Dodging Covid, dodgy dealings and a damp patch.  It’s been a strange start to 2021.

Like most people we weren’t sad to wave goodbye to 2020.  Resigned to our fate in Lockdown 3 we decided to focus on work in the house and garden so we would be ready for when all those visitors start to arrive……well it will happen at some point.

As if we needed it, we now have more logs!  A cherry tree very close to the house was a disaster waiting to happen as it was old, didn’t look too healthy and if it were to fall it would wipe out the greenhouse.

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Harry ‘the tree’ and his apprentice arrived and had it down in no time. It was rotten through and through. He also pollarded a willow which was in danger of getting out of hand.  It also cast quite a lot of shade on our little patio outside the French windows so it was a double whammy.  More logs to split and stack but, hey, it’s good exercise. 

Renovation update – part 1

Work continued on the bathrooms but at a very slow pace as we limited numbers in the house to keep social distancing rules and we kept ourselves out of the way in the study (which was also a handy excuse to not start any more decorating…..tee hee).

The kitchen fitter, Paul, returned to fit the units & worktop in the utility.  A bit of inspired forward planning meant we had already got Dave the spark to move the ugly fuse box just a few inches to allow it to sit neatly inside one of the new wall units.  Over the Christmas period Cheryl spent a few days painting the floor as we’re not quite sure what to do with the flooring as it’s such a busy and mucky area incorporating the back door and entrance to the greenhouse.  Painting it will buy us some thinking time. 

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It’s amazing what a bit of plastering, painting and a few cupboards will do to what was a dump. It looks so much better but we still need to get new skirting fitted and the pipework over and under the boiler neatly boxed in when Jake the chippy returns.

Stop right there

Monday 11^th January brought a shiver down our spines.  We had a text, the one nobody wants to get, from Stacy the builder who had been with us the previous Friday.  His wife works in the local pharmacy and her boss got the dreaded  lurgy.  She wasn’t feeling 100% either.   Whilst we had kept away from the tradies as best we could, it still gave us the heebie-jeebies. 

We immediately cancelled all the tradies due to visit and went into 10 days lockdown which was pretty easy as we had shopped just a few days earlier.  Milk was the only thing we would run out of.  Next day Stacy’s wife was tested and the day after she found out she was negative…..phew!  However, we decided to play safe and carry on with the 10 day isolation.  Kate from the little Axmouth bakery was due to deliver some of her delicious bread and we messaged her to say just drop at the front door.  A few texts later she volunteered to nip into the Co-op on her way and bought us 4pts.  It’s simple things like this why we are loving Seaton so much.

Buy one……get 9 free!!

Just as our 10 days was up a strange thing happened.  We weren’t expecting a delivery but we noticed a large van reversing up the drive.  Neil went outside and the young man, Sheldon, got out and asked if we needed any Teak Garden Furniture.  He pointed out that most of his business came from trading at local shows but obviously due to Covid this wasn’t happening.  So, to stay afloat, he had resorted to good old fashioned door knocking and to his surprise his luck was in.

We do need some better garden furniture but it wasn’t going to be on our radar for several months.  This was a golden opportunity to just get it done without shopping around and going round and round in circles as we usually do when there is too much choice.  This was to be man shopping. 

We had a poke and a prod at the samples in the back of his van – it looked good but we needed to check out the prices and we told him what we wanted.  He came back a few days later with 6 stackable chairs to go with the big table we bought last year, a table for our new patio plus 4 matching chairs and a Lutyens style bench for the front terrace. 

He unloaded it and went away for an hour for us to check it over and choose the best items.  Then we did a deal on the cardboard packaging!  He would have to pay to dispose of it, we don’t, so we kept hold of the packaging and in return we got a folding table for free that goes with the bench…..result! 

Whilst we wouldn’t normally pay cash to some ‘diamond geezer’ who appeared in the drive from nowhere, it seemed like a deal not to miss.  Anyway, his van wasn’t painted with Trotters Independent Trading Co so it was bound to be kosher.  The same furniture on the internet was around 30% more expensive.  The real plus point was that we got to choose the best items from the van.  If we had shopped on the internet or local garden centre we would have had to accept whatever furniture that was delivered.  We haven’t had a visit from the boys in blue……..and the furniture is still in the garage …….so all seems well for now.

Double Vision

Piotr the pheasant is now a regular feature in the garden.  Neil is trying to get him as tame as Phileas who last year was ‘outfoxed’.  He is able to get to within a couple of feet as Piotr pecks away at his food.  Hopefully, he’ll get him feeding from his hand before the summer is over.

Surprise!  We spotted two pheasants together so not only do we have Piotr we also now have, most days, Rufus the Red. 

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It wasn’t until Rufus arrived that we realised that Piotr has got quite a lot of beige/brown especially on his wings.  Rufus’s redder colour is spectacular, especially when it glistens in the sunlight, he is bigger and it appears that he is the dominant one although we haven’t seen them fight.  Piotr roosts next door in the top of the conifers but we’re not sure where Rufus spends the night.  One day Piotr wasn’t anywhere to be seen and when Rufus couldn’t find him he was frantically pacing up and down the garden looking for Piotr like an expectant father.  We don’t really understand their relationship yet as we thought males were territorial, but these are probably juveniles and seem to tolerate each other quite well.  Let’s see what happens when the mating season starts and hormones start to kick in. 

Renovation Update Part 2

Not really a great deal more to report as work had to be put on hold while we isolated.  Jason finished off his excellent job on the tiling and we rebooked the floor fitting in the bathroom.  Matt the plumb returned at the end of the month for second fix for the bathroom and to connect up the utility sink.  All was going well until we hit a snag with the toilet in the bathroom in that the pan connector will not stay on.  We think it’s a design fault, as he had no problem with the other 2 he fitted, but this one is a different model.  We have to wait until the technical team at the supplier come back to us. 

On the positive side, Matt had enough time to strip out the old wc and sink in the downstairs cloakroom so we can get started on that one when we have time.  That’s of course when we finish the hallway we have been putting off.  We ordered enough tiles for the upstairs bathrooms to allow for wastage during fitting and managed to blag a couple of extra boxes of tiles because some of them were broken on delivery.  Jason managed to use virtually all of the broken ones where half tiles were needed, and he didn’t break any more so the upside is that we should have enough to do the downstairs cloakroom.  We’re now waiting for the first bad day when he can’t work outside.  We’re really pleased with our choice of bathroom flooring and we’ll probably put that into the downstairs loo.

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We’re so pleased with the way it all looks so far and hopefully we can get these rooms finally completed next month and share pictures with all fixtures in place and the finishing touches like blinds, lights & mirrors.

Neil has been testing out the plumbing in the ensuite (details omitted for the faint hearted).  It was all going well until he broke the bad news that he had spotted that the top of the wall behind the bed in bedroom 2 had a large and growing damp patch – b*gger!  We seem to have a new problem as we think its to the side of the old chimney, and it could be the explanation why that particular part of the wall took so long to dry out when it was replastered.  We will have to get Stacy back to investigate.

Reasons to be cheerful

1 – We didn’t get Covid!

2 – Probably the best news we’ve had in months is the arrival of the vaccine.  The rollout is going really well in Devon, and we are lucky to have a local vaccination centre in the old Seaton Hospital site, as well as 2 mass vaccination sites within a 25 min drive.  Neil should get it around March and Cheryl a month or two after.  The UK is well ahead of the rest of Europe because the ‘Gnomes of Brussels’ took several weeks longer than us to place their orders and longer to approve the vaccines.  Well done UK!

3 – On the back of the good news on vaccinations and in a moment of unbridled optimism & recklessness we’ve booked flights!  We’re heading to Goa, we hope, for what should be a massive reunion with our friends to celebrate New Year 2022.  Hurrah!