|
Posted on Thursday, April 05, 2012 7:38 AM
What a day we had yesterday! It started with the dog ( 8 month old Lou Lou ) being sick every where, which followed by us discovering an attempted break in, and terrible weather. The weather is significant as since we bought the farm the prevailing wind has been from the west, but not yesterday it was coming in from the east. A cold day Tom decided to get the house warmed up and lit the open fire and the multifuel stove which does the central heating. The bigger the fire the warmer the radiators get, so he made an enormous fire up and got it going, the next thing we had blow back down the chimney and smoke plumped out of the stove filling the room. |
|
|
Posted on Monday, April 02, 2012 7:40 AM
 Poor Tom has had quite a bad cough and cold the past week and has felt wretched, and been dragging himself around trying to get some of the plumbing done. We have decided on a multi fuel stove with back boiler to do the heating and hot water. I was quite confident about it until the water cylinder arrived and its over two meters tall, that will take some heating! A trail was done on the stove and thats managed to heat up ten radiators, about half of what we will have on completion, test to be done on the water yet! |
|
|
Lilian Sykes: Posted on Monday, March 26, 2012 4:06 PM
I have to say that  I am in awe of Tom he just keeps going whilst I am feeling exhausted, he really is amazing. This week the pile of debris that had been piled up in front of the house he has flattened down into the base for the patio. I could not believe he did it as there was so much building rubble I was certain that we would have to hire in several dozen skips. The scale is amazing as the patio is the size of the average garden in a new build, our garden furniture is going to look quite lost on it. |
|
|
Posted on Monday, March 12, 2012 5:06 PM
  Four and half months in and we have pretty much blown the budget! Lots of sleepless nights thinking about how we are going to finish the job with the little money we have left. Its quite depressing, but then when I think of what we have achieved and what we have done to Maud ( the house) its really quite astounding. Maud has had three flat roofs replaced, the large section of pitch and tile roof replaced, floors lifted where they had dropped and steels inserted. Thirty concrete lintes half a dozen steels, floors leveled, the old veranda demolished and replaced with a new swish conservatory. |
|
|
Posted on Thursday, February 23, 2012 5:11 PM
|
|
Lilian Sykes: Posted on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 5:11 PM
Well its four months since we started work on this project and whilst we are still enjoying it both Tom and I are very tired and our budget is very depleted!!   Tom and Brian spent last week getting the chimneys ready, we have had to rebuild two and the other two which had been capped had about 100years of Jackdaw nests. It took all of Tom and Brians strength to get the nests out and there must have been around 6ft in each chimney, which is astounding when you think each nest was brought in by small birds. |
|
|
Posted on Saturday, January 28, 2012 7:56 AM
Well finally the wind died down long enough to make a start on the back section of roof. That makes it sound like a small job, but of course the back section is a very large area! We have stripped off the whole area and once again all the woodwork had woodworm and had to be replaced along with further brickwork being rebuilt, with the lads coming off the roof during high winds and hail storms. It has taken since the 9th of January but at last the tiles are on, and the main building is at last water tight. |
|
|
Lilian Sykes: Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2012 1:51 PM
The last few days have been very wet with high winds whivch unfortunatley took off part of the roof which was like God turning the tap on inside. Spent yesterday morning scooping water up off the kitchen floor whilst Tom battled to get the roof felt pinned back down. The site is so exposed that apart from trying to keep it water tight we cannot progress with replacing the roof as it is to windy and dangerous to have guys up there! These things are sent to try us!! |
|
|
Lilian Sykes: Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2011 8:44 AM
Christmas has come and gone and it has been great to take some time away and spend it with family and friends! However the 27th saw Tom and I back on site assessing where we were and what our priorities for the next few weeks would be. Because we will be doing Bed & Breakfast its important to think hard about bathrooms. They are all being squeezed into existing bedrooms which are all in excess of four square meters, but will not have any natural light. Having already replaced 14 windows with at least the same again to do, we do not want the additional expense of creating new windows, plus the facade would not take it. |
|
|
Lilian Sykes: Posted on Saturday, December 17, 2011 12:15 PM
This week we had planned to take of the roof and re-roof the back of the building, but when we came to it the brickwork supporting it was shot, and had sagged. After discussing it with Brian our fantastic brickie, Tom and I decided the only course of action was to take down the offending brickwork, and chimney stack and rebuild it. Every time things like this happen it has an effect both on the timescale and also on the budget. We always knew that on that part of the house the roof would need replacing, but had not anticipated rebuilding half of the supporting walls! |
|
