Its been a long time since I posted, but I thought I should post some pictures of the front of the house now its just about finished. The big change of course is the new porch. We have also replaced the plastic guttering with galvanised and we're trying out a rain chain on the porch.
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With things slowly returning to normal I thought it was time to post an update. We've kept busy throughout the lockdown since there is always plenty to do at home! With the house very nearly finished, this summer we have been concentrating on the outbuildings and fields. The main sheds look very smart with a good clean, a coat of paint and new galvanised guttering. For comparison, this is a similar view from the first year we were here. Apart from cleaning and painting the big change we've made to the main shed is a wider doorway. We wanted the option to get a car or the tractor into the shed so Brian can work on them in the dry, so Brian knocked out the wider doorway and we put in an RSJ and new doors. This shed is basically finished now, we do plan to replace the asbestos cement roofing eventually but it is sound and water tight so its not an immediate priority. I did a post back in that first year about our seven outbuildings (how-many-sheds.html), but we now have eight. The building on the left is the old water tank, which we've converted to a shed by cleaning it out, knocking a door hole in, raising the front and sides to give it a roof line similar to next doors shed behind and putting on a new roof. The "garage" as we call it (originally the turf store) has been tidied up and also has a brand new roof. I haven't got any decent before photos of this, but the roofing sheets were rusting through and the timbers pretty well rotted, a couple of winters ago the roof partially collapsed and was held up with acrow props for some time so its quite a novelty to have it re-built and fully water tight. We made the decision some time ago not to re-roof the lean-too as we find having a walled compound there very useful as somewhere out of the way to put the wheelie bins, ash bin etc. An ongoing job for Brian this summer is painting the barn, which is obviously very weather dependant and also very much a Brian-only job (I don't do high ladders). The location of the barn in front of the house means its very visually imposing, so getting the rusting roof painted makes a big difference to the look of the place, as well as hopefully keeping it in good nick for years to come. Brian has also cleared the ruins of the tower that we named the cottage after. There were a load of sycamores growing on top which were starting to get quite large and affect the structure and we were quite worried about strong winds bringing down one of the trees and / or some of the castle so its good to get this done. We can now get up on top and I can better picture how the village could meet up there for celebrations, there is a nice flat area on top with raised sides to sit on and a great view. In the right of this picture is a shed we christened "the bunker". This is now renamed as "the cow house", we removed the interior stalls and widened and raised the door hole so the cows can have free access to it for shelter in winter when needed. The next shed on the list for renovation is the old stable. I had originally thought I might use this as an open fronted horse shelter, but having lived here for some time it just isn't in the right location and, more importantly, has the wrong orientation facing the prevailing wind. So we've had a rethink and now intend to use it as a machinery store, giving us somewhere to park the tractor in winter and store the topper, chain harrow etc. We thought that the roof on this one wasn't too bad, but once Brian removed all the old ivy, leaf litter and other debris we discovered it rather resembled a sieve - its just that the muck was covering all the small holes. So a new roof it is. As you can see in the picture Brian has knocked out the front to make room to get the tractor in and has put in a ramp, so its ready now for the new roof when we have time. This is the same shed a few years ago after we had finished removing the old muck heap from in front of it. We've also been doing a lot of fencing work and gate hanging down the fields, I might put up a post about that later.
I don't think I ever posted any pictures of the back gable. We decided to slate it, both for looks and weather protection, and it turned out really well. Also the back porch is in, just in time for winter. The weather all comes up in that direction so being able to open the back door without having a gale blow in (particularly when carrying a tray of ash) will make a big difference. The only downside is that the chickens have decided this is a perfect shelter for them whilst they moult so it is currently full of feathers. A lot of the other work has revolved around the cows. Ear tagging our calf made us realise that our old race, even with the refurbishments Brian did before our inspection, simply wasn't going to be up to the job of containing a frightened or angry cow. So we've now put in a completely new one, including a head gate, which has already done the job for our first herd TB test and calf castration. Brian's done quite a lot of additional work in the bottom field with additional fencing and gates, including the new post and rail around the septic tank you can see in the picture below. We're now officially Dexter herd owners and properly registered with the breed society with a herd prefix. The cows have properly settled in and filled out, and have grown quite attached to Brian now (mostly since he's the one who feeds them and they really love their food).
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).
The "repair" (more like rebuild) of the front wall is finished and we fitted the last of the new windows last weekend. Unfortunately the old wall was just too wonky for a simple repair as it didn't run in anything approaching a straight line. Brian had to take the outer skin of the wall down in sections and rebuild it, using the original stone as much as possible. Some of the older parts of the wall were dry-stone wall. The window to the right of the door is located in the old doorway, rather than try and conceal this we made the decision to retain the feature as part of the history of the house, so the new block-work (replacing some old messy concrete) was simply rendered. When we took out the old concrete we found the original doorstep underneath, unfortunately it was too damaged to remove and re-use elsewhere. All that's left for the front now is lime-washing and re-building the porch. We are also planning on replacing the plastic guttering with something nicer once the porch is in place.
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. Brian took the last of the render off the front of the house this week. There were six different layers of render on this, the oldest part of the house. Originally it had been lime-washed annually over many years, before a thin lime render was added (and lime-washed again). Unfortunately they didn't stop there, later five separate layers of cement render were added eventually achieving the perfect "concrete bungalow" look and quite effectively locking moisture into the wall. All the different layers of cement render built up to a final depth of about 4 inches, the same thickness as a brick. Now the cement render is off the wall can breathe again and any remaining damp should dry out nicely over the summer. There's still a lot to do on this front wall, but its interesting to compare with how it looked when we arrived. You can also see the "done" part of the house exterior gradually working its way around, we're up to front door now. As you can see we have removed the (very ugly) concrete porch and installed a new front door. The next step - weather permitting - is to continue repairing the wall, in particular the in-fill where the original doorway was changed to a window and the wall top where the wall was raised with concrete when the roof was added. Some sections will need to be taken down and rebuilt. ..and closes properly! We installed our new back door this week. As well as being weather, draft (and frog) proof, and having glass you can actually see through, it is also 6 inches higher than the old one. Brian had to cut out the extra inches to get it in, but it was well worth the effort making the utility room much lighter and larger-looking.
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.
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Laura Nash and Brian Brett's blog about our move to Ireland. Archives
December 2020
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