It's a short...

Not so much of a blog this week as an introduction to a video...

Last weekend our pal Mark brought his drone to stay - and took a video of the cottage.

O. M. G.

Seriously - the cottage looks like something off the telly!

We are very very proud of the cottage. And very chuffed that Mark made such a great video.

Thanks Mark!

We realise that a video doesn't work so well in a book, so here's the (long) link to find it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54HRk4GT2Zc&feature=youtu.be

Enjoy!

We decide to party!

The builders left two weeks ago, we've apparently been the talk of the village with the build, so what better to do than hold a party, invite the whole village and dance the night away?

We put up a marquee and lights:

We prepare food:

And we partied:

Cat's Claw provided the music:

We had invited our guests to wear orange in honour of the original colour of the cottage... they did us proud!

The lights all worked...

And the house looked gorgeous - we were very proud of it!

The outside loo seemed to go down pretty well too!

Our guests were lovely, we met loads of new people from the village and they kindly brought us plums, damsons, candles, chocolate, a beautiful crocheted blanket, plants and sweet peas.

Like all good parties, it ended up in the kitchen, with Anna's Gin & Tonic Sorbet and all the teaspoons we could muster. Bliss!!

It's a loo, but not as we know it...

This week, yet again, we may be slightly toilet related...

You'll remember the outside loo, which used to look like this:

Had a bit of a makeover so that it looked like this:

Well, we got busy with the paint (you'll never guess which one...) and (drum roll...)

If you think it's over the top, you clearly haven't met our outside loos before. Frankly, this one is positively restrained...

And yes, there are books. Including '50 Ways To Kill A Slug' and 'How To Survive A Garden Gnome Attack'. It has battery operated rose lights too. Of course it does.

That has occupied many a happy hour this week...

And then we ordered bark. Lots of bark. 5 cubic metres, to be exact.

And it needed spreading.... 

We got it done. Although I think I've pulled something somewhere in the process...

Eventually this will be covered in plants. The bark is just to stop the weeds in the meantime... ('The meantime' in this case being measured in years....)

Remember the lovely table we bought at Warehouse 701 and then had to leave there because we had no room? We got it delivered at last - this was the previous table:

And now we have this:

We LOVE it!

Wooster the kitten is getting braver.  Look - he brought home a little friend...

It was probably braver than Wooster - it sat up and boxed at him. Eventually we rescued it and set it free. 

We may live to regret that...

A momentous week and a near disaster...

The tradesmen have left the building. YES!!!

We are, understandably, chuffed. The last to leave was the decorator at about 3.30pm on Thursday. We celebrated by continuing with tractor mowing and then polishing off a lovely bottle of wine given to us by Gordon and Ali (thank you again).

Naturally we photographed the occasion:

The large beige lump in the foreground is Guy's phone cover. I still haven't entirely got the hang of the time delay thingy.

And there's irrefutable proof that they've gone - here's a 'Spot The Difference' pair of photos:

No Site Board!!! That's the one that says to wear hard hats, look what you're doing, wear high-vis, all that stuff. And it's GONE!!! 

We are no longer a 'site'. We are now 'home'.

Since everybody left, we have been painting. Lots of painting. The outside loo is taking shape...

It needs another coat, but here's where the disaster comes in.

We have run out of Ronseal Willow.

I know, I know, HOW did we let that happen? We realised at lunchtime when I went to get another tin. There were none left. We phoned Screwfix, Homebase and Handyman House, nobody had any. To drive any further is mad on a Sunday, so we were paintless. To be fair, Handyman House did have some - a 750ml tin. Seriously? Who buys paint in tins that small?? We need at least 10 litres...

We've also done planting...

That's our newest bed. We're calling it the triangle bed because it was meant to be a triangle. By the time the brickies had finished it's more of a trapezium, but we're still calling it the triangle bed. You'll see that the music room window is now painted. Hah - so THAT'S where all the green paint went... It looks lovely with the oak. Phew. We had wondered if it would..

New boxes of bay leaves at the back door:

OK, this one's a cheat - they were (a) already painted and (b) already planted. It seems we knew from a year ago that Ronseal Willow would be nice...

We also bought a small Welsh dresser. Somebody in the village was moving away, needed to sell it and a mutual friend thought of us. We all met up, we brought it home and it's lovely! We had a cobbled together dresser that was a rough bookshelf (from Why Pay More in Blackwood) which we had just, the day before, screwed to the bottom chest of drawers to stop it falling over if the kitten climbed up it...

So here's what we had:

And here's what we've now got. It's not Ronseal Willow, but it's close...

We also found time to chat to the neighbours. Rubbish conversation, we may not bother with them again.

Guy is busy harvesting vegetables from the veg patch. He says all these three green things are courgettes.

Oh really?? So why are they completely different shapes? Huh?

Now back to the outside loo (as you do...)

This is what it used to look like inside:

And this is what it looks like now.

Those of you who know us will expect something slightly more interesting.

Be patient.

We plant stuff and take photos...

My apologies for being a day late with the blog. Not only is 'newly adopted mother cat' very poorly (currently £500 at the vets, 4 visits this week) but my laptop died yesterday. All fixed now, but trying to blog on my mobile was just a step too far. And anyway, it's only Emma wot reads it...

So what happened last week? We genuinely can't remember, so here's the week in pictures:

There's a handrail on the stairs.

The kitchen got finished.

The units in the music room (including our larder) got finished:

We planted up pots and arranged our patio furniture.

We admired our vegetable patch.

And cut flowers from our flower patch.

The hideous chest of drawers we bought from Warehouse 701...

... got a makeover*.

We got invited out to neighbours for supper and had other neighbours to us for supper. One of these resulted in us going to bed at 3.20am. We now know we're too old for such late nights...

BOB came on Saturday (at 8am after our 3.20am bedtime) and took away most of the builders' stuff. The last skip has gone too - we're beginning to look quite civilised.

One of the advantages of it being a Monday is that you can have a 'today's update' too.

The outside loo is nearly finished although the window no longer opens fully and there's a large chunk knocked out of the basin...

The decorator has painted the window of the music room dark grey, not green, and has now gone home to return who knows when...

Give us strength. Again.

*Ronseal Willow. Was there any need to say??

Nearly there, but not quite...

We still have 'the builders' in. Probably for most of this week. As one of them succinctly put it yesterday (yes, Saturday), "at the beginning you can't wait to see us arrive, by the end you can't wait to see us leave". Very true!!

The landscaping outside is now finished. Well, the earth moving is - we'll need to plant stuff for the rabbits to eat, obviously.

Look - posh driveway!!

Still with a skip though - let's not get too excited...

Outside the main job left to do is pointing the slabs - the weather was against us last week so it couldn't be done. Maybe this week?

Inside, Guy and I have been putting up shelves for the recycling baskets:

Painting the kitchen:

And (major job) sorting out the stairs. Since the day they went in (23rd May, funny we thought we'd had them longer than that) they've been covered in plywood cut to fit each stair, and then quite a lot of mud and plaster:

We've been sanding, acid washing and oiling - and they're DONE!! Yay!

We are beginning to relax nicely though - today we had a major list of about 24 things to do including 'decide where to paint' and then 'paint'. Logical... We've got through a lot of it, and also done quite a lot of things that weren't on the list but needed doing anyway.

And I've been cleaning windows. That's 'cleaning' as in 'chipping paint and oil off with a razor blade' rather than 'buffing with a soft cloth to a sparkling shine'. We're settling for 'not covered in crap' for now, rather than gleaming glass.

Wooster is also relaxing nicely - here's a 'spot the kitten' photo:

We had our first proper guests this week too - Sue and Richard from the village popped along today bang on lunchtime, so we offered them an impromptu lunch (contents of the fridge, basically). Apart from the total lack of matching crockery, wine in plastic tumblers, the dog farting spectacularly and the cats all climbing on the table, we think it went ok...

Purchases of the week:

We bought a perfectly hideous chest of drawers from our new favourite place (Warehouse 701 in Hereford) which I am going to paint and renovate (oh - go on then, I'm upcycling because I am just sooooo on-trend) - along with a table we bought a while ago, it should be delivered this week. I am ridiculously excited.

We also visited IKEA and bought two shelf brackets. They were necessary and matched the other two shelf brackets. To be fair, we also took back two panels and a mirror that should have looked nice but didn't, so it wasn't really a visit all the way to Bristol just for two £3 shelf brackets...