A few garden pics

We've had a fair bit of fencing work done, and we've had a little hack at it ourselves so took a few photos of the garden:

The pond's been fenced off to stop errant little boys trying to drown themselves. There's a row of trees (little whips) in either side of the fence now. A mix of Bird Cherry and Cherry Plum, so in blossom, a mix of pink and white flowers.

There's ivy everywhere. This is showing the 'after' picture, believe it or not.

View of the outbuilding, again, mobbed with ivy. That tree in the foreground has been the subject of some serious ivy removal work.

There's a big gate in the fence round the pond so that you can get a ride-on in there.

Looking back over the pond toward the house.

Bit further up the garden, looking back at the house

Bonfires! Getting this lot to light up at this time of the year is impossible. Going to have to rebuild it when it's drier and light again.

These twp pics are the strip of land we bought to square the plot up. A row of apple trees was here. It was part of the purchase that these were removed. We've had the fencing put in and a native hedge planted. It's a mix of Hawthorn, Blackthorn, Dog Rose, Guelder Rose and Cherry Plum.

Small start made inside

Because I've really spent most of the time doing outside projects*, there's not been too much progress inside. But, there's a start been made on this room:

This is going to be my daughter's room. It kind of looks 'Okay?' in the pic, but it isn't. The plaster is all soft, there's no point to that picture rail being up so high, and there's no insulation in the walls at all.

So time to smash the room up then:

As you can see, the door's off, and the floor's been lined with polythene, the rads removed and all the skirting and picture rails. And the fitted wardrobes.

We're not done yet, that wall with the window in it needs its laths removed. You can see that given that this is an outside wall, the construction is timber frame upstairs. Going from inside to out, the walls are plaster, laths, studs, felt and then battens with hanging tiles. We need to insulate - the idea being that we'll build out on the studwork uprights with 2x2 and insulate with batts between them. Then we'll use insulation backed plaster board on top of that.

The wall on the right is the wall that is between the daughters room and the sons. We'll use sound reducing insulation on this wall both sides for obvious reasons.

The wall on the left has a chimney brest in it. There's still a surprise possible behind that.

Lots of plaster to shovel out. Via...

... this home-made rubble chute.

* although there's outdoor projects done in mid-winter, there's method to the madness. The house has no storage (although the loft is now being boarded), and there's nowhere to put building/decorating materials. Also, things like stripping paint can't be done in the house with small children, so this is why a workshop/store is so important. Ah, yes, but the outbuildings, you say. Yep, but the candidate part of that is going to be used as a temporary kitchen when the real kitchen is being smashed up and rebuilt. So it's sensible really.

New house, new project...

Back in the summer, or perhaps late spring (in 2014), I happened to pick up a property paper on the way back from the station. On the back of it was a Savills advert, and on that was a house that was local and bigger than our current house, but with the added "attraction" of being a complete project!

I took it home to my wife thinking she wouldn't be at all interested, and in truth, I wasn't all that interested - we'd just finished the last house and we were settled there as a family with a 1 year old and a 5 year old. Anyway, wife was more interested than I thought and kind of infected me. We umm'd and ahh'd and then rang the estate agent and had a look. Having looked, we put in a bid. We didn't go too low, but we did ask for a piece of the neighbouring land to be included to square off the plot (the additional is that row of trees from the orchard at the top of the picture):

It wasn't to be, at least first off - another buying came in with a cash offer at full asking price. However it turned out that that for one reason or another this buyer didn't want to complete the purchase, so it came back to us that the owners would accept our offer, including the land we wanted. So we were in play - just had to sell our place...

Anyway, we managed that, and here we are. Bought the house in late November 2014. These, then, are very much the 'before' pictures. Some are taken with my phone while we were looking round the place, some are the estate agents brochure pics. They're all taken before we actually moved in, and as such, in the summer or early autumn. So the house looks lots worse now it's winter and it's full of boxes and so on that we've yet to unpack!

The house from the front / side.

And from the other side. The porch looks disproportionately big. Not much we can do about that - a different colour would help - white just accentuates the size.

Some views of the garden:

Lots of ivy on some of the trees...

Estate agent's photographer found some flowers:

Looking back at the house from about 2/3rds down the garden:

Looking at the neighbours across the pond:

Outbuildings:

That cage / kennel thing on the left went with the sellers.

Inside the house:

Sitting room:

Dining room:

Kitchen:

Master Bedroom:

Bedroom 2:

Bedroom 3:

Bedroom 4:

Bedroom 5:

Bedroom 6:

View up the upstairs hall:

... and the other direction (loo at the end):

Turning right after the loo toward the master bedroom:

Back outside - that door on the right is the outside loo.

Back door:

Looking into the utility room from outside:

View toward the front of the house, showing the other two stores in the outbuilding.

The piece de resistance, the endless pool (which lives in the middle two of the outbuildings):

And there it is.

Oddly enough, with a house this size, there's not that much storage. The outbuilding has this pool in it, one of the stores has the plant associated with the pool in it, so that's small. The other is not all that convenient because it's down a narrow corridor, and the loft isn't boarded out. Even coming from a smaller house, there was more room for 'stuff' because we had a boarded loft, a good sized shed, a double garage (that was home to only one car, and one bike, and of course, my lathe) and we also built small storage 'units' that held things like bikes, paint, oil and antifreeze for the cars etc. So now, we're in the position where to get ourselves organised and get room to move things about so that we can start the renovations that are so badly needed.

I'm keeping this site for the house only - other projects can be found here: http://eggsbenedictprojects.blogspot.co.uk/