The Donated House

Such progress! In a bit of a hurry, so I won’t write much, but here are the pictures:

With Sam’s help with breaking and placing tiles, we finished the section of mosaic in front of the sink, and broke enough tiles to do the rest of the area inside the front door.

This is the mosaic without grout, though I finished that too, and it’s suitable for walking on now, which means it’s filthy already.

Steven spent a lot of time working on the rendering (we’re doing a very piecemeal job of it for various reasons, the left-hand corner in the picture above is where the accidental soaking occurred, so we’re still waiting for that to dry out. Barbara’s going to bring a moisture meter at some point to check. And the porch can’t be done until the plasterboard is used up, since there’s nowhere else to put it, so I’m working on the ceiling as a priority now.

Steven also did a lot of the complicated framing in preparation for the ceiling going up, which is fantastic, he has a good sense of how to do it and I’m delighted it’s getting done while I’m flitting about doing mosaics.

I bought enough decking board to cover the porch because it was on sale cheap, but we have to do the rendering before we do that, and the ceiling before the rendering, so it might wait another few weeks. Sam heroically brought it all down the steps and stacked it on some blocks where it’ll just have to get rained on, because there’s nowhere it can go under cover, really. Everywhere’s full.

I’ve been taking several short breaks a day to swing on the rope swing, which is doing wonders for my upper body strength. I’ve ordered some cotton rope to make a trapeze with, which I can’t wait to get on; static trapeze is one of my favourite ways to exercise.

On the food front, I’ve been perfecting my recipe for slow-cooked chicken, which I’ll put in the recipe section of the blog when I get around to making that (soon!)

Sam’s been developing a board game based on the figures we dance in our morris team (Boggart’s Breakfast, look us up) and it’s at the testing stage now, so I drew a board and we played a four-player game last night. It worked really, really well, and would definitely be marketable if it wasn’t reliant on quite specialist knowledge of morris dancing figures. Still, I’m half thinking it’s worth approaching a games company with the concept, because the game play experience was really good, flows well, challenging but not impossible or tedious, I’m really impressed with it. And it’s always good to have another game to play around here!

Things moving right along now, amazing what you can get done if you actually get off your arse and do stuff!

I had an amazing run of luck with tile numbers. It’s difficult trying to cover a floor with bits and pieces of leftover tiles from other projects and cheap ebay finds. I worked out a reasonably sensible way to use exactly as many as I had of the bit white ones, and was left with a fairly random shape and no idea what to do with it.

First I used some grey granitey-looking ones to fill in the gaps around the edge, and then I used the same ones to fill in under the sink (I don’t want to do too much fancy mosaic in places it won’t be seen, after all) but they didn’t quite fill the space. So I was casting about for what to fill in with, happened upon some strips of 5mm cube stone which filled in gaps such that three widths filled the space perfectly. AND THEN I had exactly, to the single cube, the right number of cube tiles.

After that, I was left with a small number of the granitey-looking tiles and no idea what to do with them. Some messing about and staring at the floor suggested a continuation of the border I’d put round the white ones, making a frame around an area in front of the sink, which would (appealingly) cordon off a bit of floor to do a smallish scale mosaic in. And guess what, I had exactly enough of the tiles to do the border.

My luck with quantities didn’t extend as far as adhesive mixing, though, I keep mixing twice as much as I need. So since I had broken up the last of the dark tiles from the other end of the building for mosaic and had them ready to go, I quickly sketched a swirly shape (can never go wrong with a swirly shape) and pasted it up with a bit of the adhesive. This was my first crazy-paving mosaic done at speed (trying not to let the stuff harden before I’d stuck them down) and I’m pretty pleased with the initial results. Tomorrow I’ll break up the leftover tiles from the bathroom at Cherry Tree Cottage and fill in the rest of it.

Elmo, meanwhile, got a very long way toward finishing the trench for the electricity, which should be in within another week or so. The trench has a tendency to fill up with water in the rain storms we’ve been having all too frequently (Todmorden flooded again yesterday, though not as badly) but it does seem to drain quickly, which is a blessing.

Having earned it thoroughly, Elmo enjoyed a lie-in on Sunday morning.

And Alec enjoyed a nap on the couch. He also earned his sleep, by making a lot of progress on organising the middle shed in order to use it to store all the stuff in the bottom shed while we investigate its roof, which is almost sure to be the most rotten of them all.

Eating dinner outside is one of my favourite activities up there. I think I might even do it in winter, if I can pile on enough fleeces and still move my arms enough to get the fork to my mouth.

As we were cleaning up to leave yesterday, the heavens rather opened and for about half an hour we sat and watched an almost unbelievable deluge fall from the sky. The stone steps ran like weirs and small lakes formed in every bit of low ground. Elmo gallantly swapped buckets until all of them were full from the downspout, which did not take long. We really need to sort out a proper water collection system.

Just for show, we did some actual work, digging the trench to get a permanent electricity supply to the cabin. It’s going to be a bit of a slog, but it only has to be done once!

Hazel brought her dad, Bob, who was a great worker, keen and knowledgeable. I do love having new people come along. I meet so many interesting people doing this.

Elmo and I took a moment out of tidying up the lawn to have a posey-picture taken, but it came out really nice. My mum will love it. (Hi Ma!)

She’s been sending me blog-style emails with pictures of her cabin in Eden Mills, Vermont. Much more remote than mine, and she’s got 11 acres to my not-quite-one, but there are a remarkable number of similarities to our projects.

A hastily thrown together baked potato and tasty slop (thanks for that meal name, Nicola) dinner, with the last of the salad thrown on for garnish. I like being a good enough cook that I can make something tasty out of whatever’s left in the fridge.

We cleaned the place up pretty thoroughly, which felt really good. Anna’s parents came for a visit, during which I totally failed to take any pictures, though perhaps they’ll send me one that they took. They were delightful and it was great to share it with them and thank them in person for the miracle that is Anna.

In an effort to make the place look more like a home and less like a building site, I went down to the market and bought some random plants and stuck them in pots. I really am a make-it-up gardener, but stuff looks so nice when it’s freshly planted and hasn’t yet had time to go all yellow and leggy. Maybe I’ll learn to be a proper gardener in the next few years.

Lea’s coming tomorrow, so there’s every chance I’ll get a whole swathe of ground cleared and ready for planting, the way she cuts through undergrowth.

I also hope to power through a bunch more of the interior stuff. It’s high time we finished this building, really.

Am briefly back at my computer after a couple of really good weeks at Boggart Hall, working a little bit, just for show, but actually just enjoying my time up there immensely.

We had a visitor in the form of a stray racing pigeon, whom we called Percival, as he looked quite gentlemanly. Here he is having a look at Anna’s knee. He was really quite friendly.

We looked up his legband number on a stray pigeon website and got in touch with his owner, who asked us to feed him, take him a mile away and let him go. Pigeons turn out to be harder to catch than chickens, but we managed to get him in the house (easy, he kept going in anyway) and I caught him.

We took him in the cat carrier and drove him a couple of miles up onto the hill and let him go. Elmo was sure he’d be back at Boggart Hall before we were. In the event, it took him a couple of hours but back he came. However, a couple of days later he flew off not to be seen again. At least so far. Happy travels, Percival.

As a token, we did a bit of work, including building some more of the framing for my clothing shelf above the bed. We pretty much got that done, but it’s hard to be working on a lovely soft bed without taking the odd moment to lie down on it. Especially if you’re as lazy as me.

We also did a bit more claying and finally finished the last edges of the the doorway, just one more coat to go in one little area and I can paint!

I also broke down and went to the garden centre to get a few bits to put in the corner with the rose. Three delphiniums in interesting colours and a couple of campanulas. And a few slug pellets, because the little buggers ate my last delphinium.

On to the important stuff: I made my first on-site pie, a peach and rhubarb with shortcrust pastry that came out rather well, if a bit crumbly. Anna and I managed to finish it off between us within about a day and a half.

Anna’s a big barbecue fan, so we did that for dinner one night, sliced aubergine and courgette (that’s eggplant and zucchini, Ma) plus teriyaki chicken and skewers of vegetables and prawns. Oh, and haloumi. If it’s available grilled, you’ve got to have it. That’s the rule.

My new Montmorency cherry tree produced one, beautiful, perfect cherry, and today it was ripe enough to use (and just about ripe enough for me to worry a bird would get it before I could) so I picked it.

I used it, along with the bilberries Anna and I picked up on the hill overlooking Todmorden, in some aebleskiver, a Danish delight passed down from my mother’s father’s family who came from Denmark. Apparently our version is very much changed, according to my more recently Danish friend. But I love them.

The camping stove made the middle cup a little hot and I had to discard one burned one, but they were pretty amazing.

As a last effort to say we’d done something useful, Anna swept the roof of all the leaves and bits that had accumulated, and cleared the gutters of grit and crud. What a girl.

We especially want to make the place look good this weekend because Anna’s parents are coming to see it on Sunday. As you can see, the porch needs a bit of tidying, which is my job for tomorrow. I intend to do it well and make a good impression; Anna’s been right here with us all the time we’ve been building the place and it’s as much hers as it is ours. I want her to be able to be proud of the place when her parents arrive.

More later!

Well, taco midday, actually.

My own particular take on Anglo-Vermont Tex-Mex. Very delicious it was, too.

We did do some actual work as well, or at least one of us did.

We did comment that it would probably be a good idea in the main house if we finish the fabric of the building before we attempt to put a kitchen in or live there, but hey, I’m really enjoying having a kitchen.

Anna’s cut and installed most of the rafter extensions and we’ve done a lot of standing around contemplating complex intersecting planes with a view to framing various difficult bits of ceiling. People really don’t give builders credit for being good at something very difficult.

Also, we have decided to get the electricity piped in all the way to the building, though that will mean Elmo digging a trench from the bottom of the sheds to the building, which is about 40 metres. Bless him, he does like to dig. It will be so nice to be able to plug things in permanently and not have to wind up the cable every time we’re away.