BlaenCwmBychan

BlaenCwmBychan

Sunday 25 May 2014

our first piece of custom made furniture

one of the worst aspects of the British Bank Holiday
.....Traffic...
Traveling down to Wales on a Friday evening is a brave endevour...We were stuck at the (old) Severn Bridge for 30minutes in a queue for the toll, stuck agian at the Brynglas tunnels....not too bad after that.
But Lloyd and Jess were stuck on the new bridge for an hour, so didnt arrive at BCB until midnight !

Saturday I kept working on Alys' bedroom...finishing the bisquit (Celenit) board on the ceiling. Completed the skirting around the new fireplace. Also fitted the battening, ready to complete lining the walk-in-wardroab next time.
Jan limwashed the walls in the hall and landing.

Lloyd (after taking Jess down to Tenby for her girlies night out) took on my challenge of turning a pile of old bits of wood (Tulip wood cut-offs from the doors, a piece of spare floorboard, and pieces of the cladding)...into a bench for the hall.

Here was my inspiration....
http://www.pinterest.com/blaencwmbychan/blaencwmbychan/
Wooden bench  - note to myself notice the lack of mad clutter!!



































Here were the raw materials.....

And so Lloyd ....


made this......
So lovely :)




















Sunday 18 May 2014

A better weekend than the last one..

What a contrast between two weekends ! A gorgeous sunny and warm couple of days, we went down Friday evening, and stayed until Sunday lunch time...and got loads done.

Jan spent most of the time cutting grass in the orchard, 4 weeks since it was last cut and this time of year if you miss many more weeks than that and the grass gets away, so a great job to keep it down and looking great.
The lanes are full of wild flowers at the moment, and the garden is looking lovely too.. Jan picked some for the hall...(thanks Southmead Hospital for the Jug)


I started by spending Friday evening finishing the walk-in larder, hung the door, added the cladding, and fitted the door furniture from http://www.fromtheanvil.co.uk/. very pleased with the result...




just need to add the skirting, (when the adjacent wall has had its first coat of lime)

PS...also tried to make an oak wedge for an axe handle, but incurred a hand injury (more later)

Saturday was spent liming. I managed to complete the two remaining walls in Alys' bedroom, hard work , but it looks great. Needs a few layers of limewash to finish it off.

I've found that while waiting for the cement mixer to make a good lime mix (it takes 10x longer than a simple cement mix), I like to find other jobs to do. So managed to get the ladders out and clear/fix the guttering on the back of the house...no longer will we need to leave the back door in fear of the inevitable drip down the back of the neck !. Also managed to give the chimney wall in Alys' bedroom another coat of limewash...I think this is going to be a challenge as it still doesn't seem to want to dry white..mmmm will persevere.

Before and After (this is me taking the cement of the walls when we first bought it), and this weekend adding the last layer of Lime  !!



Managed to wear away the skin on my right hand rubbing out the trowel marks on the final wall...lime hurts !!!..and now there is my blood embedded in these walls !!!

We were both absolutely exhausted Saturday evening, so a quick BBQ in the orchard, and an early night.

Sunday, I fitted the door furniture to Alys' bedroom door. Also lime-filled the sides of the finished pantry.
Then started fitting Alys' newly purchased fireplace. I cut a slate hearth (and recessed the associated floorboards), bedded it in with Lime. Had to add some wood at the back of the fireplace to fill the gap (remember me saying that it was inches too small for the gap). When in place, I limed to the sides and hey presto......

All in all a beautiful and very productive weekend.

Saturday 10 May 2014

Wet 'n Wild

This weekend was a typical Welsh spring day.......wet, very wet, it rained pretty much all day, windy too, so we were glad to be working indoors...although I had to be outside for mixing the lime render :(

Made progress in Alys' bedroom, adding the top coat of lime-render to the window wall, it took all day because of the window reveal, but it looks lovely...cant wait to lime wash it.
Also finished dubbing in the chimney wall, which looks really nice now...again ready for several layers of limewash.

Not such good news, I measured the fireplace hole, for the newly purchased surround...and guess what ...its too small. A 26inch hole, with a 24inch fireplace....oops.
I will have to fashion a wooden backplate to fit to the wall, and attach the firelpace to it. Not a problem !

We arranged for the carpenter who made our front door, to come along and measure up for a new back door. Neil from Ystrad Carpentry, near Llandovery. He made such a brilliant job of the front door, so we asked him to make a replacement for the old, rotten and very draughty old back door, and also a new sash window for the rear window in the Inglenook room ( I will post pictures of these at a later date).
Very excited about these 2 additions, as they will make a huge difference.

Monday 5 May 2014

Alys' fireplace...

We didn't get down the house this weekend, but managed to source a new fireplace for Alys' bedroom....

I wanted something softer and more feminine for her bedroom, and loved this white fireplace. Plain and simple as is the Georgian style, very authentic ! 
I should be able to fit it next weekend, so long as it gets delivered this week.