Tiiiiimber...

First on the list to reclaim the garden are the evergreen trees next to the pool -  they were probably planted when the house behind us was new, to give a bit of shelter for the swimming pool.

But since we aren't going to have the pool, and the neighbour now has a big hedge, they don't really serve any purpose, so we've chopped them down. It was great entertainment for the whole family.

If only I could find a suitable Tool of the Week to help get rid of all those branches...

Relaxing by the pool

I'm posting this a little behind, since we've already started work... This is our lovely new pool, as it was when we moved into the house. We got a man round to have a look, bought some new pipes to connect properly up to the swimming pool filter and pump in the basement of the house. The decking was a little bouncy but we decided to give it a go.

Removing the cover, we found seriously black water (looks like the filter hasn't been connected for several years). After several days of intensive filtering and scrubbing with a long swimming pool pole thing, it was almost looking good - we could see the bottom.

Then, just after dinner one night, I got a phone call from the neighbour behind us (the first time we met actually), who was wondering why his entire patio and much of his garden was under water...

The pool now looked like this, the liner having burst.

This was a little disappointing, because the hope was to at least test the pool before deciding whether to clean it up properly. Instead, we've now decided to get rid of it completely and replace it with a bigger garden!

Happy New Year

Possibly the least exciting picture of the new year is the foam lagging that I've lovingly cut and shaped and tied to our bare pipes in the new boiler room.

Look at that craftsmanship... you don't see that any more (tm).

On the plus side, I've had to turn the water down since I added it, so it must be doing something good. Makes me feel all ecological...

However, for the majority of folks that aren't into rubberised insulating foam, here's a much nicer New Year's picture of one of our kittens, Rosie.

Merry Christmas!

It's a snowy Christmas here at twentyfourandthedoor!

The kittens have been playing in the snow...

Snow and Icicles

Our shed doesn't have much of a watertight roof yet and there's some pretty impressive icicles forming just in front of the door (through one of the holes in the roof). I've come close to impaling myself several times already today! I'm going to leave them to see how long they get...

Meanwhile, the snow on our roof is getting quite high, at least where it's slipped of the dormers - luckily the roofers are coming later this week to add snow stickers (technical term) to the roof. I cleaned this off with a big brush - it makes quite a whump when a huge snowball rolls off the roof and lands 10 meters below.

Winter has arrived!

Winter has finally arrived and we have a nice dusting of snow in the garden and some pretty cool stalactites on the dormers! Hopefully more snow will come later this weekend and we'll be able to make a snowman.

Our cool roofing company (Ferblanterie Gessienne) have just called to say they'd had a look on our roof and would like to add snow stoppers (the technical term) on the dormers to stop the snow slipping off and making a pile on the tiles in front of the window. How good is that!

Warm

Not much more to say really. GrDF finally arrived as promised and our fab heating engineer had everything ready for the moment it was connected!

This was on Thursday evening - we've been too busy running taps since to post anything.

The new system works really well and we're pretty happy.