Final round up

And now rounding up some final pics which I don't think I've included yet. The blue item (really white, but covered with blue protective film) is the enormous shower tray which is now laid in place in the bathroom so that the boys could measure up for the waste outlet. It's 160 by 80 cm, enough space for a party!

The other two have to do with the fact that the floor tiles have now been selected and delivered. They are 60x60cm (2 feet by 2 feet) and pale sandstone pattern with an eggshell finish. They are to go across the whole floor of the place downstairs, the bathroom floor and the window reveals, where they should bounce a fair amount of light back up into the rooms from the rather low windows. Dad and Sparks have been trying them out as a dry-run (they won't be laid till the plastering is complete). In a house where no wall is straight, or parallel with any other, or perpendicular to any other, you just have to go with what "looks right" as seen from the front door, or when looking from one major room to another. The boys laid these out roughly, then settled on a position, marked it with a tight string, then spraying yellow 'speedline' paint over the string so that the string created a dark "shadow" line on the concrete. Cunning. We now need Mum to see these lines and agree they look right.

That's it for this weekend. My paws are weary from all the typing.
Deefs

Just the Three of Us

A quick shot to show the three of us in recent pictures. Bottom is myself, Deefer, of course, now 5 years old, middle is the H-Man (Haggis) at 15 and still going strong if a little confused at times and top picture is Coco, our newest recruit aged just 2. He was actually 2 on Paddy's Day evening so, sorry, Coco, we missed it! Many Happy Returns.

Deefs

More Parade

Some more pictures of the St Patrick's Day Parade at Silverwood's including the pipe band, an eye catching rally car which definitely had Dad focussed and those crazy women from the ICA.

St Patrick's Day parade

Saturday is St Patrick's Day and the Silverwoods are all about the three girls who are in the parade as part of their 'baton twirling' club entry. Even little R(4) is in their with a huge over-sized skirt hoisted up round her chest and fixed with safety pins and 'braces', and her tee-shirt pinned up with a 9 inch hem. they don't make the uniforms small enough, and R isn't even the smallest! She and the tiny tots will be marching at the front of the group just behind the club banner with Mums in close attendance. The oldest, Em-J, will be marching along with the teenage group twirling proper batons, and daughter No.2's group of pre-teens doing ribbon-dances in the rear guard.

It's Dad first one experienced first hand. The parade is the thing, and the whole town turns out. Every child in town belongs to some club or other so they are all in it, if not as baton twirlers, then as members of clubs doing kick-boxing, young farmers, play groups, schools, amateur dramatics etc. There are floats representing the Irish answer to Womens' Institute, "ICA" (Irish Countrywomens' Association), Farriers/Blacksmiths, Sports and athletics teams (especially Hurling and GA Football), Classic cars, rally cars, tractors and agricultural implements, marching bands, a bloke dressed as Saint Pat himself, a unicyclist juggling hurleys (the 'hockey sticks' used in hurling), a stilt walker, people dresed as The Simpsons for no apparnet reason, busses, lorries and so on. It was just pure fun - no pretensions, no airs and graces, no attempt to be 'cool' or sophisticated. Brilliant.

Mum and Dad adjourn to the nearest pub (The Druid) for a well earned pint of Guinness and a glass of red wine.

Deefs

Lawn Mower and Mitre Saw

The usual collection of pics to catch you up on what's going on around the main story of the week.
1) Dad gets involved in the cutting out of the wells for the electrical socket boxes and the fitting there-of. This is technically part of first fix electrical but Sparks says he's done a million of these in his life and has no issue with the apprentice handling these. They are all fitted standard distances from the finished floor, levelled with a spirit level, especially if they are in a row, and spaced a standard distance apart so that they look the business. Sparks is very particular about this (and everything else) and Dad is keen to do what he's told and impress. It is signed off as an acceptable job.
2) This week's new toy, a 'mitre saw'. This designed to cope with sawing to standard angles, so should be good for door frames, architrave and the spindles that make up the stairs bannisters.
3) With some time to spare on Monday morning and the lawn mower now un-buried from behind its pile of thermal panel boards (we're working our way through them, using them in the house) Dad decides to give the lawn a mow. He has half a tank of gas and 45 minutes and this proves enough on both scales to complete the front lawn, which is good to know. "Lawn" looks quite neat afterwards, too.
4) Any pile of rubbish dug out from this house and garden seems to contain more than its fair share of bottles and jars. Not all of them are booze, some are farm animal medicines and stuff like milk of magnesia but we wonder why they'd never heard of recycling.

Deefs

Landmarks

We've now done the run from Silverwoods up to the Roscommon House and back so many times that it's an old familiar route to us now. We mentally divide it into quarters and tick them off - to the M6, the M6, Athlone to Roscommon, theh Rosco to the house; roughly half an hour each and 2 hours total on a good day. We also find ourselves mentally ticking off some of the landmarks which caught our eye on early runs and we now see them as old friends. Here are some examples.

1) The antiques and knick-knack shop in Ballymoe does a good line in plaster (or possibly fibre glass) figures of farm animals and human figures. For weeks they seemed to have the same 3 foot high pink piggy on the pavement outside when they felt like it but sometimes not and Mum and Dad used to play a silly betting game predicting whether it would be "Piggy in or Piggy out?" Lately it's got a bit more complicated as 'piggy' became a choice of 2 pig figures, then a calf as well, and now these two 'villagers'. It's more like high stakes roulette now!
2) Famous racing greyhound Mick the Miller has a statue at the roadside in the village where he was bred, Killeigh, County Offaly, also the home of "The Seven Blessed Wells of Killeigh".
3) "Purple Pub"; this striking paint job is on the Clay Pipe pub in Knockcroghery (hich seems to be pronounced "Na-croggery") in County Roscommon.
4) Almost 'home' when we see this old ruin of a church outside Castlerea and many jokes have been made about this being the next project. When we were hunting properties all those months ago, J-M used to joke that Mum would like "that one", pointing to some old ruin with no roof. "Lots of character", she'd say, or "Plenty of potential".
5) Just outside Roscommon town is this strikingly bizarre tree which makes us think of the Whomping Willow in Harry Potter.

There are many others, whih I may bring you in posts to come.
Deefs

Utility Room

The biggest single job this week was to start the Utility Room. This is one of the outbuildings on the eastern end of the house which we have up till now known called the 'office' because when we found it it was full of desks chairs and farm and office paperwork - invoices for milk and vet supplies, records for animals etc. It also contained a load of school reports from when the Three Sisters and TK min were at school. Much of this paperwork was cleared out by the sisters in the last days before we moved in.

In fact, the building was almost certainly some kind of slaughter house or butchery room. It has floor-to-wall coving and a drain at its lowest point out to the yard as if it needed to be hosed down or pressure-washed. It is six inches from the house with an annoying gap into which has been thrown, down the years, a whole lot of old rubbish, scrap iron bits, bottles and general waste which has built up a heap between the two buildings which collects damp right against the house wall. To make things worse a bizarre decision to route a downpipe from the gutter down into here adds to the wet.

This is right outside the range chimney and has almost definitely not helped with the damp, slow-burn, creosote build up issue in the bottom of that chimney which we are only now being able to sort out by opening it up inside and clearing stuff from against the walls outside, getting a bit of a breeze through the place.

The old 'office' has a very flat roof which is badly rotted and is also a bit low for Dad who is 6'1" tall. The boys decide to remove the roof, replacing it with a new more sloping one spanning from a ridge plate fixed to the house wall, to a wall plate on the office outer wall. They will then be able to demolish the inner wall altogether adding a foot to the width of the room. The roof will be waterproof OSB ply like the extension with 2 layers of torch-down tar felt and with insulated foam panels between the rafters. The walls will be insulated panels and it will get a new door. It will be plumbed and wired and should easily take the washing machine and any other white goods, a sink for dog washing and a chest freezer. These will be in rows up either side, with a galley walkway between.

The inner wall proved to be very tough, made of poured concrete with rocks and stones lobbed in and puddled down. It was, joked Dad and Sparks, probably the strongest wall in the house. Why do we have to knock down the strong walls and keep the tired, falling down ones? Anyway, my pictures here are of the process so far. The roof came off, the new roof beams were mounted on the new plates and the inner wall was demolished using Dad's sledge hammer. By Friday afternoon, all the beams were in and the wooden boards fixed down. The ends of the beams were then marked and sawn off to sensible lengths so that a gutter can be fixed along the outside which will feed into one of our new gulleys. Rain stopped play on any torch-down felting so this will be picked up next week. A nice space is coming together. A good job.

Dog washing sink? Yoiks!
Deefs