Between Christmas and New Year

Peter at work under the stairs

After the children had departed on December 27th we spent the day doing laundry, tidying up and going to the dump with the cardboard and paper!   Then we went to Southwold to continue our labours.  I refurbished another curtain for the kitchen and Peter attempted to put up a new curtain track for it.   Unfortunately he drilled rather too close to a power cable, smoke came out of the hole  and the trip switch went, but nothing worse, luckily.  However, he called a halt to his work and telephoned an electrician.  The electrician will call next week to check out the situation.  So a slight delay on getting the curtain up.   We took a brisk walk along the sea front as far as the pier and then back via the carpet shop to check on the front bedroom carpet, but the shop was closed for the holiday.

Instead we turned our attention to the cupboard under the stairs.   This has been emptied of coats and clutter so that the new floor boards that also run along the hall could be stained and varnished.   With the cupboard empty, the opportunity presented itself to freshen it up a little!   Hardly a priority, but the day was largely spent slapping white paint on.   Just the doorway and door and the skirting board to do and then we can get the coats back in.   It's an excellent space for storing 'stuff'.

Christmas 2016

This is how it works!

Putting on the decoratons

A large family gathering for several days over Christmas.  There were 9 of us in all and 10 on Boxing day when we were joined by Rupert's new girlfriend. 

Making Brunch

Simon and Tania cooked on Christmas Eve and Eliot and Nancy made brunch on Christmas Day.  The little boys dressed the tree and a good time was had by all!  Well, I hope so at least.

Tania

Our Boxing Day walk in Southwold was rather shorter than we had planned because we went to Gordon House for coffee and everyone spent time exploring and checking out what we have been up to.   There was general approval.

In the middle of it all, Eliot decides to inhale! 

Another step forward

More progress this week.   We now have curtains at one of the windows in the kitchen.  We also have carpet on the stairs and the upstairs landing.  Excellent carpet layers who took a lot of trouble to get it right.

Peter has started on staining the new floorboards in the hall prior to varnishing them.   A very awkward job as he has insisted on giving the same treatment to the floorboards in the understairs cupboard which is being decorated and will be a useful store as well as the coat cupboard. 

Front staircase - before

Front staircase - after

Bedroom staircase - before

Bedroom staircase - after

Upstairs landing

Progress

As of last Monday we have:

1. Completed bedroom (ours) with no curtains but a sheet pinned up at the window for the time being.   The bed is on castors and has trouble staying put on the polished floor.  We need to invest in some castor cups to keep us anchored!  Next job, make the curtains.
2. Cleaned and serviceable en-suite - apart from the absence of a shower curtain.  The pole fell down into the bath when I tried to attach the curtain.  Hilarious!  Next job, fix the rail and decorate the bathroom.
3. Newly decorated from bedroom - without curtains or carpet and now full of the contents of the study which is being decorated as I write. Next job, make curtains and order carpet.
4. Curtains at one end of the sitting room only.  They have thermal lining which keeps the heat in and the light out.  I have noticed the cosy effect already.   Unfortunately the curtains aren't exactly the same length.  One is just a smidgeon longer than the other three.  How did that happen!?   They have to come down anyway as Peter needs to fill up the holes he made putting up the track, so the defect will be remedied.   Next job, put up track at the other end of the room and make curtains.

There are an awful lot of next jobs! 😩

A little privacy required

Peter starts work on the curtain rails

We have succumbed to net curtains!   Not something we would normally do but we've noticed too many people pressing their noses to the windows and staring in!   We are right on the street and the temptation to peer in is clearly too great.   The remarks are mainly very complimentary, but all the same.   We have only gone for half curtains as a compromise. 

Peter fixes the door knob back on

We spent last week in Southwold mainly decorating our bedroom.   We've done an OK job - good enough for government work Peter tells me!  The quality of the paintwork won't win any prizes but at least it's all clean and fresh and we were able to get the bed and the chest of drawers out of the bathroom at last and give them a good clean.  We haven't been in there since the building work started and it was pretty dusty.  So now our bedroom is restored and we can use the bathroom. 

At the weekend Peter got the curtain tracks up on the two front sash windows and today I went down and started re-working the curtains we brought from London.  This involves a great deal of crawling around on the floor measuring and cutting.  I managed to get one curtain finished, hemmed and hung.  Three to hand...and that's just the windows at the front of the sitting room. 13 curtains  more to go!!

In which we get the sitting room into shape and start on our bedroom...

At last, we have cleaned the sitting room, removed the dust sheets and scattered furniture about.   It's beginning to look civilised.   We have taken the loose covers off the old settee that was left in the house.  Peter isn't keen on it, but it's really comfortable so I'm rooting for it.  The covers have been dropped off at a dry cleaners to be appraised for cleaning and dyeing.   We shall see if it's possible and how they turn out.    We need to find some rugs now.

I've been round the house in Norwich collecting up books that I've never got round to reading or have only got as far as the first chapter, and have taken them down to Southwold and started filling up the shelves in the sitting room. 

One end of the sitting room

The other end

We were going to start putting up the new curtain tracks this weekend, but we discovered that none of the packages contained the right number of fixings!   Most annoying and odd for good old John Lewis.   We called in on our way back to Norwich and they gave us the extra pieces we needed.   We may get some of them up tomorrow and that will be an incentive to start on the curtains.

The Liss lights

Instead of putting up the curtain tracks, we started decorating our bedroom.   We managed to paint the insides of the fitted wardrobes (unnecessary in my opinion!) and put two coats on the ceiling.  Quite good progress!   Tomorrow we go again and see what the paint colour we chose looks like on the walls - last thing today we painted some patches on three different walls to get the effect.  

Peter did all sorts of running repairs and improvements to the front door fittings and put up the lampshades in the sitting room.   These lampshades are original 70s shades and were given to us by our friends Barrie and Marion Liss when they moved from Stafford to France.   We had one in the Barbican, left by the previous occupant, and were delighted that the Stafford Lisses bequeathed theirs to us.  

And lastly, we purchased a tree at Darsham Nursery.  A Malus John Downie, which will have great blossom in the spring and fruit in the autumn.   https://goo.gl/images/UCX2uL

A busy weekend

We accomplished a lot of small jobs this weekend:

• Filled, sanded and painted the shower room window.
• Finished touching up the downstairs loo and cleaning up the paint on the windows (I never claimed to be perfect!)
• Painted some drawer fronts from our bedroom cupboards
• Raked out and filled cracks in the bedroom walls
• Raked out loose paint from the windows in our bedroom
• Pulled up and got rid of carpet from our bedroom and the two staircases
• Prepared the sitting room for the decorator by removing ancient curtain tracks and sundry hooks and writing the paint colours on the wall
• Purchased new knobs for our cupboards 

Goodbye yellow pipes!

The downstairs loo is now sparkling white.  We're pleased to see the back of the dingy yellow in there at least. 

We treated ourselves to a meal out on Saturday night and went to the Crown.    This evening we decided to go for a walk to get some fresh air, but it started raining as soon as we had got round the corner so we stood under a tree for a while and then walked on and stood under another tree and in the end cut our losses and walked round in a much smaller circle than we intended and got back home.

Tomorrow the man sanding the sitting room floor returns to finish off.  Perhaps a couple more days.  He's making an excellent job and it will look great.

Also arriving tomorrow is a decorator who is going to do the halls and stairs and the sitting room.  We shall see great progress in the next couple of weeks, though we think he has underestimated the time it's going to take him.

The decorating begins!

The builders have gone!!  And taken all our money!!

The house is ours again.  Billy, the decorator who has painted all our houses in Norwich at intervals over the last 40 years, has been and stayed for a week at Southwold to paint the kitchen.   It was a great favour to us as Billy has tried to retire for several years but keeps getting enticed back by his old clients.   All the kitchen equipment has now been rescued from various nooks and crannies round the house, washed and  installed in the kitchen and we can cook!  This is our first weekend actually staying at the house since Easter.

Today we have started on the make over of the downstairs loo.  Nothing dramatic, just swapping the yellow paint for white. 

We are trying to clear out the lounge so that a man can come and sand and varnish the floorboards.  He starts on Monday.  In moving some furniture we came across the remnants of an old hearth in the half of the room that no longer has a fire place.  They might just be Georgian or Victorian...so we are cleaning them up so they can be seen as a bit of house history.

Another decorator is booked to come and paint the halls and the living room and we have a date for the kitchen floor to be laid.  We're steadily making progress.

Raised beds filling up gradually.

Outside the garden still looks rather bare but some plants are in.  We need some large pots and a tree and I need to find time towards the end of the month to put in the 50 bulbs I've bought.

The beginning of the herb garden

Lusher's last stand

We are drawing towards the end of Lusher's total occupation of Gordon House.  We are their last job and the Administrators are pressing them to finish.   Many of the workforce have now received their redundancy and even our very good contract manager has finished.   That just leaves one carpenter in charge down in Southwold overseeing the installation of the splashback in the kitchen and the electrical contractor and the painters finishing off the outside of the house.  And sundry other odd finishing jobs, which we hope will include putting things back where they found them and copius use of the vacuum cleaner.   We fear, however, that we will have much cleaning up to do.

However, things are not all doom and gloom!   Peter and Rupert have sanded our bedroom floor and it's just about ready for varnishing.   It's going to look good.    The kitchen is in and looks good, although there are one or two oddities that could have been ironed out if it wasn't all so rushed.   It's come totally unfinished, which was not what we expected but luckily our long term decorator, Billy, is prepared to go and stay in Southwold for a few days and prime and paint it for us.

We are waiting for a quote for laying the kitchen floor, and we now have to plan our attack on the decorating, moving from one room to another.

The garden is coming on with plants going in and nearly all the plants left in pots by the previous owner being given a new lease of life in the raised beds.  The weather has been glorious for the last few weeks and the garden is a real sun trap.   We are begining to think about garden furniture.  Even though we are into September, it's been really warm and sunny.  

Family at Upton House

Finally, we got a copy of the group picture taken on our family visit to Upton House.  There's an odd couple inserted into the picture - the grandchildren of someone who also worked at the bank, who came to meet up with us.   I like the way all the little boys, who don't see each other that often, cosied up with their arms around each other for the photo.

And just when you think it can't get any worse!

Hall floor foundations

Last Monday we found out that our builders, a highly respected family business with a great reputation (they look after the Queen's Norfolk house for heaven's sake) have gone into Administration!   In other words, are on the verge of going bust.  Fortunately, we think, they have made a commitment to finish our job and we are keeping an even closer eye on things now, checking who's there doing what and progress.   At the moment the kitchen does not exist and a lot of the boards are up.  There's plastering to do and a piece of roof to sort out.   The whole house is thick with dirt and dust.  We're trying to stay calm.   In the meantime, we have a solid foundation for the new hall floor and new boards have gone down and been covered to protect them.   We've been sent photos of

We added more soil improver and fertilizer to the raised beds and begun planting.  I expect I'm putting all the wrong things in the wrong place, but at least with plants you can just move them about. 

More trouble at t'mill...

As soon as the kitchen floor was sorted, the investigations in the hall showed up another dire set of circumstances.   Apart from the woodworm and the death watch beetle damage, there is damage to the joists caused by the high level of soil under the floor.   Excavation has shown that there's hardly a salvagable joist in the hall and the staircase is supported on a wing and a prayer!   Ah, well.   Nothing that money can't fix...now where's my lottery ticket!

The hall 'floor'

Digging down

Temporary supports

Holding up the stairs

And holding up the wall

Upton House Family Visit

Saturday 16th July 2016 was a great family day out at Upton House.  There were 19 of us - all related in some way to my father Barney Adler - and we were looked after very well by the staff at Upton.  ,
Peter and I arrived first, quickly followed by Eliot, Nancy, Abe and Saul.  Sadly we had only time for a quick hug before we had to dash away and meet a couple who's grandfather had worked for the same bank as my father and who had also spent some of the war years at Upton House.  While we were talking to them in the restaurant, the rest of the family arrived and then we were treated to lunch, courtesy of the National Trust.   Then it was off to the house for free entry and the tour.

Upton House was transformed into the Country House Bank, recalling the years when the staff were moved out of the city of London to Upton to escape the bombing.  My father had written about his time there in his 'memoirs' and some of his stories had formed the basis for the exhibition.  Peter and I had heard the tour before when we went for the opening, but Barney's grandchildren and great-grandchildren were fascinated.   Ann Thomas, a volunteer with responsibility for oral history, was our guide and she had been my contact while the exhibition was taking shape, checking facts with me and asking for photographs.  The great-grandchildren ranged in age from 3 to 7 so there were some understandable moments of inattention!   Ann coped with noise, and questions and touching!

Barney and Joyce, my parents

This was my third visit to Upton House and I always come away feeling sad that my parents didn't live to see their own story captured in this way.

The family gathers for lunch

The start of the tour

In the 'banking hall'

My father's desk...

Boys reading

Supposedly, my father's bed

More introductions