It’s suddenly much warmer today. Unfortunately the front hasn’t passed yet so it’s just grey and raining all day. Pretty damned miserable if you ask me, but hopefully it means that the house might be a little warmer too.

We’re still somewhat limited in what we can do since the car isn’t back unfortunately. When I got downstairs however I’d expected to see Matt working on something but seems he was doing more research. It takes a lot of time to plan what you need when everything you need comes in multiples of 100. Now I’m up though we can make a start on preparing the plasterboard for the chimney. This took much longer than you might expect. Matt trimmed it, then we tried it again, then he trimmed it some more, and so on. Eventually we manage to get it into the right shape and screw it on.

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There’s no point filling it with insulation at this point for two reasons, 1) it will get in the way when we are running the gaines down the chimney and into the basement, and 2) there’s no heat in the house to keep in anyway.

Since the rain has stopped we have a quick wander around the garden. Clearly there is a lot of work to be done in the fenced off area but good to be able to explore with the nettles having been pushed down by the snow. Not sure what those cages would have been used for and saw a couple of things that we didn’t know what were, the mottled nettle sort of thing and the plant with attractive red stems. Any ideas?

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As we walk down to the far corner we finally find what Tonia had been searching for for days before she returned home, her blue electric cigarette. I’m not sure that being under a foot of snow for a week or more that has then melted is going to have done much for the battery though.

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I also have a quick check on my helebores. They appear to have come through just fine, as far as I can tell, good thing that they are snow hardy. I think they’re usually good to -5 and it’s certainly been lower than that, but I will keep an eye on them over the coming few weeks. It also turned out that Matt can speak French Cat – who knew! The two of them were chatting away for ages and she was much more talkative than Reg.

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Back in the kitchen and we need to remove the loose plaster, there’s no point leaving it there as anything we put on will come off too. Just a couple of taps with a hammer and it would crack and fall off so was a pretty easy job. There’s a lot of dodgy plastering in this place too as it bulges significantly around the doors too for some unknown reason. Looks as though when we redo it we will have to set the door back a bit further into the frame.

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Once we have the car back we will need to get a load of plaster so that we can start on some of these walls. We’ll start on this back wall as it will be covered by units so not a bad place to practice and hone our skills.

Also need to remove the last of the skirting board and railing. Doesn’t take too long but brings us back to the question of what we are going to potentially replace it with, once we finally start to rebuild. I think some wainscoating is probably a good idea as it will help to wrap the kitchen and bring the whole thing together, creating a cohesive sight line level with the units and bottom of the windows. I also very much like the existing colour and think it will go really well with the new units. Will have to consider in more detail again once we are closer and have put the units in to ensure that the dimensions work.

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In order to understand what we are doing upstairs we need to look again at what is there and how we might be able to run the required lighting, power and data. While we are up in the attic we have a look out of the window at the lovely chimney tops and unusual hooks. They appear to be attached to the internal beams so can only assume that they are there to support someone outside working on the roof – you can bugger off it you think I’m ever going to do that!

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We also need to re-measure for our floor plan. Our existing measurements don’t make a lot of sense. We’ve had a look at the floorboards and looks as though they are tongue and groove. While we are keen to do a lot of things ourselves it’s important to recognise when and where to use a professional, this will be one of those times. Having considered it in detail, the only sensible way to do this is going to be to get a professional in to lift them, we will run the power etc and insulate, before getting the professionals to re-lay it.

Rang mum. Was good to catch up with her as it had been a while and was pleased to hear that she liked the suggested flooring. Dinner’s ready though so need to wrap it up. We made some bread today to go with dinner, I have to admit – it was really good and happy that Mum gave us her bread maker.

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After dinner we play with the floorplans again to test the flooring and wall treatments. It doesn’t look quite right and we can’t get the right colour/finish but I think Matt is generally on board. What it does uncover though is that we are going to need to think about where we create the join. While the lino rolls are 4m and the room is about 3.8 the doorway adds another 50cm. Probably not a good idea to have a join in the highest traffic area but I think we can solve that by having it over by the window to the external wall. Most of that side will be covered in units so will only be a small area and largely unused.

Looking at woodburners again and it looks as though we can get the higher spec one to fit but it is going to be pretty tight. This is going to have to remain under review until we can get a good look at what the floor there is made of.

The other thing that will need some consideration is what we do about inserting a new hearth. Lino won’t fare well in front of a new fire with the amount of heat it will push out so we’ll need some tiles or something. My instinct is to make it plain, dark blue. Any pattern would jar with the current flooring plan and be overwhelming. We may also put a plain navy run across the door so match the black run in the hallway. It doesn’t need the additional decorative bit, in my opinion, but I am willing to look at it again in the fullness of time.

Planning the bathroom for bedroom 2 remains a point of some contention and will need to be revisited again but we’ve had enough for one night. Time to get the house tidied a bit as we are due to have the pellet boiler consultation tomorrow and it’s not exactly pristine. Matt is tired so he’s off to bed while I finish the blogs from last week and yesterday before I duly follow.

[17 January 2021]