Tap tap and fire

 Welcome back to another week here, after a lovely weekend.

As the fog clears, a beautiful day

Carpet roll strapped to Thomas

Fireplace is safe

Planting out lots of cabbages

Rosie having a wander

Temporary office location

The days here are settling into their usual pattern of heavy fog in the morning that burns off to a glorious day; both Saturday and Sunday were like this, as was today actually. On Saturday we had a lovely day with a call with my mum and sister and after Rosie's nap we headed into town to collect the blinds for Room 13 and also the carpet for the library. It was huge, but travelled safely on Thomas' roof. I also got round to fitting the barriers around the fireplace so now we really are ready for winter. It hasn't yet been anywhere near the weather for a fire, however, with blue skies and glorious sunshine. Angela got some more plants potted out onto the balcony while on Sunday I finally got Room 13 emptied and moved the desk into the upstairs corridor (where I'm typing this up now) ready for the work to be done in Room 13.

Hikmet in the fog breaking sticks

Sally sweeps

Black paint on the metal pole

Grinding out a support

Here is one of three he made

Black paint around the library

Today again dawned very foggy and Hikmet could barely be seen breaking more sticks out past the chicken enclosure. Inside Halil and Sally cleaned up the library floor, Halil then going on to paint the pole for the curtain at the end of the corridor, while Bekir set to making the brackets for the pole to hang from. With the library floor clean Halil and Sally did more painting, Halil touching up some missed spots on the walls while Sally did the skirting very carefully. We're now all but done in there; tomorrow I'll ask Bekir to fix the ducting for the network and then we'll be stuck until the window people finally show.

Halil starts scraping

Sally begins the tap tap chore

Drilling out to fit the brackets

Picking up fallen fruit

A fitted pole for curtains

Chainsawing the larger bits

It wasn't long before Halil was upstairs starting to scrape the walls outside Room 13 and the Games Room. Sally then came and joined in and so the tap tap began. Bekir had made all the brackets now and so started to drill holes to fit them but then it was lunch time and he and Hikmet gathered bags full of fallen crab pears to take for their cows. After lunch he got the next two brackets mounted (though first of all, so they didn't make lots of noise when Rosie was just napping, the men carried all the boxes of books down into the gym out of the guest room ready for our visitor this weekend) and then when the pole was in place Bekir went to help Hikmet with the chainsaw as Hikmet still doesn't like using power tools really.

Sally keeps going - such a horrible task

Halil grouting the window tiles

Hanging the dust sheets

Let's start a fire....

.. paaanniiiiccc!

Aftermath of the out of control fire

Wood stash for next year

Sally continued on the tap tap going down the stairs and they made very good progress on this; we did change our minds and decide that rather than only do the landing area we'd do all the stairs as well; I've also decided to put some plasterboard on the wall that will have the model railway on it, to make attaching things to it easier. Halil did some grouting in the library before going to join Sally while Bekir lit the bonfire that Hikmet had built. It was all going fine before suddenly it got out of hand and they were all out frantically beating the fire out before it spread into the woods behind. Thankfully they managed to do this but it did burn a chunk of our back bank first. We may end up waiting for a very still day and doing more of this as it really does drop the weeds well. We shall see. I ended the day, after a really tiring work day, with Rosie and Angela asked me to check the wood stash that Hikmet has built and wow what a sight. That can now stay there until next winter.

There you are; a longer blog as usual on a Monday but a lot has gone on. Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow.