The Donated House

My mother was good enough to send me two boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese, which was my dinner of choice when I was six. I requested it because Anna had never had it, and she’s half Italian, and a bit of a foodie, so I thought for the sake of a rounded experience, she should witness what has become of Italian cuisine in a couple of hundred years of Americanification. Still as delicious as I remembered…

Elmo came out on Tuesday and put up a scaffolding tower in preparation for the guy coming to put in the telephone line because they said they couldn’t do it last time on account of the pole was too old and knackered to climb. Only the guy didn’t show up, so he spent several hours on the phone explaining over and over again that there was no line (the system insisted it was there) and that the guy hadn’t come (the system said he had) and that we had come there specially to meet him and we needed the guy to come today (“I’m sorry, sir, we can book you a new appointment, you should hear from us within 48 hours and the appointment will be within three weeks.) Elmo was not pleased. The issue persists.

Ryan sent me a heads up about some free “firewood” on Freecycle, which I thought would be good for campfires, but when I got there, there turned out to be not only a big pile of firewood, but some pretty good roof timbers as well. The whole lot had been woodwormed, so it’s probably not going in a building, but it’s pretty sound for the most part, the big stuff, so we piled it all on the trailer to take up to Boggart Hall. I have no idea why Anna is looking up or why Elmo is looking down in this photo. But I thought it was funny.

Anna became a human sawmill yesterday and today, sawing up all the bits we needed to knock together a basic shed to store long bits of wood in. She has ten times my stamina with a saw.

Lea, on the other hand, specialises in clearing greenery. She powered through tons of path and raised bed, with many years of weed growth and many-times-trimmed-and-re-sprouted hazel trees. That corner of the plot is absolutely transformed.

I finally planted the rose Michelle gave me, which was not in bad shape, having been put in a bigger pot than it came in when it first arrived. It’s put on a bit of growth this year and has one bud. Val said it would cover the whole corner of wall when it gets going. I can’t wait. I want tons of roses around the place.

Also, look carefully and spot the frog in the picture. I didn’t even notice it when I was taking it. They’re everywhere around the tank to the left (just visible) that catches rainwater. They’re probably a bit pissed off about the changes in the neigbourhood.

Today we got enough of the path clear to start building the woodshed.

Anna, leaning on her handiwork. Unfortunately, I believed the guy at the shop when he said the roofing stuff worked out at a meter wide when overlapped properly. Turns out it was just shy of. Need to buy another piece.

Here you can see the transformation of the corner of ancient garden. The path is flagstoned, charmingly. You can see in the background what it looked like before we started. You couldn’t even tell there was a path.

I’m on a twice-a-day prescription of rope-swinging, trying to get a bit more strength after not doing anything requiring strength for a really long time. There are worse ways to get exercise.

The last couple of evenings were quiet and we all went to bed fairly early in order to be ready to work all day, but we took the trouble to light the lovely lanterns. A little more beauty never hurts at the end of a day.

The summer so far has really been about cold and rain, with occasional 3-day hot, sunny periods. But this last week has been more like all that stuffed into a single day. Downpours followed by sizzling sunshine, making the roof steam like a boiling pot.

This corner of the house got soaked rather badly in one of these downpours, because the down-spout overflowed and gushed water all down the outside of the hose that was (stupidly, in retrospect) in contact with the corner of the building. Whoops. Still, it’s drying out, slowly, and Barbara has a moisture meter we can put in in a month or so to see if it’s going to be ok.

Meanwhile, we’ve started lime rendering the back, though I think I will have to make a couple of changes to the plan for ventilation purposes. Was going to do a warm roof, but there seems to be a strong feeling against that idea in the circles of wisdom to which I have access, so I am going to leave the inch gap and ventilate under the eaves.

I mostly spent the day on Saturday cutting up tiles for the mosaic I’m going to do along the back of the work surface and sink in the kitchen. I have a good selection of colours to do a sort of sand-ridge-pattern with lights and darks making optical-illusion-style curves of colour. I’m quite excited to get on with it, though the ceiling and gables should really take precedence.

The potatoes are doing alright, having been thoroughly weeded round by Lea. I’m sure they will shortly get blight; I’ve never had a crop of potatoes that didn’t.

On Wednesday Alec and I went round Haddon Hall (on a sort of one-day holiday) and there was an absolutely amazing, beautiful, semi-wild looking perennial garden in the grounds that has me seriously inspired. So I bought a delphinium, which I hope to propagate when it’s come on a bit. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that next spring or if it’ll have to establish a bit longer. Anybody know?

Elmo and the steaming roof, in one of the sunny intervals. Check out my lawn!

This is the unfortunate state of the really hard-trodden earth around the building after a rain storm. It drains eventually, but I think we should probably figure out some way to drain it more quickly. Before someone drowns.

The rain continued at intervals on the way back to Barnsley, giving us some of the most intense and beautiful rainbows I’ve ever seen. This one was an incredibly bright, full double rainbow all the way over and down the other side. I’m afraid my iPhone has not done it justice.

And a happy workforce is valuable in so many ways, not least because they’re jolly to be around. Had a great weekend at Boggart Hall, getting many and varied things done and greeting a vast array of people over the course of the weekend, though not too many to properly cater for at any one time.

Hazel and Rose did some good work on the lime render, taking over from Rhod, Carolyn and daughters Rhianwen and Sioned, who got the ball rolling. The back of the house is nearly done with its first coat now, though there was a dripping downspout that really soaked the corner of the house during the massive downpour (of which more later, or see BBC news) so we are a little worried that it might not dry before it rots. More news as events unfold.

We arrived on Friday, dreading the forecast rain, and the river was quite high through Hebden Bridge, but not yet over the road or anything. We drove through Tod to see if it was high there, but the smaller of the two rivers didn’t look too bad. However, around 7pm, they sounded the air-raid sirens, which we surmised could only mean flooding had begun. We weren’t brave enough to go downtown and look, but the next morning I got about a hundred texts asking if we’d drowned. We hadn’t, but we’d got a lot of leaves blown onto the roof. And a lot of new rainwater in the tank.

On the way to Hebden station to collect Claire, we saw this boat that had sort of run afoul of the weir that let the floodwater out of the canal. It was unmanned at the time, but we talked to the owner, who said it would have to be craned off to avoid damaging it further. He was remarkably philosophical about it. The state of both Tod and Hebden was generally silty and damp, most of downtown was underwater and a lot of low-lying houses and shops got their bottom floors totally flooded. The pavement was full of wet stuff put out to dry.

We used the money Elmo got for his birthday towards materials on wood for framing the gables and building out the rafters for the necessary amount of insulation, plus enough plasterboard to do the whole ceiling. Steven made a good start and got the first gable framed in by the end of the weekend.

Many hands made light work of the next section of clay plaster. There’s probably only a day’s work left on that, so I hope to finish this week and get some more tiles down. I’ve got a fantastic selection of tiles for my mosaic entryway floor.

Alec and Ryan enjoying the living room, which is very pleasant in warm weather. The rain stops just shy of hitting the couch, even in really windy weather.

Rhod and Carolyn and family were there for the first time, so a fire was definitely in order. And of course, the obligatory sausages to roast. The butcher commented that I was “running late today” as I got them at about 4:30pm. I guess he’s come to expect me on a Saturday.

Later on we were treated to some lovely tunes by Steven, Hazel and Rosie. They weren’t miserable tunes, despite the slightly melancholy look of the photo, they were quite jolly, really!

I hurried to finish the candle lanterns I’d been meaning to make, and saving up jam jars for, for ages. This shot doesn’t really do them justice, but they were really cheerful and pretty at dusk.

Just spent a couple of days up at Boggart Hall preparing for the upcoming weekend; got lots of people coming but the weather looks set to be pretty awful. I think we might get a bit crowded in the little house.

However, have bought a large pile of materials for the gables and ceiling with Elmo’s birthday contributions (*THANK YOU!*) so we can be working on that, plus the tiling and the rest of the claying.

The weather was lovely while we were up there, and Lea came to stay a couple of days and was enormously helpful with strimming and pulling up weeds. The place really was looking like a jungle, but we strimmed most of it and pulled some stuff up by the roots in a few places, so hopefully it’ll be a couple of weeks (!) before it all needs doing again.

It was warm and dry enough to eat outdoors, which was lovely, although I have a few midge bites for my trouble.

I made a fruit crumble with some blueberries (not my own yet) and some rhubarb from the patch that Lea unearthed from under all the weeds.

After supper we walked up to Gaddings Dam to have a look at the swimming place, which Lea was keen to see. It was a bit cold for a dip, but I’m looking forward to it next time it gets warm. If it ever gets warm.

The sun had set by the time we walked back to the car. A beautiful view of the town and a lovely, inviting looking pub, but we didn’t stop for a drink. An early night and a long day of work the next day seemed more important! The place looks good now and is ready for an influx on Saturday.

After a fairly gruelling couple of weeks of “relaxation” in various guises, including preparing for and running Elmo’s 50th birthday party (a roaring success) and moving the last of our stuff out of our old house, which is now rented, bringing in some *much* needed income, and a long weekend at Kinnersley French dancing festival, which was medium-relaxing, but also full of (reasonably pleasant) responsibilities… we’re back and we’re ready to get to work again. After a day of brain-death style refusal to do anything useful at all. That’s today. Proper tongue-lolling day.

But, we emptied our old house by throwing everything into the shipping container we have in a nearby field, so that’s got to be sorted out, and we have no place to put it until we’ve got the middle shed roof shored up, de-ivy-ed and tarped, so I guess we’ll be getting on with that this weekend. In case you happen to be free!

Also, many many thanks to Simon (for masterminding it) and to everyone who contributed to Elmo’s birthday fund to buy materials to finish the cabin. We were gobsmacked by everyone’s generosity and the total collected is more than enough to buy all the necessary materials, so we very much hope the contributors will come sometime this summer to help us do the actual work. The signed bit of plasterboard will have a special place above the woodstove. More details and pictures of the materials we buy and the work we do with them will be forthcoming!