Unbelievably, it’s exactly a year today that we got the keys to Ethel’s. That was the day we confidently expected to be welcoming our first guests when we got back from holiday in October – how wrong can you get?? Right now, I’m crossing everything very hard that we might just get our first visitors this summer!
Mick has spent most of the day down there putting up the kitchen ceiling, so Dougie can now fit the ceiling lights in the kitchen and bathroom, and Derek has said he’ll be here on Wednesday to finish installing the heating. Assuming he does get it all done in one day, I can then ask David to reserve us a few days in a fortnight’s time to get the downstairs floor laid and install the kitchen.
Once Mick was back to dog-sit (our young collie is going through a phase of eating things he shouldn’t when left unsupervised during the day), I went down the road to get to grips with my new toy.
Appropriate gear was donned (this is SUCH a good look for me….)
After a couple of false starts before I worked out I could turn the speed down a bit (I’m sure the small chunks it took out of the rail will buff out), I got to grips with it. The sanding reel seems best for the spindles, but the little flapper disc has done a great job on the groove in the bannister. Unlike the random orbital sander I was using before, I do have to remember to sand with the grain using this.
With potential heating next week, I also needed to check we had some heating oil. No glass level on the tank, so I found a stick and we appear to have about 4 inches left. I should be okay to leave ordering until April. One annoying thing is that the main filling hole is padlocked and none of the keys we have seem to fit it – either that or it’s rusted shut. I think the tankers can fill it using the smaller one, but they’re not keen on doing it because it slows them down. The little spike thing with the wire appears to be some sort of wireless level-checking device, called a Watchman, made by Kingspan Environmental. I’ll contact them and see if it’s possible to get it working, as I’m guessing Ethel and John never used it.
The final job down there for the day was to feed the ladies, who were most unimpressed at me being late.
It was a beautiful evening – dare we hope that there’s a touch of spring in the air? This was taken on the way back up towards Ethel’s from the sheep field on the point.
