I know everyone has a love hate relationship with a contractor and ours is no exception. He is so damn slow and never does anything he says he will. We are so far behind in the process and everything that was promised remains undelivered. Thankfully the Plumber has been here. Jason is fantastic. Fast, neat and very professional. Takes real pride in his work. I would recommend him to anyone. His girlfriend is also a falconer which is cool too. He brought a Peregrin falcon to the job site one day...we were not here to see it.
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| Jason's handy work for the master bathroom vanity |
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| The in wall toilets are all in |
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| Even the point for the washer drier upstairs has gone in |
As you can see we are still only at framing phase because patching the floors and building the doors has taken 4 weeks. Yes that's a lot longer than it should have taken but we have to admit that what he has done he has done well. The back door has been reconstructed with some old poplar beams. There is a wonderful bead on the beams that match the originals within the house.
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| New Door Frame constructed using mortise and tenon. Lovely hand beading |
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| New Door frame in the traditional hand made style |
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| Restoring the Mow door with a new footer made out of old chestnut |
The Mow door is also being restored. We've repaired the floor at the door and have a new footer which has been planed to make it look like it has been used over the years The original frame was rotten at the bottom so the sides of the Mow will be patched with similar wood so that it will look almost exactly how it looked originally.
Now, some of you might remember that we took out the ceilings in all the downstairs rooms to restore the house to its original look - boards and beams as the ceiling. Unfortunately, when we took out the ceilings a couple of the original floor boards had been cut over the years for some reason and had been supported by the joists that held up the ceiling. This of course caused us problems as we needed to find a way to repair the floorboards so they could support people walking on them. We opted for inserting steel bars (rebar) and fixing them in place with epoxy and wood-shavings that will later be stained to match the floors.
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| Repairing floorboards back to structural strength |
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| From below. These will be sanded and painted and you will never know |
During all this time Daniel and I are still slumming it in the tent. In fact, I'm writing this post from an air mattress with the rain hitting the canvas. The pussies are lying around sleeping which is more than they were doing in the middle of the night. Last night our friends Pat and Dawn Kiernan came round to see the house. Dawn said "this house is very lucky to have found you two". Given all the work we are doing to restore this house to its former glory - and more - I know what she means. From the air mattress it does feel like the house is the only one benefiting right now.
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| Pat and Dawn at DeJoux House |
The test garden is doing well. Another bumper crop of tomatoes and beans. Strawberries get eaten by the slugs before I can get to them. Basil is taking over so we have to start making pesto or gimlets.
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| Nest of Baby Green Heron on the island in the lake |
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