The Woodworm Man Cometh

We're out of the cottage and back in the house.  Forced out by small wood-boring insects and the need to have professionals come in and sort them out.

I tried to treat the cottage beams myself, last year, but the woodworm march onwards has been inexorable and so it's time to get the job done properly.

Otherwise, we'd still be snug in the cottage at the bottom of the garden, with its underfloor heating, double glazing and good insulation. But it's back to the hot-water bottles, bed-socks (very important before putting one's feet down onto cold floors first thing in the morning), extra layers and calor gas heaters to stand between us and the draughts.

Who would have thought May would be this cold?  Or maybe, with cottage living, we've just gone soft.

Overwhelmed

For over eight weeks, every day, I drove up the drive from the cottage, past the house, averting my eyes from the sight of Nature rampaging through the garden and made my way into town to clean floors, paint walls and repair lino.

And now, with time to garden again, I've no idea where to begin.

The rose beds, the bushes already in full bud? Strangled with buttercup and bindweed tendrils, great juicy thistle, dandelion and dock stems barging their way skywards, cutting out the light and killing the lower branches.

Perhaps the paving round the swimming pool? A jungle of dead nettle, self-seeded alliums, more dock, dandelion and thistle (of course) and speedwell.

Or the loving planted borders either side of the one-day-to-be front door? Now overrun with rye grasses and wild oats and yet more dock and thistles.

Or the lawns, round the house and the cottage?  The grass now so high and stems so coarse that mower and strimmer struggle to do more than just knock the plants down.

I despair at what a mere eight weeks' neglect can do to all my previous hours of care. How do those of you who spend no more than a few weeks here each year cope?

I sit on the bank behind the cottage laboriously extracting fronds of sap-filled grass from the middle of a large cotoneaster that is desperately trying to flower.  Vita and Bertie sit close by, watching me mournfully as I cut back what are obviously their absolutely favourite blades to chew.  Don't be ridiculous dogs!  There are acres of greenery all round us, just waiting to be eaten.

It looked easy ....

... on the B&Q and Homebase DIY videos:

-  Run a hot hair-dryer over the damaged plastic tile

-  Slide a putty knife under the tile and lift

-  Scrape off the softened old adhesive underneath

-  Apply fresh adhesive to the now clean floor

-  Place the new tile on the fresh adhesive

-  Smooth out air bubbles

-  Put a heavy book on top for 24 hours and voilà, flooring repaired

No mention of  what you do if, in lifting the damaged tile, half the floor underneath comes up as well.  Or how to cope if the plastic tiles are so old and brittle that the adjacent one starts to crack and lift.  Still, Steve, our builder, did a couple for us - mixing self-levelling compound that would even out the lumps and bumps under the tile and letting it flow slowly across the floor, placing the new tile on top and gently pressing it down into the concrete so it was at the same height as the neighbouring tiles.

Well it didn't look too difficult.

So the next evening, after Tod had left, I had a go with replacing the tiles we lifted in the kitchen.  Mixing the grey self-levelling compound in the small bucket took forever.  It just seemed too runny.  So I'd beat out all the lumpy bits, stir and stir, add more powder, beat out the fresh lumps, stir,.add more powder.      And then, suddenly, it wasn't runny any longer, it had gone like thick porridge.  That was the moment I should have thrown it away and started again, but after all that time mixing it seemed a shame to waste it.

So I plonked it on the floor in dollops and tried to smooth it out. Far from self-levelling, it determinedly formed a small mountain.  So I scraped most of it off, thought it looked reasonably level and then realised that, as it was now hard rather than runny, the tiles might not stick to it, so the addition of tile adhesive might be a good idea.  I squidged the new tiles onto this mess and reached for a heavy tub of paint to rest on top of a block of wood to keep the tiles flat, when I realised that the tile adhesive had tipped over and formed a small white lake behind me (where I wouldn't notice what was happening).  The pack warned me that while the adhesive was white I could clean it up, once clear (after about ten minutes) it became like super-glue.  I grabbed a roll of kitchen towel and mopped as fast as I could.

Twenty minutes later, I was still scraping a nasty mixture of self-levelling compound and tile adhesive off the floor that Tod had so carefully cleaned a couple of days previously. I was also conscious that my hands were becoming increasingly sticky and it was difficult to separate my fingers. I padded into the bathroom, leaving a trail of sticky concrete footprints along the (recently cleaned by Tod) corridor floor and lathered my fingers alternately with white spirit, soap and Nivea cream. They still felt tacky.

As I drove away later, I wondered whether I would be able to prise my fingers off the steering wheel when I reached my destination.

It was only as I was driving in the following morning it occurred to me I might not be able to unstick the block of wood with the paint tub on top from off the newly laid tiles.

It's at moments like this that the only thing I can do is sing Gerry Rafferty..... I hope he's right.

Our photo project in early April ...

... was to take two spring flower photos.  How could I possibly choose only  two!

Apple blossom

 Cherry blossom

 Quince blossom

 

In the end, I didn't have to choose, as I was still busy painting!

Joy and Stamina

One of the earliest "Grand Designs Abroad" (and one of our favourites) was the story of Doug and Deni who lovingly restored a HUGE five-storey French maison de ville, open to the sky.

We saw the program again the other evening and yet again we were in awe of the task they took on and also admiring of their evident joy, enthusiasm  and stamina - working 12-14 hour days over months and months, often just the two of them.

And here we are grumping about our six-week / six hour day DIY task.  Ah, but ours feels like a duty and a burden.  Just goes to show how miracles can be wrought if there is joy in the task.

I spent yesterday cleaning the filthy living room vinyl tile floor - hands and knees, scrubbing each tile with a nail brush soaked in a grease remover, then rinsing off the swirly filth, then drying.  Took me an hour to do the first row of tiles.

Mind you, I did speed up when I stopped trying to clean off the pattern. It's a kind of streaky smudge (meant to be a type of marbled look I think) and I thought it was dried in paint. Only another ten hours of lounge flooring to go.

A mere nothing! Doug and Deni persevered for a month lifting eighty flooring beams in place.

Links:
Doug and Deni's B&B
Grand Designs Abroad

March Mementos

March departed yesterday "like a lamb" and for the first time this year, in the early evening sun, we had supper on the cottage terrace.

The days have passed in the seemingly endless drudgery of cleaning walls, ceilings, floors, bathroom tiles, light fittings, repairing, filling holes (dozens of holes!) and painting, painting, painting.  Too tired in the evening to do anything except eat, watch bad TV and then go to bed.

It was good last night just to stop for a few hours and breathe in the green spring air.

My few memories of March:

Vita, Tod, Bertie sitting on the sofa, intently watching Crufts.

Bertie charging across our neighbour's field tail wagging frantically, nose buried in the thick luscious sward of spring wheat - saying: "no way am I coming in, you haven't been here and now I'm having fun!"

The steady stream of people through the door of the boulangerie (including Easter Sunday and Monday) where I stop on my way in, to buy pain aux raisins for the workers. Each time the door swings a murmured "Bonjour messieurs-dames".

Bertie and Vita sitting waiting at the entrance to our drive - waiting for one of us to come home.

The sound of the Saturday market in full swing below the open window as I paint the wall of the back bedroom.

The front garden of the little old lady who used to own sheep, a riot of colour as I drive past each morning into town:  blues and pinks and whites of the dozens of fat hyacinths and brilliant reds and oranges from the hundreds of tulips, all planted through a river of mauve aubretia.

I return in the evening to find one tulip blooming in our cottage garden, the rest still tightly furled green buds just poking above the earth.

We're late this morning - Easter Monday and the clocks have gone forward - time to get back to the painting.  Not for much longer, we're nearly there and the result will be worth it.

[And a PS - an early April memento - this morning's bored mischievousness in our absence: a whole pack of rye flour spread over the kitchen floor and Vita's muzzle, mixed with plenty of water from their drinking bowl.  It's sticky and hard to get off (dog and floor). We're about to find out whether Vita's diet should or should not include raw flour!]

I feel as if ...

... we are living in the film "The Shipping News", which by the way if you haven't seen I can thoroughly recommend. Kevin Spacey is on top form as a slightly bemused man who, with his young daughter and aunt (superbly played by Judi Dench) goes back to the family home on a remote cliff top in Newfoundland.

The old Newfoundland house is held down by guy ropes to keep it from flying off the cliff in the high winds and at night creaks, groans and sighs, keeping the occupants awake.  For the last twenty-four hours that's what it's been like in the cottage.  Bertie, Vita and I got little sleep last night as I resorted to a duvet and the sofa in the lounge. The constant thrumming of the aluminium drain pipes and the shrieking of the wind through the shutters kept all three of us on edge - while Tod slept blissfully through it.

Debris is all over the garden and a couple of the dead elms in the small copse behind the cottage, covered in ivy where the small birds nest, are now snapped in two and doubled over - as is a brand new concrete electricity pole up on the ridge behind us.

I found the plastic greenhouse that I bought from Lidls tilting precariously to one side, all the contents in a jumble on the floor.  So taking a tip from the film, the greenhouse is now held down by an improvised guy rope stretched across the roof and tied on one side to a wooden pallet and the other to an old plough.

Although the high winds are still with us, I'm hoping that I'm tired enough to be able to sleep through the noise tonight.  Tomorrow is the Big Day - Tod is demonstrating making his sourdough rye bread and I want to be wide awake for it.  But more of that anon.

Link:
The Shipping News

How very French!

I peeled off my pink Marigold gloves and, with aching shoulders and feet, staggered downstairs to Tod saying I'd had more than enough of stripping flocked jungle paper off the back bedroom walls and please could we go home for lunch.

Up a ladder in the lounge, surrounded by strips of bright orange wallpaper, he agreed. So, locking the front door, we set off home in our two cars (extravagant I know, but we'd been running different errands).

As I turned out of the side street I met a queue of traffic crawling through the town centre, every other vehicle a white van.  This was unheard of.  We never meet heavy traffic in town - particularly not on a Monday when most of the shops are shut.

Then I happened to notice the clock on the dashboard. Three minutes past twelve. Ah!  The Frenchman's rush to get home as soon as possible for his two-hour lunch.

And we're doing the same! We've gone native!