Carbon neutral fuel!

I know it's the height of summer and tempertures are touching 30C but it's time to start thinking about the winter and how we are going to heat the house. Hopefully by the end of October we will have the wood burner and multifuel burner installed and connected to the central heating and hot water.

The garden has needed quite serious pruning including trees like this one in the hedge between our's and next door's garden.

Working with Steve from next door, he attached a rope and I pulled as he got to work with the chainsaw. After dodging the falling tree it fell into the garden.

Julian popped into the garden this morning to ask how things were going as he'd heard the chainsaws whining away for most of the day. Nila and Jake had a good run around the garden as Julian and I put the world to right. Then back to Gill chopping and me sawing and before long we began to build a log pile, with the help of Tom and a wheelbarrow. All the smaller branches will have to be burned on the bonfire. On probably the hottest day so far Gill and I worked through the heat and got it done.

We reckon we have about a month's worth of wood, just 6 more months worth to go now!

Recycling and Reclamation

One of the problems with renovating an older house is trying to get the right period materials. The challenge was to find bricks for the extra window we are having put in; we needed the sill and plinth bricks (Staffordshire Blue), the edging and normal bricks (Cheshires). This is what we are trying to achieve:

This is what you are faced with at a Reclimation Yard:

We found the bricks in 3 different yards and bought around 200 in total....we also saw some wonderful oak internal doors that used to belong to Mark Hughes (ex footballer and now Stoke City Manager) so we had those too.

My poor old car has been taking the strain for a lot of these bricks.....no problems with traction here.

Every trip from the car to the cottage and back works out at a quarter of a mile! At the weekend it worked out at  3 and a half miles carrying glass from a greenhouse bought on eBay.

Taming the jungle.

With the work progressing nicely inside the cottage we are turning our attention to the garden. We started bright and early with a bow saw and some loppers and this is what faced us.

We found a plum tree that had so much ivy on it that it had uprooted and fallen down crushing the bbq you can see in the picture. As hard as we tried we could not move the plum tree. After a few hours the building inspector turned up to give us the all clear on the steelwork and drainage so we won't be seeing him until the end of the work now! We took a break then cracked on......as you can see we invested in a new 'boy's toy' which put a huge smile on my face.

The tree trunk in the foreground will be logged and used in the wood burner when it turns cold. After ensuring next door had their washing in we started the bonfire and all smell of smoke now...even Nila. He's been tubbed, which he hates, and smells lovely now...well for a dog.

Steel is in and drains are being cut.

Today we finally started to see the size of the main room as the steelwork is now in and the wall is part down. It will be a fantastic space!

The nibbs have been rebuilt and the old timber lintels taken out. It's amazing how good the 130 year old wood looked.....the Victorians really knew how to build houses that last.

As we are moving the kitchen the drain has to be rebuilt. So, the yard has been dug up and we found part of the old water storage tank from the time when these cottages didn't have running water!. As you can see this has confused poor Nila and he took ages to find a way into the cottage. Getting out was even worse....he's no mountain goat that dog.

Over the past few weeks the hens have been quite entertaining and follow me around the garden, maybe it's the corn I keep treating them to. They are real characters and if you have the space we recommend you get some. Here's a picture of them taking a bath, the dust was really flying.