Time flies...

Firstly apologies for the length of time it has taken me to write this post but time just seems to be speeding by! (also I have only just unpacked the box containing my Blackberry connector to upload photos!).

We moved at the end of July into our beautiful new home.

The upstairs was pretty much as we had hoped when we moved, definitely livable, if a little rough around the edges. The Children's rooms and our bedroom as well as the landing were almost finished. They had been painted, carpeted, they had blinds in windows and doors (almost) on hinges!
Since then they have been more or less finished, the doors and frames are painted, we even have curtains!

The bathroom is as it was... one can live with a certain amount of floral wallpaper!

And our bedroom is also pretty much there... with the exception of a few yet to be unpacked boxes!

Hmmm but downstairs.....

... that was another matter entirely!

This picture was taken at 1am the morning before the plasterers were due. In our wisdom we decided to remove the boxes surrounding the beautiful beams leading to much dust, rubble, swearing and clearing up not to mention having to cut and screw up tiny bits of plasterboard all the way along the edges of the beam...
This was on a school night and WRM had to get up and drive the 2 hours to Gloucester for work the next day while I supervised the plasterers with nowhere downstairs to put down a wriggly baby and due to the rainy weather nowhere for a 3 year old to play!

This is now our dinning room, which is our living space downstairs until we mange to remove a wall in the sitting room and get the other end of the house started, let alone finished!!
The oil fire now works which means we are capable of having some heat and we have an open fire at the other end of the house too. This is good bearing in mind that autumn is swiftly arriving with its chilly evenings and that we have 2 little tiddlers to keep warm (never mind a bucket of washing to dry!).

The kitchen is also a work in progress. It is functional. I have everything I need to cook and do the washing however because of the exposed wall and floor it is sooo dusty! Every time anybody walks upstairs it causes bits fall out from the wall over the surfaces! I have learnt not to cook using the back hobs following a lovely pheasant casserole with some little bits of what I though was shot, which turned out to be rubble!
There was also an early incident with the washing machine, which although (thankfully) plumbed in there is no water outlet, the hose needs to be in the sink.... I *might* have forgotten this the first time I did a load of washing... I *might* have ever so slightly flooded the kitchen and marooned the dog in its bed!

As for our fields, we eventually managed to cut the grass and make some haylage too! Just got it wrapped in time before it rained, was a little close for comfort though. We made 41 big bales, lucky ponies!

And yesterday WRM was very busy collecting wood from the fields with the quad and trailer and cutting and splitting it so that we can heat the "sitting room" end of the house (under the children's rooms) for free this winter. This pile is 2 deep and the sitting room is also stacked with wood too. Think he did a pretty good job in one day! Even with 2 little helpers!

We are very much enjoying living in our lovely house despite some parts of it being less than finished. The next challenge is to finish the landing and dining room completely and have it re-carpeted... then to the kitchen! And I have some digging and planting to do, bulbs and onion sets ordered and on their way as we speak.

Hope you enjoyed the update and I promise not to leave it so long before the next installment!

Towy Totty x