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.