Spring Flowers

The garden is full of wild violets and primroses.  The wild garlic is beginning to flower and smell and the birds are singing their little heads off.  Unfortunately we are still plagued with magpies and yet another squirrel has appeared on the block!!

Progress

We have now got an opening for the french doors!!  Hooray.  The downside is that next week they may take the chimney breast out of the kitchen - major mess.  There is a delay on the delivery of the roof trusses for the rebuilt extension due to the Easter weekend which is the reason for bringing forward the demolition work inside.

Stab Bound Books

Almost to the final week of this term of the Creative Bookbinding Class.  Last week we did a couple of stab bound books.  The one with the paper beads on the spine is a traditional method of binding.  The other one has the cover edges folded inwards and the thread tied inside.  We made the marbled paper, experimenting with three methods of marbling.  I also had a go at home using shaving foam, something I had not tried before.

Moon over Malvern

My apologies for the quality of this photo.  For some weeks now we have seen the moon with Jupiter and Saturn (?) close by.  I have been fascinated by the brightness of them, the largest is the moon, then Jupiter and finally Saturn.  We get amazing views of the stars here and I often end up standing in the garden gazing up at them on clear and relatively warm evenings.

Progress of sorts

This was last week.  Things have moved on apace this week and we now have a proper window hole in the breeze block wall and will shortly have a proper opening for the french door in the white section.  The existing holes are where the windows were.

Believe the steel girders will arrive either Tuesday or Wednesday so we will then have more deconstruction going on in the Breakfast Room/Kitchen and upstairs in Bedroom 3.  No roof on the Breakfast Room at present so the wall joining it to the Kitchen has to stay put for a while yet.

I am frantically trying to put together a waxing demonstration for Wednesday morning's meeting of the Ad-Venture Group.  I madly volunteered to do 15 minutes this month using church candles and paper.  I will never learn!!

Bedroom 3

The chimney has now gone.  The picture on the left shows the view from the door into the room.  Our lovely new roof is quite clearly visible and the new water cylinder.

The picture on the right shows the small window in what was the under eaves cupboard.  There is another larger window in the actual bedroom as well.  The Steel girder is awaited and then work can proceed on getting it finished.  The water cylinder is to be boxed in and the ceiling reinstated and, of course, lots more plastering.  At the moment there is still a square hole through the floor which goes down the chimney in the kitchen.

Work in Progress

This was poor old Craig digging the 1.8 m footings.  He ended up standing on a breeze block because we reached the water table and he was getting his feet wet.  The wonderful blue graffiti is where the supporting pillars need to go for the steel girders.

We have now had the concrete delivered and the footings are full with that and some foam board which compresses if the clay swells.

Floor beams have also arrived, so providing it does not rain on Monday, we will be able to see some real progress next week.

Sunset Leigh Sinton Road

This was the view from our Lounge window on Saturday evening.  At least you cannot see the mini digger and all the soil that is piled high to the right of this scene!  We are not meant to get good sunsets, you have to live on the other side of the hills to appreciate those.

Flag Book

We all made flag books at the bookbinding class this week and surprisingly we all finished them.

Mine has some of my wallpaper paste paper on its cover and some nice bright card inside to make the flags.  Afraid you have to be very accurate at measuring and cutting out the pieces for the flags, which is not one of my strong points.

One very clever person used two large photographs (she had looked flag books up on the Internet) and it was really effective.

Someone else made more than 3 rows of flags with plain white paper and the contast of dark and shade gave a really pleasing result.

A longer piece of card allows you to have more folds and thus you can add more flags to the book.

Demolition

This arrived on Friday and I have got custody of the key until Monday.  It is going to dig our 1.8 mtr footings.  It looks like fun to me!!

This is our third bedroom.

A bit of down time on Friday caused by problems with the planning office on the extension meant that part of the fireplace and chimney has been removed and is now awaiting an RSJ.  The rest of the wall will then be taken out to include the under eaves cupboard as part of the room.

Our wonderful new central heating hot water cylinder is in there but will eventually be boxed in.  The blue drawing on the wall is where the brick pillars have to go to support the RSJ.

By the way that pole in the foreground is temporarily supporting the ceiling - just in case!!

Pattern - Wasps Nest

Hope none of you are afraid of creepy crawlies.  This is a small wasps nest that was found in the loft of the 'Sun Room'.  Martin very kindly took it down for me without damaging it and I have taken some photographs of the patterns.  The colours are like swirls of caramel and it is paper thin.  It is an amazing structure and just begs for some sketching to be done.

I missed out when we had the new roof on the house because there were around 30 nests up there, some still inhabited, but I did not think to acquire some of the lovely fabric from them and it was all thrown in the skip.

Demolition Day

Today saw the 'Sun Room' being totally demolished to make way for our new Breakfast Room.  There was one thing that was for certain - it was never going to fall down!!  Martin & Craig worked really hard and things seemed to be going swimmingly until the Building Regs man arrived.  It seems we have to have footings of 1.5 metres and have to remove two trees from the garden.  The structural surveyor was summoned and he is busy drawing up some new plans for the floor and footings to submit to the Building Inspector before we can progress further.  At this point I made a hasty retreat and went to the Worcester branch meeting of the EG for a talk by Marie Roper about her dolls.

PLAN B was to start and demolish the chimney in the third bedroom tomorrow, but since I returned home it looks like this has been put on hold temporarily, unless the weather turns really nasty.  Keep your fingers crossed as there is only so much I can cope with at once.

House Renovations

This is the main reason I have been quiet for the past week.  There was an archway between the Lounge and the Library area(?) and we have had it blocked up.  Of course there were unforeseen problems but all seems to be okay at the moment.  Demolition of the walls on the other side has started this week.  The cat was most interested in the hole left overnight at the top of the new wall and he kept sitting on the pile of blocks holding up the Acro prop looking up at the hole.  Thankfully he did not decide to leap up and go through it.