Clearing out the Cider Barn

We were in the cider barn today, on a clearing mission. There is so much character in this room, so lots of it to save! Soon we will be taking out the old cider press, to reinstate in the new kitchen as a island. We'll worry about quite 'how' another day, but for now it's a case of taking the old apple shelves down and clearing out space for the hopper...

 

I really liked the look of the panelling on the partition:

So after some testing, Mike agreed that it should remain, 

rather than take it down to essentially build the same thing again!

The space looked great when we'd finished:

The chicken shed looks nice a full now too!

It will be nice to have this hatch in operation again:

and with a bit more room it was also a good excuse to try out the press:

A little bit of bricklaying

Now that the tank had arrived it was time to get the roof back on. Before that though, there was a little bit of repair work to do...

An old and battered window needed our attention:

We had intended on replacing it but, after some advice from Hendys (the treatments that we will be using in the pumphouse are light sensitive and so may not work if we expose them to daylight), we decided to block it up. Mike got very excited by this as this meant he could put to practice some of the skills he had picked up from his bricklaying course

Good job we'd salvaged those bricks from the front of the house:

After a chisel and a scrub with the wire brush they came up good as new:

Ideal for what Mike needed to build up the surround:

We also removed the old door frame and reinstated a new one:

After using up the last of the cement and a bit more patching up, 
we were all done for the day:

    

Whilst we'd been repairing the pumphouse, 

Steve and his team had been filling in the pipe trench, cementing the floor of the plant room and finishing off that entrance to the walled garden:

Another good day's work!

The Tank Arrives!

Phase 1.5 of the Pumphouse - our 800 gallon water tank arrived today :) Really glad it turned out to be a good day, there had been talk of rain, which wouldn't have been much fun.

John had kindly offered some help with his JCB, and after Hendys strapped the tank up it was a case of hooking it onto the loadall:

A few attempts to try and get it in:

It needed a bit of re configuring, so we strapped it back up:

John showed off his skills by wiggling it on one arm:

Almost there...

A little bit further...up, over...

And we're in!

Taking down the chimeny

The chimney for the aga has started its decent. There's drilling and hammering from each corner of the house now! 

Fantastic work though here's the two flues:

 

Looks like we'll get plenty of salvage from this demolition:

And with the rubble chute and dumper truck ready + an unwanted tennis court...

it looks like we've found the perfect space to store it all too!

Pumphouse refit: phase 1

We had an email from the pump engineer and our tank is ready for delivery next Wednesday - yippee! So that it can be fitted we needed to take the roof off. It was a great day for it so we made the most of our hard hats in the sunshine:

#selfbuildselfie!

Mike got up on the roof:

and passed down the tiles through the already suspect felt:

They were all pretty moss ridden so I gave them all a good clean with a wire brush:

That's all the tiles off - now for taking the battons down...

Oh dear - what a mess! 

Lovely to see the sky though: 

Then, after a good tidy up

the tiles got stacked up ready for re-roofing:

Not bad for a days work!