Internally the big news is the completion of Freya's bedroom. Its turned out really nicely and Freya is thrilled with it. She obviously had a large role in the decorative theme for the room (luckily claypaint does come in pink).
The beautiful weather this week was perfect for taking photos of the cottage, and so I thought it was about time I updated this blog. Although I've not been keeping up to date, there has been a lot going on. As you can see from the picture above, the exterior stone walls of the cottage are now lime-washed and the exterior is close to complete, though we do plan to repaint the chimneys and there will be a final change to the front with the re-instatement of the front porch. Internally the big news is the completion of Freya's bedroom. Its turned out really nicely and Freya is thrilled with it. She obviously had a large role in the decorative theme for the room (luckily claypaint does come in pink). Freya's room is in the oldest part of the property and also had one wall where a previous owner had, had the "bright" idea to take down part of the inner skin in order to install a fitted cupboard. Although Brian repaired and stabilized the wall some time ago, it had left this old wall pretty unlevel in places. The solution was a poured render of insulating lime plaster on the two exterior walls, levelling them up and also making the room lovely and cosy. Speaking of lovely and cosy, the other big development since my last post is not easily illustrated in pictures. We've had the stove in for some time now providing heat and hot water and running a single "heat leak" radiator in the corridor, but this winter Brian plumbed in all the other radiators and got the pump up and running so we had fully functional central heating (and an airing cupboard, or "hot press" as they call it here).
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..by two kittens. Well, strictly speaking by one kitten (the tortoiseshell) and it's brought its reluctant sibling along with it. Initially the mother moved into an outbuilding across the road with four kittens. The mother then left with the two largest kittens and the smaller two turned up hungry outside our back door one evening. They've now moved into one of our sheds, where the ginger kitten spends its days perfecting its stalk and pounce, and the tortoishell has dedicated itself to cosying up to humans and trying to come in the house. They both love playing and are very entertaining to have around.
We don't know if the family was split up or the mother just decided she couldn't feed four, but we have also seen a very hungry fox around in daylight, which is unusual here, and unfortunately lost one of our chickens to it. So introducing our new chicken, currently named New Chicken, who is a Marans. We have a finished bedroom! The renovation of the parlour is now complete. I haven't posted about the work on this room before, but we started on it last September. It is the oldest addition to the house and is seperated from the rest of the property by a wall that goes right into the loft. When we moved in it was the cleanest room, with no smell of smoke. "The parlour room was the 'good room'. The parlour was rarely used for the family, instead it was maintained meticulously in case of visiting dignitary’s such as the priest, doctor or teacher". Irish Cottage History, cottageology.com Due to these two factors this is the room we initially moved into and used as essentially a bedsit whilst working on the rest of the property. We removed the huge wooden fire surround (finding a bird skeleton behind it) and Freya took on the job of drawing on the walls to liven it up. The problem with it as a bedroom was the lack of insulation which made it expensive to heat, so as winter approached we decided to bite the bullet and get it done, even though it meant sleeping in the main room for a few weeks. The first job was to remove the plasterboard drylining, scrape off the layers of modern impermeable paint (which were flaking off pretty well anyway) and remove any loose render. Unfortunately at this point a lot more of the render around the gable window came off than we hoped and Brian had to rebuild that area. Then came the big job, removing the final thatched roof. After the hardboard ceiling was torn down you can see the underside of this thatch, lined with turf. This wasn't as bad to remove as the other roof since the thatch was much newer and cleaner. Brian tore it all down and chucked it out of the window where I put it in a skip. Finally the old roof structure could be removed and the new ceiling joists installed. Thanks to the wall we cannot easily access the loft over this room, and we don't lack of loft space, so we took the opportunity to have a super-insulated ceiling over this room. The room was finished with new windows and window ledges, and terracotta tiles (the same type as the main room but smaller) for the main floor with a decorative encoustic tile hearth. The fire insert was re-installed properly and the walls finished and painted.
For now this room is our shared bedroom, hopefully in the longer term it will revert to its original use as a living space.
Outside there is a new gate round the back and the logs are neatly stacked in the barn. The garden is also much more garden-like, though the chickens are doing their best to dig it all back up again.
The chickens have now decided that the front windowsill is a perfect place for their morning roost. I can see the attraction, its a warm, dry, sheltered spot with the bonus of an interesting view.
Our new Daisy Belle (named Daisy) doesn't have the restraining influence on Snowflake (our Light Sussex) that our previous chickens did, she's just as curious and energetic and they make quite a pair dashing about and getting into everything. It makes digging in the garden more interesting, trying to avoid the chickens as they leap in to grab any worms. On the plus side they are both reliable layers and always lay promptly in the morning making it easier to grab the eggs before the magpie's get them. Merry Christmas everyone! We are currently hunkered down waiting out Storm Barbara beside a nice roaring fire. The anti-downdraught cowls have been fully tested today as we've had some serious wind, alongside downpours and hail. The ponies are in the barn and the chickens made the wise decision to stay in their house for the day, so far no damage done. I hope everyone else survives the weather and has a great christmas.
We have a kitchen! Okay, its not quite finished yet. It doesn't have a sink, the plumbing is in but we decided the sink we brought with us didn't quite look right and looked better in the utility room so we still need to go get a new one. The hob isn't yet connected to the gas, so the worktop isn't fixed (you can see the edging cover strip is still on it) and the oven isn't connected as the gas fitter will need to move them for access. There's also a door missing due to a change of plans with the tall cupboard.
Even in its unfinished state though, its nice to have the whole room looking like a room. We've also been able to move the kitchen wares and food out of the bedroom and into the cupboards, so the bedroom is now a bedroom rather than a bedsit. Its still such a luxury to have a consistently warm house and hot water whenever we want. We've had a series of storms sweep past which have upset the open fire so much we have had to put it out a few times, but the stove has burned perfectly all the way through.
Looking at it now its hard to remember what an unstable, tarry mess the fireplace was when we first uncovered it behind the rusted out range, so I've put together a sequence showing the transformation. This is the view from our garden, looking out over the lake. We knew when we bought the house that we were quite close to a turlough (a lake that dries out in summer), but this winter it has come even closer than normal. The common is now part of the lake, including a few of our smaller and unfenced fields around its edge. The lake attracts a lot of birds, geese and swans particularly.
Meanwhile the plumbing is now complete on the stove meaning we have central heating and a constant supply of hot water, and a much lower electricity bill! We have a wood store (a converted old animal trailer) full of sycamore that Brian cut down when we first moved in so its practically free. We have hot water again! After a year relying on a tea urn for bath water it is amazing to be able to simply run a bath whenever we want without any complicated preparation. Its also rather nice to be able to fill the bath right up, the new hot water cylinder is bigger than the one we had in Somerset and makes a really decent bath. I spent last week in Dublin on my induction week for my new job with SoftCo. I'm now back home and remote working from The Hub @ Headford. This is hopefully the best of both worlds, with a short commute but an interesting job with a really good company. Its a very international and mixed gender team, over half female now I've joined which is quite a change! It's early days but fingers crossed it works out.
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Laura Nash and Brian Brett's blog about our move to Ireland. Archives
December 2020
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