All Quiet

All quiet now that the pigs are gone.

We are enjoying a quiet few days between the departure of The Dans and the arrival of the next Help-X volunteers. It is extra quiet here at the moment because we have now finished the pigs - a euphemism for taking them on their final journey (which is , itself, a euphemism for taking them to slaughter). It is not that they are especially noisy with squealing for food or craving attention. It is the very bass-y grunts they chunter out as they move about. The noise carries right across the garden so, no matter where you are, you'd know there were pigs close by.

The ark. Redundant now till next year?

The pigs were booked in for early Wednesday. We knew we could load the pigs into the trailer with no problem - these pigs were trained and would sprint up the race for their breakfast. We could snick the door shut on them before they'd hoovered up the tempting fruit.

However, in my current, weakened state, I was not at all sure we could push the loaded trailer, with its 180 kg piggy payload across the dippy grass to the hard standing where stood the car. Step forward our good friends Suzy and Rob who volunteered to donate their early morning muscle; they are easily our closest 'barter' partners when it comes to man hours of help. They were headed on to Castlerea afterwards, so they also opted to come to the butcher's and help us unload the animals, after which we'd adjourn to Benny's Deli for a coffee and croissant breakfast.

Blue among the hops.

That was the pigs "finished". The carcasses now sit in the butcher's cold store round to Monday while the meat sets. We collect them around mid-day Monday and have an afternoon armed with the bone-saw, knives and cleaver, breaking them down into kitchen-friendly chunks. By then, we should have the new Help-X volunteers with us (Sonja and Asbjörn), both chefs of a sort, so I am fascinated to see if they want to get involved or whether butchery is too far "up stream".

Work boots.

For the next few weeks, Elizabeth is calling Thursday her 'busy day'. Regular readers will know that she is currently on a once-a-week, year+ long Horticultural course which absorbs every Thursday.

Red Admiral.

For these few weeks, this has become a Thursday AND Friday outdoor module on Hard Landscaping. A gang of them are out by the church at Ballinlough finding out all about digging foundations, creating hard paths, building planters, erecting an arbour, doing stone-work and even learning about re-pointing walls with lime mortar.

Hollyhock.

On with the work-boots then, tough gloves and at least have your wet weather gear in the car. Elizabeth also needed a hi-viz jacket, so she grabbed one that had been hanging in the shed for who knows how long. She did not pay too much attention, but this one had my name and the name of "Exel" (logistics) on the front panel but "PROJECT MANAGER" writ large across the shoulders. This drew a fair amount of friendly flak and banter from the rest of the 'students' - "Come on then, YOU're the Project Manager...how do we do this?"

Lupins doing well in the nursery.

Then, as if she'd not done enough physical stuff for that day, she signed up for evening classes on furniture restoration starting last night. I couldn't go to this one as she had to be there early to help set up and the birds here would not yet have gone to bed yet, but from the report back it sounds a fascinating course. Elizabeth had taken 3 pages of notes on tools and techniques and is now looking hungrily at a pair of old favourite blue chairs we have in the Sitting Room. Watch this space.... I sense a 'project' in the making.

Very slow cropping but tasty.

That's about it for this one.. I will just do a quick meander through a few other pictures. By the time I next post, we should have the Help-X couple on board and the pork in the freezer.

The 'Summer' 'Parma-style ham is only fit for the stock pot now.

Blackberries were a bit variable this year due to the drought.
We have not (yet) been out picking.

Is It Really Two Years?

Waiting in the lanes in Holyhead Docks

The 12th of December. It was two years ago today (and probably to the hour) that we completed our heroic convoy trip for 500 miles across the UK and Ireland in the 2CV and trailer and the little Fiat. About now we were arriving at the solicitor's in Strokestown to collect our keys before driving on the extra half hour or so to our front gate. We had driven through the afternoon and evening across Britain and caught the overnight ferry from Holyhead to Dublin's North Wall.

First arrival in convoy. We have MOVED!

We were still at that stage, 95% terrified that we'd done the wrong thing and made a big mistake. The house, once we'd got a chance for a proper "owner's" look round (where we could start ripping up bits of floor and breaking into stud walling!) was not getting any better than we'd feared. It was going to be a big job to get it live-able, never mind 'nice'. We laugh now, of course, at our naivity. We'd looked at the cake-icing "concrete" (Ha!) of the floors and wondered if spongy-lino would cover it. We looked at some wood-wormy floor boards and wondered if a few patches might fix it. (Ha! again). We also laugh a bit about the "survey" which had to pay for for our own peace of mind (Ha!) ; the guy had managed to find central heating (there was none) and had failed to find the septic tank which we had specifically asked him to confirm the presence/absence of.

Horrors uncovered now we are in

Readers who were with us back in December 2011 will know that we engaged Sparks as Project Manager and Main Builder and ended up doing way more work than these first fumblings had suggested, ripping out every bit of wood below the rafters and going down 17 inches into the floor to come up again with gravel, modern thermal panel blocks, and a new concrete floor and floor tiles. We were sometimes in awe of what we needed to achieve but we'd burned our bridges, There was no turning back or running for cover back "home"; the house in Kent was sold, paid work was gone.

It's been quite a ride and we loved that we had this blog, internet discussion groups, Facebook and email on which to share the story with all our friends and the workmates and family we'd left behind. Was that really only 2 years ago? We are now so firmly established here that it feels as if we've been here way longer than just 2 years. Definitely the biggest, most daunting and scary DIY project any of us (including Sparks) had ever engaged in. As we were told at the time - "How do you eat an elephant?....... One bite at a time".

Been Here a Year!

Happy Anniversary, House! It was on April 26th 2012, exactly a year ago that we had finished the renovation of this house far enough to be able to move in. Project Manager, Sparks shared the meal depicted here on the 25th and then departed the next day so on the 26th we left the caravan which had been home for 4 months and officially moved in to the house. We had no mattress at that stage, so we blagged mattresses off the single beds but that didn't worry us. We had created a live-able, if rather bare, space. It was a brilliant achievement of which all three of us are very proud.

Back to Inspect?

Readers who have been with us since last winter will know that the Brother in Law, known as "Sparks" in these pages was here throughout the house build as our Project Manager and main Builder. Officially 'just a sparks' he was actually able to do all of our demolition, purchasing, general buildering, all the plumbing, carpentering, tiling and all manner of other heroics so that Liz and I, with our much lower levels of practical skill, could stick to labouring and catering and other service functions (driving, shopping for plumbing supplies etc). You'll also know that we were all very proud of ourselves, back in April 2012 when Sparks semi-officially handed the house over to us, big celebratory meal, job done, brilliant, and headed back to his 'real life' Mrs Sparks, son Brian (4, now 5) and North Dublin.

It won't therefore come as a big surprise that we are, as a result, slightly in awe of Sparks (despite Liz being 'Big Sister' in many other ways) and when he comes down on a perfectly innocent visit we always worry that we are being inspected to make sure we are looking after 'his house' in a satisfactory way. We get over this by the time Sparks has been here a few minutes and has not fallen about laughing, and it is well buried by the time he has looked around and seen what hard work we have been doing on poly tunnel and veg garden, and we go on to have a lovely time meeting them all again.

Brian just LOVES it here, his day down on 'the farm' and his chance to charge about doing stuff with Uncle Matt , cooking with Auntie Liz etc. He is as excited as any 5 year old at all the space to run around in, pups and kittens to play with, chickens to feed, geese, rabbits to see and all the other stuff that goes on. He loves to dig up worms for the chickens and spends lots of time, shovel in hand, inevitably surrounded by the chickens who arrive immediately anyone starts to make digging noises here, and is only slightly non-plussed at the rooster crowing within feet of the back of his head.

He was all a bit too much for the geese, who ran a mile every time he appeared, but they are new and nervous and will probably get used to him. At least they were not attacking him.

The visit also gave Liz a chance to do 'hostess' again and Brian coped very well with the fact that the lamb he was helping Liz cook, was one of the ones he fed by hand last year. For Liz it was a chance to use the halogen-light powered slow cooker, which is a gift from the Silverwoods. Liz went for a Moroccan style meal this time well smeared with garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, onion and enough yogurt to make a paste.  Brian was on hand to help grate carrot, mix mint sauce with yogurt, measure out cous-cous and add cinnamon and raisins.

Brian is well able for this, loves his cooking and often helps his Dad in the kitchen. Mr and Mrs Sparks have given him plenty of supervised practice with the 'serious knives' so that he can now be trusted not to add too many fingers to the mixture, and is really good with the measuring and mixing. He knows some recipes off by heart - leek and potato soup for example, and if Spag-bol is on the menu he will have all the ingredients out of their cupboards and on the work surfaces ready to start, without being told.

So, we had a lovely visit and everyone enjoyed them selves. We were sad to see them all go, but also exhausted in the way you are when an important visit has gone off successfully. Thank you, as ever, Mr and Mrs Sparks and Brian. You are welcome back at any time.

19th Anniversary

Well, every one, we made it to our 19th Wedding Anniversary! It's been an interesting year in which we've spent some time apart (once we'd moved out of the Faversham house, Liz was at Diamond's, I was in the caravan or Hastings and then over here, house-hunting) and some time in very close proximity (the famous caravan). We've had all the stresses and strains of  being made redundant (me) and giving up a job which got seriously awful by the end (Liz), selling up and moving countries and the gutting and rebuilding a farmhouse in County Roscommon. Yet, here we still are, still madly in lurve with each other and nobody has been killed and buried under the patio. These two are our most recent pictures, taken by Sis-in-Law Pauline C (Mrs "Sparks") on the occasion of their recent visit down here to visit.

This was Sparks's first visit since the completion of the rebuild project way back in April and Mrs Sparks and son Brian (5)'s first ever. They therefore saw it with the garden reasonably well advanced and with the 'small holding' coming together quite well. Brian loves all that and had a whale of a time feeding sheep, chickens, rabbits and baby chicks, getting chased about by puppies and cuddling kittens. He was a very tired boy by the end of it and Mrs Sparks tells us he was 'in a coma' that evening, sleeping like a log.

We love these visits and a chance to show off the place and, in the case of Sparks, it has the added pleasure of knowing that he was the main king-pin in the build project, Project Manager and Main Builder, so most of what he's looking at, he put together with his own hands (helped, admittedly, by Liz and I and a few tradesmen) so, to a degree, we feel like we are being judged on how well we have looked after 'his house'!

Happy Anniversary!
Matt

Sparks, Doors and Windows

It's been a big week for us down at the house, with plenty going on, so I'm going to cover it off in a series of posts over this weekend rather than try to squeeze it all into one. If you are seeing this version with no pictures, that's just because the pics are currently on another laptop which is in use. I will load some pictures on soon, so please do re-visit these posts when you get a chance.

The main bit of news is the arrival on site of Sparks, our Project Manager. He'd visited before Christmas and pointed Mum and Dad in the right direction to give us plenty of work over Christmas and the New Year (pulling down ceilings and pulling the plaster board off stud-walls, pulling up the living room floor (wooden) and chipping off some plaster, as well as more superficial stuff like tearing out cupboards, kitchen equipment, the bathroom suite etc.). Sparks is pleased with this progress and compliments us all on our hard work but now that he's on board we can step up the pace a good deal. He tends to go at it all a bit more vigorously than Mum and Dad, making more noise and achieving a whole new level of destructive ability. He wields the big hammer and the longer crow-bar with no fear of damaging something vital where Mum and Dad now look like they were pussy-footing it a bit. The frames for stud walling are ripped from their bases as 6 inch nails are prised free, the bangs and clangs of a lump hammer swinging reverberate and the serious crunch of damage being done to masonry echoes across Roscommon.

Sparks though, is also the project MANAGER, so he has all the planning, measuring, deciding and prioritising to do. He decides whether a floor should stay or go, whether a joist is bad enough for replacement, or needs repair or just needs spraying with the treatment chemical. He knows what order things should be done in, so he has mental time-lines of when to order stuff to arrive by, or on which days to hire equipment. He has the note book and the tape measure and the constantly ringing mobile phone. On Monday he has Nathan from the doors and windows firm (Munster Joinery) coming out to measure us up, let us choose styles and quote for the job. This puts a smile on everyone's face - where we'd all been half expecting the doors and windows to be one of the major expensive purchases, they turn out to be very reasonable. We accept the price and Nathan will send back two of his measurers/fitters tomorrow to measure up properly and dot the i's and cross the t's on the task.

So Monday sees the stud wall frames between the two halves of what will be the main bedroom torn down revealing what will be the final size of the main bedroom and what the Dining Room will look like united with the former 'hall', so that the stairs run up one side of the room and there is space under them for a computer desk. Sparks having had a good look at the joists exposed by our work around Christmas though, thinks we will probably need to completely replace the first 4 joists working from the west end of the house (including a bit of a weird bodge made to accommodate the then upstairs fireplace; we are not going to use the fireplace so we can revert to a simple single house-deep joist beam there). We will also need to re-end or repair a couple above the front door in the short bit of landing, and possibly a couple in the Dining room ceiling. They have suffered rather from woodworm or near windows where possibly because of the single glazing and 15 years being closed up, the condensation has left them continuously damp.

More in the next post
Deefs