First night in the new Bedroom!!!!!!!

We spent the first night in the new bedroom. It was SO exciting. 

There are still a few things to do:

• Connect the ceiling lights and fan. 
• Get and fit the wardrobe doors (they are ordered)
• Move all our clothes up there (after washing to get rid of the mould)
• Move the bedding chest up there

This is where there will be sliding doors across

Before the bed and furniture obviously

Bed will be under that light on the left

The view

The wardrobe has strip of LED lights in it

The balcony still needs cleaned off!

View through the door back in to the main part of the house. We have cleaned a strip through the junk (valued possessions) as best we can

The fan still has a bit of wrapping on it which will come off when it is wired up

Bed and chest of drawers. There is another one the other side of the window. They are HUGE, but so is the room so they don't really look it. The bed is a super king and there is plenty of room around it. Biggest best bedroom EVER!

Rain has stopped!

We had two days of torrential torrential rain and we are surprised the house hasn't slid down the hill on the mud. We thought it was muddy before!
Finally the rain has stopped though and there are days of sunshine forecast now. It will be a bit cold (-9 overnight) but a relief!

Bedroom - slogging slogging

Doug's design for the stairs kept for posterity (original thrown away in the tidyup once all the wood cutting was finished)

Door painted blue. Doug finds the colour a little bright but I LOVE it. The wardrobe doors will have a moroccan pattern painted on them with this blue and the same white as the woodwork, as will the bedside cabinets.

We are going to paint the putty white too. This door is really crunkety and we will replace it when the rest of the house is done, but for now it fits the door opening without too much upheaval.

Wardrobe innards finished

Here is my detailed design of the wardrobe

Here is work in progress

Pink knot blocking primer.

Painting them is a BIG BIG job as it is taking MANY coats and there is a lot of surface area with quite a few fiddly bits at the back of low down shelves.

New WABBITS

They are Champagne d'argent, a male and a female. We ordered them on the internet and they arrived by lorry - I now it sounds strange when MILLIONS of people round here have rabbits, but it is such an undertaking finding them and they are generally at least 30 mins drive away... It was very smooth and so far (they arrived yesterday) they seem fine. They are a bit under 4 months old, so not yet ready to mate. 

I think this one is the male. He is called Koala.

I think this one is the female (I have looked at her bits and still think that though it is a bit hard to tell on rabbits). She is called Sterling.

They are currently living in the stacking cages as they have never eaten anything but pellets so they need to be carefully transferred over to eating grass, hay and a few pellets.

Assuming he really is a buck we will get rid of one of the Harveys (our two existing white bucks are both called Harvey). This is the one we will keep as he is more randy.

 We will keep this doe (Blondie) who is one of the Harvey's daughter. She is hopefully pregnant.

This is Blondie's daughter (Snowy) who is also hopefully pregnant.

Farm chic

I might have mentioned this before, but the weather has made me think about it again.

Before we moved here I read lots of lifestyle homesteading blogs (mainly in America) where people appeared to spend their whole lives going around in lovely floaty flowery skirts with pretty wellies. Reality turned out to be a bit different with the mud, cold, brambles and flies making this DEEPLY impractical. I tried lots of things, but eventually settled on farming onsies. This is the waterproof winter one, there is also a winter thermal, some spring and autumn not waterproof, not thermal ones and some summer ones (also known as dungarees).

There is no point in pretty wellies as the mud covers the pretty.

There is also a DIY onesie and and evening wear onesie. They are terribly practical...

Let there be light!

They are not connected up yet. The fan in the middle doesn't have a light on it, we decided the two either side should be enough. Though the room is huge!
There are also bedside lights and lights in the wardrobe.

Yet more moaning about mud

Just when we think it can't rain any more, it rains some more. 

This doesn't look like it in the photo, but is a steepish slope down in to the chicken enclosure. It has become an extreme mud sport to get down to get the (muddy) eggs and then to get back up again.

The poor chickens will be getting trench foot.

In the brief breaks in the rain it has been very pleasant and we have rushed out to walk the dog (not skiing at the moment because we are pushing forward on the bedroom, it is busy because of school holidays and the colds hung on rather).