Robins, Riverford and Renovations

We called to our local garden centre on Saturday to return something, so we decided to get some breakfast and a coffee while we were there.  We were very well entertained at our riverside window table by a pair of robins, a pair of some kind of tit and a couple of little black and white birds dashing here there and everywhere.

Have I ever mentioned my complete lack of knowledge of flora and fauna, my head is just too full of other things for any of this to stick ... the robins are lucky that they mean so much to me.

.

The river was hurtling past, right at the very top of the bank, fascinating and very hypnotising to watch while sipping my coffee.

We didn't go for a full Riverford box last week, instead we got a salad bag each and some additional blueberries and another pack of hot cross buns.  But ... I've had enough of the hot cross buns now, seasonal eating is good but you can gorge too much on something when it suddenly appears on your radar.

I loved this week's newsletter.

On our way back from the garden centre we called to the bungalow, it had been a few days since I had last seen it and Alan and the builders had been working hard all week.

This is the view from the front door.

This is the old kitchen, who needs windows with glass in them when you can have a wooden board that the wind relocates. 😄

The old living room.  

As I said who needs windows, or in this case part of the front wall too.  We do seem to have gained a coat hook though.  Proper posh!! 😁

The biggest gain of the week is an actual concrete floor in the living/dining/kitchen room.

An actual surface to walk on!!

Just four more layers on top of this and the floor will be done, ah well it's all progress.

Alan and the builders will hopefully have all the floors to this stage by Thursday night, when the builders all down tools and head off to Spain for the Easter weekend.  We are obviously paying them far too much. 😄 

Sue xx

Just Read Books

 

With the suddenly colder weather back again I've been sinking into books almost every afternoon.  

It's cosy in my little living room with the sun streaming through the French doors on the sunny but 'cold outside' days, and it feels even cosier if the rain is battering the glass and I can be inside with the heating on and a cup of coffee to hand, and of course the occasional biscuit ... or three.

When the warmer weather appeared last week Alan brought our garden chairs down from his spare room and put them on the patio, then the weather turned cold, wet and windy and we have yet to actually sit on them.  One day soon ... hopefully, it will be warm enough, perhaps with a cardigan on, to sit outside and read on one of them.

We can but hope.  😎

In the meantime I will sit indoors and carry on really enjoying my latest book, it's one by Stanley Tucci.  It's the sort of book that I love, very foody ... enough to make me hungry while I read ... and very well written.  He has a slight sarcastic at time humour that I find funny, and gosh doesn't he know a lot of very famous people so well.

Being half Italian and a really good home cook, he's making me want to eat more pasta with his wonderful descriptions of the meals that he makes, which can only be a good thing considering my current spaghetti mountain.  😄

I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Sue xx

Purely Bungalow Renovation News ... and Floorplan

This meme really strikes home. 

We really are downsizing our home for the final time.  While I will have more square footage than the lodge, Alan will have a lot less than his current house and we will be sharing.  Hence this final move being quite possibly the last one we make together.

So it's important that we get it right.

After weeks of no floor, then a gradual infill of rubble floor, this week has seen Alan and the builders getting ready for the concrete to be laid.  The bricks from the walls being taken down were mostly used to bring the level to the right height.  Alan sunk the main pipes that will come from each bathroom into the floor and then all the gaps were filled with a top layer of sand, to protect the damp-proof membrane from puncture.

 On top of all these layers the thick insulation boards were laid in place in the dining/kitchen/living room ready for the concrete to be poured.  Our chief builder Paul could not resist a little tap dance to celebrate, now Alan just has to break it to him that this photo is going all around the world.  😄

It's all starting to come together nicely.

Nearly all the windows are now at their new sizes and with new concrete lintels.  This will be my en-suite shower-room window.

Country Cook asked in the comment section the other day for floorplans, so she could visualise how we are changing the layout of the bungalow.  Alan has all the 'proper' ones at the bungalow.  But here are two of the basic ones I worked on while I was originally changing the layout.  The original layout is on the left and our new one on the right.

I am a very visual person so I always look at floorplans of a property before understanding it or buying it.  Hopefully these make sense to you.  

I think that the best thing about this simplification, apart from it about to be the bungalow design that we have always wanted, is getting rid of the excess of doors that used to be there ... at least we managed to sell them all.  😄 

Sue xx

Washing Symbols, Snow ... and Choccy Balls

 

It's a slow news day today, hence the washing symbol chart that really made me laugh yesterday when it popped up in my Facebook Memories.

 I'm sat here with the heating having just come back on, it clicked on itself even though it's set at just 14 degrees so it must be chilly.  We had torrential rain, howling winds, flooding and snow yesterday ... so much for me thinking it's about time to unpack my Summer clothes.

How Alan and the builders are working in these temperatures at the bungalow I have no idea, but Alan comes home every afternoon and either heads straight back out to the gym to sit in the steam room and the hot tub, or he goes upstairs to fall asleep in a hot bath.

We called to Asda last weekend to pick up something that Alan needed, we don't have an Asda particularly close to us so it's somewhere we visit quite rarely.  They do have a brilliant selection of dairy-free chocolate goodies there, so I always enjoy a browse.  I was very lucky Alan decided that whatever I chose would be my 'Easter Egg'.

Now I just have to try and save them for nearer to Easter ... I  have to admit the Choccy Balls did not even last the day.  😁

Sue xx

Indoor Gardening, and Winding Down

 

Over the last few days I have been doing a few little jobs in the garden and I really thought I was on a roll, then yesterday morning I woke up to really heavy rain and temperatures that had plummeted ... as promised by the previous nights weather person.

So I decided to find an indoor something or other that I could do to try and keep me motivated.

A little trawl through my seed tin and I found two different kinds of courgette seeds, a pack of cucumber seeds and some rocket.  So I sowed them all in little pots with labels.

And now they live on the bedroom windowsill, alongside the chitting potatoes.

The potatoes that we have had from Riverford for the past few deliveries have been delicious, so I had decided to sacrifice three of them to see if I can grow some for myself this Summer.  Fingers crossed. 🤞

I'm not growing too much this year, for two reasons, firstly, my health.  Gardening is becoming increasingly difficult for me and I can only manage a few minutes at a time without a long rest, and secondly because of our imminent move we want to wind the garden here down to make it truly easily manageable, but at the same time we want to keep it photogenic enough for when we put this house on the market later this year.

So just a few vegetables, and our regular fruit from the apple tree and the blueberry bushes will be more than enough.

Sue xx