We’ve had the fire on most days now for the last couple of weeks and although there’s enough wood on the land to chop for logs, it’s been one job too many – so yesterday we gave in and ordered a truck load (which will last us a couple of months). They were deposited in a huge pile at the back door – Ed ferried and I stacked. It’s just taken us 2 hours. How far away life in London now seems…
The radiators arrived today. 9 out of 11 survived the pressure testing. We went for gun metal grey and they look great.
The roof insulation is all in. We have 7 different roof spaces but as half of them had no access new holes had to be created to get the insulation in and then filled back up. We now have a thick blanket of wool above our heads which has surely got to make a difference…
However the plans for the biomass installation (See Preparing for next winter – Apr 7) have been seriously delayed. The council planners said to estimate 3 months so I doubled it and crossed my fingers that it would be in before Christmas. It’s tight. The man from the council is coming next week and it’s a 5 week lead on the boiler….
All the time we were living in London we’d see stuff in auctions, junk shops and antique markets that we would fantasise about buying if we had a big enough house. Now we’re here we have to stop ourselves from going too many auctions and markets until we’re ready…
Ideally we’d love to furnish the whole house second hand and nearly every room needs an overhaul; re-decorating and furnishing. Coming from a 2 bed flat means we have very little furniture – and most of what we do have doesn’t really work. In the long term the bathrooms and kitchen will also need replacing.
But we’ve got to wait. Our budget means we’ll have to do 1 room at a time and until we have a clearer idea of what exactly we’re going to do – it’s dangerous to start buying too many things – especially big bits of furniture.
So for now we’re sticking to generic or small at the cheaper end of the market. Here are some of our bargain vintage finds to date…
