Progress update

by In Ethel's House, Renovations Tagged , , , , Leave a comment

It’s been a week of steady progress.  This afternoon Mick and I went down and finished clearing out the byre.  The hay might still be on the ground getting steadily wetter, but at least we have somewhere to put it and Ronald, who I’ve been told is one of the best hay makers in the area and lives opposite Ethel’s House, has reassured me that I haven’t lost it yet, I just need to hold my nerve.  The byre looks an awful lot better, anyway.

156 armadale - byres - 1

I found this under several years of dirt on the floor – hopefully it’s a good omen!

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I also have an update on the two photographs.  I tagged a couple of neighbours on Facebook to see if they had any idea and someone tagged a relative of Ethel’s, who very kindly messaged me with this:

Hello , I believe you have purchased ,my late mothers family home ,used to love going there for my holidays late forties early fifties .the photo of the man you found , is my late maternal grandfather , Hugh MacDonald , he died very young , in his thirties , possibly around 1910 era ( burst appendix ) leaving my granny with three young children ,and pregnant with the fourth , my late uncle Harry .we are not sure who the lady in photograph is , but think it may be my fathers sister Ina . If you find any more photos could be interesting .

So that means one of those photos is possibly over 100 years old – incredible!  I’m going to see if my Photoshop skills are good enough to retouch them, if not I may get it professionally done.  I’d like to get the originals and cleaned-up copies put in one frame to hang in the house.  The Uncle Harry referred to was Ethel’s husband.

Travis Perkins were supposed to deliver the ridge tiles on Wednesday, but rang Pete to say their crane was being inspected, so it would be Thursday.  Turned out there was a fault on the crane, which was fixed on Thursday, but then the lorry came west without our order on it.  They said they’d bring it on Friday, but had to go to Wick first, so Pete hooked up his trailer and went to get it himself.  Of course, it promptly rained, but they did manage to make a start and Mick has been up the scaffolding to get some close-up photos of our beautiful, beautiful roof.

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The chimneys will be re-pointed, but we’re going to leave that stone in-fill detail visible.

In even better news, David managed to give us a day, so we have some studwork going in upstairs.

156 armadale - bedroom one - 24

Where did the weekend go?

by In Ethel's House, Finances, Renovations Tagged , , , , , Leave a comment

It seems it was Friday only about two seconds ago!  This is where the roofing team got to on Friday afternoon:

156 armadale - roof - 5

You can’t see it very well on the picture (click on it to enlarge), but there are four scalloped diamonds on the roof, spaced in between the windows.  Pete suggested that we do a line of scallops connecting them as well, to echo the one at the ridge line.  I was expecting the diamonds to be three slates wide, as per my original drawing – if you want a laugh…:

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they’ve actually gone for four and we may have overcooked it slightly, but I think it only looks a bit overdone at the moment because the rest of the outside isn’t finished.  Once the house is painted a warm white with a dark green front door, a couple of dark green planters with colourful flowers either side, a new fence and new gate, it might well be just right.

Of course, the fact that the front is nearly finished means that I’m going to have to write another big cheque soon, as the second of the three payments is due on completion of slating.  My credit card bill for the insulation and flooring arrived last week (1% cashback on that card!) and when I logged in to pay it, I was slightly alarmed to see that I had no money transfer or balance transfer offers available – there’s been one on that card every month for at least the last three years.  I still have one available on my other card from the same provider, which I will take up next week, but this card has a £12,000 limit and not being able to access that is going to leave quite a big hole in the budget.

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