Breeze block wall demolished!

 Before

During

After

We also had to remove the hot water tank that replaced the death trap gas boiler that was here when we moved in and move the giant washer dryer combo we have to handle all the bedding from the apartments.

Lots of memories about living in this part of the house when we first arrived and how uncomfortable it was…

Rough puff pastry

 250g plain flour

250g cold butter cut in to 2cm ish chunks

Cold water

Makes enough for 4 individual pies (my dishes are 13x20cm)

Put the flour in a bowl and add the cubes of butter making sure each one is coated in flour so they don’t all stick back together.

Use pastry cutter to roughly work the butter in to the flour (like making short crust but you want plenty of lumps of butter still so don’t work it for long.

Add enough cold water that the dough just comes together, you can still see lumps of butter.

Put in fridge for 30 mins (or up to a few days) 

Roll out to 1cm thick and twice as long as it is wide. Fold each end in (like an envelope)

Turn through 90° and roll long again (not wider) till 3 times as long as wide.

Turn 90° and repeat twice more

Put whatever filling you are using in your pie dish (this one was beef and mushroom)

Roll out to the size of your pie dish, brush with milk or egg and bake at 180°C for about 30 mins or until golden brown on top.

Having removed various bits of insulation we can now clearly see the crack between the original internal wall (left) and the front wall (right). Bit of a worry!

Looking down through the 3rd section (of 7). Next thing is to replace any joists that need it and then lay the new upstairs subfloor.

This is the rubble from knocking down part of the breeze block (very not original) wall to open this up to it’s original 6x6m size

 It will eventually be kitchen/dinner with a small seating area as well. We have decided that the 2 beams need a little support from below to take out bounce from the floor upstairs and stop the beams sagging further (there is an 11cm difference between the ends and the middle) so there will be a couple of pillars in the downstairs room. Details of the design still being looked at..,

Snow snow snow!

 We have had plenty of snow now, at home and in the ski area. What a relief!

The animals don’t massively enjoy it

Here are the cows enjoying a sunny interlude.

Each one has an egret beside it, we presume they are there eating bugs and stuff, we only see them at certain times of year, so I suppose they are migrating.

Snow has finally arrived!

 

On to 2 of 7

 Sticky out stones trimmed back (though we still have the scary part of removing the acrows…)

Moving the table, chair, keyboard and freezer in to the section we have done (to the extent of new subfloor upstairs and prepared walls for further steps later) so we can do the same in the next section…

The polythene doesn’t exactly stop the dust, but it reduces it a little…

Back at it…

 We both had colds over Christmas and New Year, but now recovered enough to get back to work!

This is Doug chipping old crumbling plaster off the wall. We have also removed a lot of rotten stuff from the beam on his right.

This is the little bit of new subfloor we have done upstairs. With the old joists from this section on the left and new ones for the next sections on the right. The pink bit is insulation in what will be the full length window.

Brushing off the walls ready for eventual hempcrete insulation (there’s a lot to do before that though…

I’m not sure health and safety would find this to be acceptable working conditions!