a faint hope at this stage we realise but we live in hope!

These are the flagstones that have been lifted from outside the French Doors and the floor of the Bakehouse and which we are going to use to pave some of the courtyard, by way of recycling some of the materials from the house and retaining some of the old alongside the new.
A white line marks the outline of the proposed paves area, starting with the old flagstones by the French Doors and then transitioning to new paving stones in front of the bi-fold doors as the 'contemporary' end of the house
In this shot you can see that we have removed the bed in front of the French Doors.  The Chanomeles (Japanese Quince) now resides at the bottom of the garden and clearly did not like being moved - hopefully it will come back next Spring!  We have sieved all of the earth and transported it to the bottom of the garden into a large builders bag and will no doubt transport it back to the raised bed that will be part of the new paved area - seem to spend all our weekends taking stuff out of the year into the garden and eventually bringing it back...............


   The plants are all in pots waiting to be moved once the builders arrive do the paving.

 
The mini digger scraping off the layers of earth, clay tiles and stone to the required depth where the earth is rock hard - if we had known that we might not have needed to use the rubble and old roof tiles as hard-core!

 The area that will be paved over the next few weekends.
Hardcore, courtesy of the old tiles from the Bakehouse roof and some of the old bricks from various bits of the house and old pigsty.
 Ready for the pavers.
 It's hard work laying old flagstones and the pavers really don't like them - as you can see below - but they do look good.
Some of the slabs of flagstone were so thick that they had to chisel them in half as the still saw was not really up to the job.
 First area completed with a space left for the raised bed (herbs and fragrant plants hopefully!)
 The old flagstones - or at least all we can re-use - are complete.
Moving the lillies hasn't done them much harm as the flowers have all come into bloom.

The pavers were good enough to try and get the old Grapevine out of the ground with as much of the root intact as they could.  However, it doesn't look very happy in the Water Butt although we are going to plant it in the garden and hope it will survive the experience.
 Phase 2 - Aged limestone slabs (i.e. 2015 variant) being laid and they are going down a lot quicker than the old flagstones.
The teracotta tiles which also came out of the old Bakehouse provide the edging for the old flagstones outsode the French Doors and the 'break' between the old and the new.
This is the end of day 1 and its clear these are easier to lay than the flagstones!

Long deliberations on how we 'edge' the water cistern...........
The slabs are all laid and now await the 'pointing team'
The completed 'new' end of the 'Terrace' - it's too nice to call it a patio according to our dear neighbours!
So here it is 'The Serpentine terrace' in all it's glory.  As you can see the BBQ and a selection of pots have already made their way onto the Terrace.
Closer view of the French Doors and the flagstone aspect of the terrace - note the placeholder for the raised bed - WIP!!
View of the terrace from the entrance to the courtyard.
All we need is a bistro table and the raised bed fiull of fragrant herbs and it will be perfect!


Well we haven't managed the bistro table yet but the raised herb bed is in place  two types of sage, basil, ginger mint (in a pot of couse), lavender, thyme and tarragon to start us off..............bistro table will have to wait!!

 The 'window box' at the shed window is finally looking like a window box sould - shouldnhave planted the seeds earlier I expect!

 The BBQ has been relegated the the end of the terrace as if leaked 'fat' on the old flagstones (needed new layer of cat litter) but looks Ok against the hanging basket and the pot at one end of the terrace.
The French doors with the 'sodium light'of the downlighter as evening draws in on an August Saturday...................