As Promised…

Here, as promised, is a small selection of photos from the recent works.

Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to get a decent photo of the whole house, as it’s under a fairly low-slung tarp cover, and to see under it, you have to be so close to the house as to not be able to fit more than a couple of bales into the shot. But it’s not long now til the tarp comes off, I hope, and I can post pictures of the building in all its glory.

In the meantime, this is the view along the back of the building, before the scaffolding was erected and after.

Elmo supervised the putting up of it, so it’s on a solid and level base, I can tell you, not a wobbly bit of wood in sight, and dead level. So what if it took all day to put up?

And then Rae walked in and asked why we had put it round the back of the building. I could only reply that Barbara had measured up back there and told me how much to get according to how much room there was, so I assumed that was where we needed it. I’m still not sure exactly what role it’s going to play, besides helping us heft enormous sheets of plywood up there, so I guess we’ll learn as we go along, as usual.

Here’s a fairly unflattering shot of me shaving the hairy bits off the walls. An incredibly dusty job that is, and I must remember to get some safety glasses, to ensure any future pictures are even more unflattering. Anyway, it’s fairly satisfying work when you look back over the bits you’ve done, and I’ve just had a text from Rae who says we can start putting clay on the walls later this week. That will feel like proper progress to me!

In other news, Barbara Next Door (as opposed to Barbara Straw Bales) has given us a front door and a thin mattress suitable for making the bed in the caravan actually comfortable. The mattress is salvaged from a foldaway couch bed; her son didn’t like the smell of it and had it replaced. The front door came off a house across the road and was replaced by a plastic one. I really don’t get that. It’s a lovely wooden door with a little diamond-shaped window and a knocker and a mail slot and the number 122 on it (*almost* tempted to keep that.) I might try to strip the orange-ish finish off it, depends on how difficult I find the test patch.