Squirrels in the attic and Friends came to visit

Its cold, cold, cold here today .with an icy wind blowing, and the big old oak trees making whistling noises. its a funny old day, one minute its bright skies then it  turns grey and a huge hail storm passes over and deposits a layer of white gravel over everything.

 One of my  builders is working  high up on the roof and he hunkers down below the gable and battles on laying the new slates with his frozen hands. Another builder is inside the roof space cleaning away all the old debris, cobwebs, birds nests etc. Its pretty dark up there. He's at the far end where the slates are still on the roof, so no daylight is aiding his vision, instead he is working by lamp.  a single light bulb attached to a long cable is hooked to a beam above his head

I met them outside for an afternoon cup of coffee, and he told he that in the far corner of the attic, in the space above mums bedroom he was clearing away debris, stuffing twigs and straw into bags, when suddenly his hand felt something solid.  Solid but slightly soft.  In the dim gloom of the attic he brought the lamp closer and saw he had found a dray.  A dray is a squirrels nest.  Curled up inside the dray was a dead grey squirrel. Slightly cobwebby but pretty much intact.  I'm guessing it made a nest and tucked himself inside and fell asleep but didn't wake up.

The attic is absolutely massive. Its square footage is bigger than the entire size of our last house.  It is vast.   I went up in it to take a look.   Its a feat of agility to go there.  A long ladder stands in the largest of the bedrooms. Its top rungs poke through a hole in the ceiling, and you have to climb to the top then  squeeze your body through the gap in the ceiling, hold onto a beam and haul yourself up carefully placing your feet on some planks that span the gaps between the rafters. The hole in the ceiling is quite small... OK for my builders,  but rather more of a challenge for myself.  Being female certain parts of me got stuck and I wasn't going to ask them for help so I had to squeeze and manipulate myself up into the hole. I tiptoed along planks, with a torch in my right hand, whilst my left hand held onto the roof trusses to steady myself.  All along the hallway, past the big brick chimney, below a huge A frame, past another chimney until I was at the very far corner of the attic. 

The builder wanted to show me what he was doing,  basically cleaning off every piece of wood that formed the construction of the roof shape. Cleaning it by brushing it off and then applying the timber treatment.  I have to say the timber looks to be in fantastic condition.  All the wooden  main framework is bright clean lovely looking wood. Pitch pine I think.  It doesn't look like oak to me,  the grain is different.

We had a busy weekend.  Lots of friends came to visit us to see our project....They  thought it was fantastic.... but one couldn't imagine living without a proper kitchen....I don't need a big posh kitchen... I don't spend any longer than necessary in the kitchen any way, so I can live with a makeshift kitchen for some time yet.  They all thought the house was huge, and would be stunning when it was finished.  It was lovely to see everyone.  I would love to have a garden party in the late summer...but only if we're nearly finished by then.

We got a kitchen company to visit us to do a free survey at the weekend.  It was one of the big DIY stores with an orange logo.  Not that I will be necessary buying my kitchen from them but i wanted to pinch their ideas and measurements. If they could work out the floor plan and where the appliances would go, then i can use that for getting prices and quotes.  He came at 2pm..... at 6pm he was still here !!  I had to make up a story that we were going out..to get him gone.  He didn't come up with anything different than our rough plan.  Stevie had already designed the layout using a kitchen planning design  peice of  software  on the computer...the orange logo'd boy followed that pretty much exactly...i was a bit disappointed really.  I thought he could have been more imaginative than that.  Oh well.. I think we are going to find our selves  a proper cabinet maker.  A real craftsman.. a proper carpenter to make it bespoke for us.

The other thing we did at the weekend, was to strip the wall paper of the little toilet which is half way up the stair case. Mum did that. She was a bit bored of sitting on the sofa in the snug knitting socks, so she suddenly announced that she was going to strip... Stevie looked rather bemused, and made himself scarce to play with his new water jetter...but soon realised that he wasn't going to see his mother in law uncovering herself, but rather..armed with a bucket of water and a scraper she set to work removing the old wallpaper. It came off so easily. Either the dampness helped or the previous owner had been sparse with the wallpaper paste. If you picked off one corner you could gently remove the entire strip in one sheet !

I donned the bright orange boiler suit again and decided to tackle the gun room.  The gun room is situated behind the drawing room and is very small, but contains a brick floor and a small safe, complete with keys.  It's a dark stinking hovel though. The walls are marked with green streaks, and something nasty drips down them. The brick floor is thick with white fungus, and some very weird and ominous looking tree like fungi is creeping up the walls.   Thick rubber gloves, boiling hot water and a whole bottle of industrial strength bleach took most of it off, but I think it will need another good scrub out before we decide how we are going to tank it. I couldn't get out of there fast enough.  It was really horrible.

I will make more updates during the week as work the progresses.

x
Jo