Plumbing and Plaster
A Renovation Journal
Hello! I’ve decided to write a weekly journal so you can follow along with snippets of what I’m getting up to all week. This is inspired by the weekly journal that Grace Alexander writes from Malus Farm. You can join her ‘Journal of a Flower Lover’ email list by visiting her blog posts here. I love her Sunday emails that make me feel so warm and cosy. However, while Grace’s journal is almost therapy, filled with slow living and flower prettiness this will be a bit more chaotic and messy. Hopefully, it will give you an insight into our day-to-day and let you keep up with all our current projects. I’ll return to some house history soon and maybe include some how-tos when I feel I’ve figured something out!
Monday
The plumbers are here and they are wonderful. There are three of them crawling all over the house installing a new boiler and connecting it all up. It’s such a comfort to have plumbers happily figuring things out where others have run a mile at such a big job. They don’t even seem to mind that the boiler room currently only has a temporary roof!
Tuesday
A busy day with the plasterer, electrician and plumbers. It all seems to be coming together slowly. The plumbers were here until late and I didn’t get the early night that I wanted. I think they felt a bit sorry for me as James was away and I was sitting on my own with no TV or fire because of the wet plaster. I didn’t mind though. This house has never felt scary to me, except maybe financially!
Wednesday
We’ve had to turn the Aga off again while we sort out the oil supply. There’s also no heating while they switch over to the new boiler. The plumbers are still working hard. I caught one of them talking to himself. He said “Losing the light. Must work faster!” I wish I’d recorded it.
Emma and I went over to the Old Estate Office and did some paint scraping. We put a heater on and played some music and it was actually quite fun.
Thursday
I’m super tired and it’s making me even more cold and hungry. The heating is back on but I miss the Aga. We went to Much Wenlock to look at mortar samples and at least it was warm in the car with the heated seats on!
Friday
A foggy start to the day but it got sunnier as I worked in the garden with Kate my gardener. We removed a huge Viburnum bush from under the mulberry tree so that we can now see the shape of the tree and its gnarled old trunk. It must be very old, maybe even an ancient tree. You can see where the trunk has broken and where it has touched down it has rooted again and formed a new tree. It’s gradually walking its way across the garden.
I spent the afternoon roofing with James. We’re frantically trying to get a new roof over the new boiler to keep it all safe and dry.
Saturday
More paint scraping while the boys went to Toby’s rugby match. Then we finished off all the roof rafters and got it all covered. Just lots of tidying up to do now and then the roofers will finish the rest. Finally got the early night I’ve been trying to get all week!
Sunday
Popped up to the church for the Remembrance service. There was a new vicar who I hadn’t met before and she had a lovely singing voice. The words “they will beat their swords into ploughshares” stick in my mind.
We had a tidy-up and filled the skip this afternoon but it was cold and damp. It was lovely to retreat to the snug and light the wood burner.