A Little Piece of Christmas

I need some Christmas at home, I decided this weekend! Despite the building rubbish everywhere and the hectic week in the shop, I picked up the Hoover and attacked the mess that seemed to cover the whole house in a fine film. I could draw some quite interesting patterns with the Hoover in the dust! So, I managed to salvage one room so we can have some sort of Christmas Day. The children don't seem to mind, to them it's all a great adventure.

A Little Bit of Christmas

The building work this week has been rather stop start with the heavy rain and showers making working on the roof difficult. The builders have continued to strip and save the tiles, carefully stacking them on the scaffold. I took a trip to see the old roof first hand and it's quite amazing to still see the old lath and lime mortar plaster, bound with hair, on the ceilings beneath.

Lime Mortar and Lath Ceiling

Of course there was no insulation between the tile and the ceiling and that doesn't give us much space to add any in. I think in the long run we will have to take some of these ceilings down to adjust the height and also because the roofer have put their feet through it in a few places!

The view from the top of the scaffolding across the farmyard helps to put the farmhouse in perspective as it is the heart of this ancient site.

The Old 17th century Barn and Walled Yard

This week will see the building work winding up before Christmas. We will hopefully have a sample window to look at and we will have to plan just how far we strip this house back.....oh yes, and we have to do that little job of moving out.....! Joy!

Rotten Roof

The winter weather continues to batter the house, rip the plastic sheetings off at night and seep into the roof. I had rather a cold shower of rain water from the roof accompany me in the shower at the weekend! Refreshing!

I also had a day of light relief away from the house attending an upholstery course at Annie Sloan Interiors in Oxford. I'm hoping learning new skills will help me when tackling the interior of the house. A night in a warm hotel was lovelier than ever!!

Lovely ladies on the Annie Sloan Workshop

The roof work continues with stripping back and insulating. In one section at the back of the farmhouse the timbers had completely rotten and it was only the tiles that were knitted together holding it! Good job we hadn't had a heavy snow fall or a section of the roof may have gone completely. 

At the rear of 'The Cottage' side of the house. The raking out of grout has begun. Water over the year has run down this wall and penetrated into the brickwork. The hard grout held the water in and this in now being removed and replaced with a lime based, softer mortar. 

 

Replacement Lime Mortar

Today I began to look at how we are going to heat this heat house after the new roof. At the moment we have a couple of ancient oil fired boiler and two rather lovely wood burners. We have a 'free' supply of wood on the farm and we are keen to perhaps look at pellet wood burners. There's also a part of me that love a gas guzzling Aga! Though I think this option is seriously outside our budget!

Today I visited Ludlow Stoves to investigate and I fell in love with this pellet boiler that also acts as a cooker and water heater! I think we will have to visit Ludlow Stoves home where they have one working to view. I just can't decide which colour I would choose?! Red or cream!?