Peace resumes

A truly handsome fellow but too blinking noisy! 

The cockerels have gone! Mr D had had enough, so emailed the lady who had left us the cockerels (admittedly without us requesting her to) and asked her to take them back. This was the email he received back...

Needless to say, it has caused many a childish titter at the double entendres! 

We are now back to five of our ladies and five of their ladies and all is peaceful with the world in chicken land. They are all laying well and enjoying their male-free environment. I intend to improve their chicken run, but I need to get a tree surgeon to remove the ten or so pine trees that are in there first. We brought our own coop which our ladies are using and there are a few other enclosures in there already. I cleaned about 4 inches of chicken poo and sawdust out of them the other day. Not sure when they were last cleaned out thoroughly. I need to rebuild one of the structures as the nesting  box is actually sliding off the side of it! At least they are well enclosed and have loads of space to scratch about in. One of their chickens hasn't yet developed a comb and seems to be the runt of the litter. At night time, she has taken to roosting in the pine trees rather than with the others. The first night she did it, we had no idea where she was. We had even sent Jet in to the run  to flush her out with no success. I then had the thought to look up and sure enough, there she was, a little white blob in the branches above my head. Bless her! 

Unfortunately, Jet seems to have developed his infection again. Yesterday afternoon he was obviously in significant pain and couldn't put any weight on his leg. We took him to the vets and they gave him morphine, antibiotics and kept him in. They will do an X-ray on Monday and we will go from there. The poor soul had just started to make some progress with his leg movement and strength. This is going to be a long haul. 

I haven't done anything much outside yet in terms of jobs - some clearance and cutting back. Fortunately they had cut the lawn before they moved out which was very helpful as our little electric mower is definitely not going to be adequate! I'll borrow my brothers petrol mower for now and then we  will look at buying ourselves a ride on. 

We have had a constant steam of visitors over the last three weeks, which has been lovely  as it has  given us a good excuse to explore the local area, but I now need a period of time to get organised and finish off some of the jobs we have started. Next priority? My youngest needs to be ready for school on Wednesday and we need to book our son his flight to America next month. 

First room nearly finished

Our son, who has just finished his A Levels, decided to stay in Surrey for August to be with his mates. He hasn't seen this house, so when he comes up tomorrow, it will be his first experience of our new home. We wanted to ensure he had a nice bedroom to come home to especially as this is what he had before.....

From this to this ....

And from this.....

To this....

Au Revoir to the Barbie pink walls and door

Bonjour to a more calming décor!

His previous room was definitely a single, so we have had to go out and buy him a double bed. One of the things I wanted to do here was not buy new furniture if I could source second hand and fortunately, after looking in multiple thrift shops, I found an excellent second hand pine bed frame. Two coats of white chalk paint and it's as good as new! We did dash out and buy him new bedding though :) 

I'm planning on painting the rest of his furniture and updating the handles - the little football handles date back from when he was about 6! We haven't put all his stuff back in either. It's all in the store room so he can go through bit by bit deciding exactly what he wants to keep. I suspect, he's ready for a whole new feel in his room. 

It's slow progress but at least we are making some progress! 

Animal antics

You may remember that the previous owners of this house asked if we would like some chickens, to which I said yes, imagining that we would end up with about 10/12 extra chickens. I wasn't sure what we would do with the eggs, but was happy to have some extra ladies to add to my brood.....

{OK, I've given up! You'll just have to imagine a photo of a jumped up white cockerel lording it over the roost! I cannot get my photos to upload again - GRRRRRR!}

I ain't no lady!

And indeed he isn't. He is the loudest beast in town waking me any time from 4.30 onwards. To top it all, he has a brand new band of brothers developing too as we seem to have at least three more cockerels.
My poor ladies are horrified at this randy fellow chasing them all over the place.
Fortunately we have found someone with a smallholding a few miles away who will take him off our hands and, after a Facebook post by Mr D, we may have a taker for the teenage pretender who is following rapidly in his footsteps! The other two cockerels are still young, so they can stay for the time being, but they may not last long.
Even the ever gentle Mr D has been tempted into murderous thoughts in the early hours!

Talking of early hours, Mr D and I were woken at about 1am the other night by a loud noise outside. We had no idea what it was, but it sounded like an animal scrabbling about. Nothing could be seen outside and all seemed calm, so we went back to bed. About 10 minutes later more noise above our heads - my heart sank - "that sounds like a cat on the roof", I said to myself...sure enough, seconds later, loud meowing emanated from the roof above our window. Mr D and I ran out to see Freya perched precariously in the gutter, scared witless. We tried, unsuccessfully to entice her back over the roof with food but we realised she was stuck, so Mr D had to go back inside whilst I shine a torch upwards from the garden to illuminate the issue. He had to lean right out of our bedroom window, coax her along the gutter towards him and then reach out, grab her by the scruff and haul her back inside. What a hero!

Strangely enough, she hasn't been seen in the roof since! I think she was thrown by the steep angle and the slipperiness of the slate, rather than the tile she was used to at home. She even managed to dislodge a loose slate - miraculously it didn't break as it shot off the roof onto the front path. We'll have to get our builder to pop it back in.

So, as you can see it's all fun and frolics in the animal kingdom!

Funky colours

Hello again. We have been mad busy decorating. We have done one bedroom at the rear of the house, although I still need to paint the furniture, buy a bigger bed etc. we have been trying to be very thorough when painting - filling in all the holes/gaps along skirting etc; painting ceilings and glossing all the woodwork. My thinking is that if we do it really well this time, any future decorating will be much easier.
We have now moved in to my youngest's bedroom at the front. She wanted black (!) but I have talked her round to a very dark grey on one wall only. It looks amazing. I just need to do some neatening of the edges (my brush was too big for the cutting in) and gloss the woodwork. When I've done, I'll post photos.
There is so much to do, that it's very easy to become rather overwhelmed, but we are trying to bite it off in chunks.

As I mentioned in my last post, there are some pretty wacky colours in this house....

One of the rear bedrooms 

The downstairs shower room

Inside the music room cupboard 

The office 

Another of the bedrooms 

More pink 

Decals on one of the bedroom walls. 

My youngest's bedroom. That is brick effect wallpaper. Well it was, until I painted over it yesterday! 

Even the front door - a lovely stable door from my wish list - is painted baby pink! I have bought a delicious soft green for that, but have yet to get round to painting it. It's either too sunny or showers...

We are almost through 10 litres of white emulsion already. Goodness knows how much more we'll use to get the house looking how I want it to.....

In reply to some of the questions from the last post :- Jet is absolutely loving it here. He is like the proverbial pig in clover. We haven't needed to actually walk him yet as he can lolop around the plot with gay abandon. He's still recovering from his op and still limps a bit, but we will get there. The cats.... Our female cat, Freya, has settled very well and is managing the cat flap (a new concept to them). She is quite grave and going outside. Oscar, the black male cat, who disgraced himself so often before we moved is still regularly leaving us 'gifts' in the house. He knows how to get in and out of the cat flap, but is too nervous to do so. We put him out of the  front door and he dashes straight round the back, through the flap and  back upstairs to his spot in the sun. I guess patience is needed with him. 

More soon x 

I think I've sussed it!

Well I've cobbled together some way of uploading photos - it's not ideal, but I am so desperate to show you some of the lovely rooms. Then house is just as beautiful as I remembered it. In fact, it's larger and more homely than I remembered it. There are some seriously wacky colours on the walls and many of the rooms are rather tatty, so that will take us time, but despite that it already feels like home.

It seems like such a long time since I last posted properly. We moved in on the 8th but then didn't have Internet for over a week so I wasn't able to post then. Anyway, we are in and mostly settled. The move went very well and my youngest daughter and I managed to unpack over 30 boxes in the kitchen whilst they were unloading and building the rest of the furniture, so I gave them all of those boxes back (I don't think they wanted them, but I had enough to deal with..) Fortunately this house has a boot room which was completely empty so it looked like this after a while - floor to ceiling cardboard boxes:-

We have two lounges, so we've turned one into a music room/snug. It still some decorative work (woodwork, waxing the doors and some smaller things to do), but we have made loads of progress already. The idea of this room is that it's a relaxing space - for hobbies - like playing music, reading and just relaxing. No TV allowed here! Jet also has his 'bed' in here so we can all hang out together.
What do you think?

Frustrating!

We've moved in and I'm desperate to post photos, but whilst I've been offline, Google have retired Picasaweb which I was using (quite happily) for downloading and uploading all the photos on the blog. Does anyone have any helpful hints as to how I can upload photos directly off my iPad, or indeed suggestions as to an interim measure along the lines of Picasaweb? What do other people use?

Please send me some suggestions as I can't wait to show you what we're doing!
Many thanks in advance and apologies for the disappointingly boring first post in a while :(

Boxes

I apologise in advance to Corish Chickpea for my little moan. I'm still hoping everything works out for you very soon!

Welcome to Chris, a new follower :)

OMG! I am so incredibly fed up with filling and stacking boxes, especially when I remember that this is just the first stage - I then have to empty them all again at the other end, crush them and recycle them.
I really cannot understand why you would move regularly if you didn't have to. I think next time we move, we will sell everything and move into a camper van to tour around Europe! Or just back a backpack and go round the world. Now that would be liberating!

Although when I look around at the mess I feel as if we will never be ready, I do know that we are nearly there now. My poor little house has never been this consistently messy since we moved in in 1994! It doesn't seem much point cleaning too often at this stage. I will obviously do a deep clean when they have packed everything up on Sunday.

Nearly there ...... :)