A few from the year off

Let me take you back through the mists of time, back to a time when temperatures averaged some 10C higher than today, the country was covered in verdant vegetation and man had no need for Justin Beiber. Let me take you back to.... May 2010!!

As I wasn't keeping the blog up at the time these pics of me and the Doris/Dozza/Dozzoire (mum) sorting out the front garden and stripping the ivy off the front of the house in awesome weather last year, got lost on my hard drive.

Anyway, here they are in all their slightly self indulgent glory. Come on summer, hurry up!

 

"This is as high as I'm going without a risk assessment"

  

"Mungo love gloves, Mungo love gardening"

 Back to work Dozza

 

 Doris attempts to stem the blood having cut off her right ear with the shears

  

Doris attempts the Buttercup trick with purple flowers, discovers she likes Prince

All systems go go go!!

Firstly an apology for not posting anything on here for over a year. The long and boring reason for this is that it's taken nearly the whole year to get planning permission and we didn't want to prejudice the councils decision by spouting a load of (probably libelous) nonsense on here. The short (also boring) reason is that I'm very very lazy when it comes to this sort of thing.

The big news is that we now have planning permission (with a load of pre-commencement conditions) for the renovations we want to do to Coombe Cottage and have started work opening up beams and clearing the interior to allow our architect and engineer to complete the necessary work to satisfy the planners that we are going to do this properly. It would be nice to just get cracking on the proper building work but slowly, slowly and all that.

After 15 months of owning the cottage it got to the stage where we doubted we'd ever see any work starting, so it was slightly surreal to turn up there yesterday morning to see builders vans outside and Pete and his guys already starting on the opening up. The nasty 60's kitchen was in a pile in the garden as was most of the bathroom and all of the downstairs lino... Brilliant.

Not the best pic I know but seeing white vans (and my crappy Volvo) out front is weirdly exciting.

Here's what was the kitchen and bathroom on the ground floor. This second staircase will be swapped around so it starts by the far window and the partition is being taken out to make it one room. For the time being the toilet will stay for the guys to use during the work, nice and private eh!

 

Even at this early stage some really nice features of the house lost over the years are starting to be uncovered. This is the stone flag floor of the front room that until this morning was covered in a rotting concrete screed. Presumably it was covered over because the flags were cold or uneven, either way they are an amazing feature of the house and it really is mind blowing to think they could have been laid 600 years ago.

     

and for one last pic check out just how steep and tight the stairs from our bedroom are, can't wait to tackle these after a few ales.