Fine and warm weather on the way!

We've been waiting 6 weeks for the plumber and now we finally have a big warm radiator in our freezing cold bathroom. The weather will now undoubtedly warm up and we won't need it ... no need to all thank me at once! :-)

We now have some decorating and reflooring to do in the bathroom as to fit this in, we had to remove a shelf that was at the back of the bath. It's left a mark against the matchboarding which needs a heavy sanding down and repainting. The floor on the bathroom was pretty hideous and needed replacing anyway but it has to wait til the decorating is done obviously. So the bathroom looks worse than it did at the start of the day but it's much warmer now.

In fact everything we're doing to our lovely new home is making it look worse at the moment! 

We've had a 10mm armour plated power cable run from the electricity box to my new garden studio to get power out there. The electricity box is at the furthest point away from the garden (of course!) For part of its journey through the house it has gone in the void above the ceiling of the lounge so it's hidden but there was no alternative to going straight across at ceiling level of DH's study - it's a huge big black ugly thing so needs to be boxed in. DH has pointed out to me that the electrics on that wall are all surface mounted so he was always planning on dry lining that wall anyway to hide it so it was part of the plan to put it there - more work! 

Tomorrow there will be two pipes going across the same route to feed water into the ensuite so we'll hold off on the dry lining til after that is done :-) It's all in the plan ...

We've had our lovely sun terrace and bar-b-q area dug up to put in drains for a new bathroom we're adding to our bedroom to act as an ensuite. It's all been replaced now but when Ned was digging around, he found lots of old drains that are now heaped up messily in a corner and are waiting to be skipped away after the scaffolding has gone up for the construction of the ensuite (the new bathroom will replace a rickety old lean to "conservatory" which we are planning to demolish). Might as well take the rubbish away at the same time as then so I'm stuck with the rubbish in the corner til the scaffolder turns up ... Jed was supposed to be here yesterday. The plan goes awry! 

DH's Easter project was to put up some fencing at the bottom of the garden to stop the dog and tortoise falling into the river, we still wanted to be able to see the river through it so we've used larch poles and a two inch mesh which is practically invisible from the house. 

It looks pretty good doesn't it but there is earth all over the grass round the holes which needs properly raking and smoothing down and reseeding. Missy actually doesn't like getting wet at all and we're confident she wouldn't get into the river on purpose but the garden slopes quite a bit; if she went chasing a bird or a squirrel, I'm worried she wouldn't be able to stop in time! The fence also enables us to be able to play with a ball down there. There is a gate set at an angle so we can still get down to the jetty.

These gorgous ewes and lambs arrived into the field on the other side of our river on Monday ... aren't they brilliant? When I'm working in the studio now, instead of birds cheeping and quietude, there's loads of baa-ing - it's really great looking out on them and I can see them from our kitchen window as well. Love the way the lambs wag their tails when they're feeding :-) 

On our shortlist of houses to buy - before we settled on this one - was a converted barn with hardly any work to do and an absolutely beautiful garden; all we would've needed to do to it was get power down to the shed for me to work in ... we decided to go with this house instead because we thought it would be a project and having something to strive for keeps you young. We decided that we would just get old quick in a house that's all finished with nothing to do to it ... trouble is I feel about 80 thinking about all the work we have ahead of us!!! 

Hope everyone had a lovely Easter break :-)