Garden Room - our work begins day 2 - more paint

Another cold day, but the second coat only took us 4.5 hours! Can you spot all the window beading strips, and thats just a few of them. Peter has painted the french door end of the barn. I'm pictured here painting the little door that fits over the new window above the french doors. Once the new guttering - cast iron style, arrives we will paint the side walls then put up the new guttering all in one go.  Peter found some hinges in his store of 'junk' which match the hinges on the right hand side for the old doors, why the hinges were odd in the first place we'll never know, but he's pretty pleased with himself.  I suppose I shouldn't nag him to clear his junk out now its proved useful.

We have also ordered the interior and exterior lighting today, so we are moving along.  We are planning to have oak cask water barrels so have had a search of the internet to try and source some in our area.   So all in all another successful day.

Neil and co are back tomorrow to carry on with their bit

Garden Room - our work begins day 1

Today Peter and I have spent all day staining the window/door frames in preparation for the glass next week.  Its amazing how much wood there is once you get started.  We decided to do it all black so that it blends in with the rest of the barn.  It great stuff to work with as its water based and dries to a matt black finish, hardly any smell and your brushes wash out in water.  Only draw back was working in a building with no glass, the wind was blowing through and we are both frozen.  Second coat tomorrow, hopefully it will be warmer and also the second coat won't take so long, then its on to all the new wood.  In total there is approximately 160sq metres of wood, but luckily we don't have to paint it all as Peter and his band of merry helpers are going to insulate the walls between the uprights and beams, so basically just all the uprights and beams to paint inside, along with the ceiling, so not much if you say it quickly......

Garden Room - Day 13

Cat flap, handles and lock fitted to the stable door.  New rails fitted to window over old doors - they turned out to be rotten when they went to add the frame. Little surprises keep popping up.  We discussed what we wanted doing to the old doors to tidy them up, they will become shutters, and also add some extra security and privacy when not in use. The glass for the windows won't arrive until Wednesday or Thursday, so not too much more they can do until then apart from clearing up and repairing the old doors.  Our work starts......

Garden Room - Day 12

Slowly slowly, I am so impatient. We are now at the stage where there is not much to see at the end of the day, unlike when the project was first started. Yesterday the doors were fitted into the french window frames and the door furniture added.  I didn't actually spot anything else, but only had a cursory glance as I was trying to sort out the non functioning laptop.

You will be pleased to know (or not) that we are up and running again, not sure what was wrong with it, but taking the battery pack out of the bottom and re-inserting it seemed to do the trick, there then followed a long and laborious wait whilst it went into recovery mode, me dashing upstairs to see if I had any writeable DVD's for the backup, luckily we did, then popping back and forth to follow its commands inbetween trying to make a Cottage Pie for dinner.

On the knitting front I have given myself a break from the Ten Stitch blanket and have knitted another Bunny Blanket Buddy and am half way through a little jumper for a friend's baby

Garden Room - Day 11

All the window frames and doors are in place, it really is starting to look like I imagined the room would look.  They won't get glazed until next week, so we are planning to stain all the frames for Neil over the weekend.  There is still lots of making good on the old doors to do and all the door furniture and cat flap to fit.  Neil is on his own for the next couple of days so progress will be slower. 

I took lots of photographs yesterday afternoon but unfortunately our laptop died last night so I am unable to get them off the camera - it was a wierd evening with no access to the internet - how sad we are!  Luckily I can do this at work, but have no access to Facebook (that's blocked).  Not sure when we will be online at home next, so if you email I may not respond as quickly as usual

Added 27th Feb - mixture of photos for days 10 and 11

Garden Room - Day 10

Roof boarding now complete.  The joiner made frames are onsite.

On my needles - A second Ten Stitch Blanket

A large amount of stash - 600grams so far - has being used on this project - 800grams still to go. It really is an addictive knit, as you are only working on ten stitches at a time you can just pick it up at anytime. I have been reasonably good this month only adding 250grams to my stash.  I even turned my back on loads of yarn in the charity shop today.  In truth I didn't fancy any of it, but at any other time I would have been tempted.