another room!

The walls of bedroom 2 (as it's known on the plans) are now scraped, filled, sanded, treated & painted. It will be the main guest bedroom, but for the moment I have moved my sewing machine in, and Keith has set up shelving.



I won't be making curtains yet, just some bunting for the village celebrations and some repairs that need doing, but it is nice to sit at it again.

Next job is the main bathroom, which Keith prepped today and I have to begin tiling tomorrow.

This picture shows Genghis & his mate, but you can't see their ducklings nestled between them.

a living room

The task of smoothing down, filling, scraping, treating and painting the living room is now finished. We celebrated by moving our table & chairs down. No more carrying trays upstairs! Keith has also done part of the hall - and - a mammoth task - the stairwell.
The lights are in place and we can begin to get a sense of how it will work.



We took some time off this weekend to go to Raunds Music Festival. It's a small, community based festival in a market town a few miles away. It's our kind of festival - you can walk to the car & be home within a quarter hour of it finishing. There is beer (including a special brewed "Raunds Revelry") and tea & home-made cake as well. It attracts all ages & kinds of people. A big thanks to the volunteer organisers who make it happen.

The waters are going down. we can see the footbridge & path now, and the birds are returning to find their way around again.

not-so-fine weather for ducklings

This afternoon a mother duck came into the garden with her ducklings. They appeared quite happy, running about & cheeping, although she seemed to be keeping a close eye on the high, fast-flowing brook.
After about an hour, they left. We found out later that they were unable to cope, and she took them into our neighbour's garden. She tried to find a safe place for them, but the ducklings kept jumping into the water, whilst she tried to shoo them out! She attempted to put some safely in the log store, but they got stuck, and our neighbours had to rescue them. She finally managed to lead them off, but had to return for a missing one. By late afternoon, it did seem that they were back safely at the War Memorial.

All of this water has disconcerted both the heron and egret who have difficulty wading through the fast flow to catch fish. As I wrote yesterday, this is more typical of February than May. Tiny ducklings would not normally need to cope with this weather.

rain

The 2 winters we have spent in this area have been dry ones, and the flood meadows at the back of the house have been relatively dry.
This week however, has seen them covered in water. Keith took these 2 photos yesterday afternoon and evening:


It has also filled up our rainwater harvester, so our washing machine & loos are functioning on recycled water.

We were pleased to see Brian & Ann Carter, old colleagues & friends from Dunstable. Now living in Gloucestershire, they called in to see us and brought a lovely plant for our garden. As Jackie & Rob from Irthlingborough have given us fruit bushes, and a new acquaintance, Rachel from Thrapston has given us some lemon balm, I must make time to look after them all!

photos

The kitchen is now largely done. The ceiling cannot be finished until all of our "smart home" wiring is connected, and the floor has to wait until other downstairs rooms are finished.
As our next step is to finish the walls in the living room, which will create dust, we haven't put anything on the shelves.
But here it is, with the units all in place:




The Denford ducks have produced 2 broods of ducklings so far this year. Here is one of them:






And here is our house, nestling among the others in Denford:

It is the buff brick, with red detailing & red roof.

And finally, a heron at Denford Weir, about 1/4 mile downstream from our house:

the kitchen

Our kitchen was always going to be very important. Like most families, we gather there, and we loved our old kitchen / family room that ran the length of the house. Our kitchen here is like the short part of an L, with the main part being the living / dining room with the glass doors opening on to the garden.
Most of our work over the last couple of weeks has been there. Keith has now made half the drawers, and they look very lovely, with the ash grain as a main feature.

I have been tiling, and my skills are slowly improving, helped by the small tiles that are easier to push into place.
It is a bit frustrating to have such lovely cookers installed and not be able to use them yet, but looking at them spurs me on! We have used the Quooker and can confirm that it makes a lovely cup of tea. Keith installed it, and we can recommend the team there as being friendly & helpful.

On Wednesday we took a "day off" by which we mean that we went to the Axminster store at Nuneaton, Keith's natural habitat (and Bob's too, I think!). It is always a pleasure to listen to experts, and we are full of admiration for the skills of so many people that we have encountered. This includes Ben at Sykes Timber whose has twice now taken the time to talk to us about the best wood for our projects. They have a lovely small showroom with samples of wood shown as worktops, stairs etc.

Outside, the Heras fencing, secure store & skip have all gone. Many thanks to Neil who spent Easter day helping Keith with the ordinary fencing (continuing the work begun by Terry 18 months ago). This is how it looks now:

The "thunderbox" is going this week. Our thanks go to Portable Toilets Limited who have emptied and cleaned this for nearly a year. In baking heat, in freezing snow, they have made their way past diggers & huge delivery lorries with no fuss at all.


Here is a photo of of one of our regular visitors, Genghis Puddleduck. He has been given the name in honour of an amazing game of "who am I?" last Xmas. Details from anyone who was there and can remember it.

at last!

Without doubt, BT have been the most difficult of all the services we have had to deal with; partly because they contract / sub-contract out the work through layers of companies. This means that no-one knows what is happening.
Our saga has involved 9 different reference numbers, 2 different phone numbers & 5 different teams. I have lost count of the number of phone calls I have made. They have e-mailed us knowing that we had no service; they have asked how we are getting on with the service they have failed to provide; they have rung to say that we do not need a pole or that the pole cannot be put up.
They managed to ring me last Friday, as the pole was being erected, to tell me that it would go up on Monday. They rang on Monday to tell me it would go up "today".
They rang today to give me a reference number for the complaint I made over a week ago, in which I asked for all communication to be by letter.
One of the first e-mails I saw as I connected today, was an e-survey they have sent as "they are really keen to know how they did" (they could start by reading my letters to them!)
Everyone has been unfailingly polite, even as I ceased to be. Everyone has tried to be helpful whilst being given poor information. My thanks to them all, and I hope that their bosses become more organised (!)

To make up for boring you, here is a picture that Keith took of the heron visiting our brook: