Another good week at Southwold

A lot has been achieved in the last three days:

• Curtains have been altered and hung in the front bedroom
• The carpet has been laid in the front bedroom (not by us of course) and the bed made and the TV installed and it's ready for occupancy! 
• The electrician has been and checked the hole that Peter drilled in the cable sending out a large bang, but, thankfully, nothing worse.  The hole has been patched and the batten for the curtain track installed.
• The curtain track has gone up and the curtain for the second window in the kitchen has been altered and hung.
• The handrail from the stairs to our bedroom has been sanded and stained and is ready for varnish in the morning.
• The hall floor is black and gleaming and really looks good.  All Peter's work.  His Christmas kneedpads have proved their weight in gold!
• The redecoration of the understairs cupboard is complete and coat hooks screwed back on.  We are on the lookout for more.
• The wardrobe doors in our bedroom have had another coat of paint.  They weren't exactly right.  So far just the lower doors done.  The upper doors still remain to be finished tomorrow.
• The thresholds to all the rooms have been re-varnished. 

Front bedroom

Front bedroom

Arts and Crafts hall table and umbrella stand and the gleaming hall floor

 

 

 

Plate made by yours truly in pottery class! Pattern from 50s wallpaper I had in my bedroom.

One end of the kitchen. Note Liss Bros bureau

The unholy holly

We have been giving the holly tree by the back gate the evil eye.   It's been badly pruned in the past and is lopsided with foliage on the street side only.  It is a roost for pigeons which foul the path to the back gate and the gate itself.   I have made enquiries and as the trunk at head height is bigger than a bean can we have to make an application to remove it.   There are two forms and a set of instructions.  This should be fun!

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