Flower bed

Catching up now on all the things we did over the summer - this was one of the first - bringing the old flower bed back to life. We killed all the existing stuff and have now put in a geotextile underlay with lots of bark chips on top. It's got automatic watering laid in there too, so it hasn't been too much work to maintain over the summer. Weeds are amazing things though, and they still manage to poke through the slightest gap in the bark chips...

Water water everywhere

The obsession with pipes continues - this is but a small part of the garden watering system we've been putting into the garden.

It's spent the summer watering the tomatoes and our new flower bed, but I have greater plans for it...

There's a couple of conduits built in the concrete wall supporting the balcony - they were previously used to get water to and from the old swimming pool. I plan to use them to get the house cave-drain through the wall and down to the bottom of the garden where there's a real drain (underground).

We'll also take a garden water pipe through the wall to get the water out into the rest of the garden and down to the bottom of the garden where we'd like to put the chickens.

Knock knock

We've now decided to do something about the quarter of the downstairs which was the old studio - it's going to be a new playroom for the kids.

It will have two doors - one from the existing kitchen and one from the hall. As you can see, the existing door into the hall is still there, though rather impressively bricked up with concrete construction blocks.

All this means a bit of reconfiguration in the hall - the existing toilet under the stairs will become a cupboard and what was the old bathroom of the studio will become a new larger downstairs toilet.

The partially demolished old bathroom, which was raised up onto high steps, with lots of walls.


















The new shiny toilet is getting there - the plumbing work and demolition of the old bathroom is done now. Next we (meaning the builders and plumbers, by the way) need to do the underfloor heating in here and in the playroom next door, and put up all the plasterboard walls and ceiling.

The pipe going overhead is for the new laundry room upstairs (next project)...

New arrivals

Meg and Stumpy (*) are pleased to announce the arrival of five small kittens!

(*) at least we assume it's Stumpy, since at least 3 of them look like him, and he was caught in flagrante delicto with Meg a few weeks ago, on the balcony, by Mrs McCance (senior).

All household renovation work has stopped as my wife just sits and watches them much of the day.

It's all getting a bit industrial..

Just bought a large electric breaker for taking down the concrete wall in the garden... no action shot yet - it's still in the post.

It's a monster. Thank you Amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002QRSO4O/ref=oss_product
(gift wrap available.)

Bed for the night?

It's amazing what you find in the attic.

We found these old steel-spring hotel beds while getting the attic cleared out for the work on the roof.

They don't look very comfy though they are quite solid (and heavy), and I'm not at all sure about the old horsehair mattress..

There's a garden at the bottom of my garden!

After some work - we've finally got the bottom part of the garden (the bit next to where the pool was) in a state where we can plant a lawn. We've hacked out I don't know how many bushes, trees and bamboos, mulched them into compost (with the fantastic Bosch tree chomper) and killed most of the remaining foliage - none of which was grass. We did this over the winter and got rid of all the remaining rubbish in about 40 cars loads to the local dump.

This was followed by a rotovation, an epic stone hunt (the kids helped), burying of some pipes to transport water around the garden, and days of raking to try and level out the bumps. Along the way we found a water source (the same that flows through the village), a barbecue and paved bit, and an old border (which now has some tomato plants in it). We've added a swing set, a sandpit and a little wooden house for the kids to play in.

The grass seed is now sown according to Alan's careful instructions, so now it's just a matter of watering and hopefully we'll have a new lawn in a few weeks!