Fallen Apple Farm

Yes, apparently ‘red room’ has stuck for now. It’s been too long!

We’ve spent months basically rebuilding this room, from repointing the stone sections and plastering the walls, to repairing the joists and opening the hearth. It seems so close to the decorating/fun bit but there’s still a bunch to do. The biggest being to get something to surround the fireplace, put windowsills in and the heating panel on the ceiling.

Here’s the room before Tim sanded the floor.

Much nicer! I’ll also take any compliments about the plastering job. Yeh it’s not perfectly smooth on close inspection but I don’t intend to closely inspect the wall ever again.

The grey chaise will be going into my room when we can remove the water heater. It will be replaced by some seating that we haven’t found yet.

The less said about the ceiling, the better. I have nothing positive to say about it other than ‘better than it was’. ? If an explanation is required: wonky everything. Just assume that any surface in the entire house is wonky enough to cause grumps. Started putting the skirting boards up and there was a gap of over an inch behind one of them! All these little things that add more and more time. That one little problem added over a week with research, buying the solution, waiting for things to dry and so on. Anyway, it’s done now and it all looks fine to me!

We have the light very low because it’s over the table. For board games and jigsaw puzzles ??

Pictures will be above this cupboard and a lamp on it that I’ve been trying to persuade Tim into buying. Tim, I’ve said it on the internet so it’s official, we have to buy it now! ?

Here’s what it used to look like.. not really red either in this light ?????

We haven’t made a post in a while because we haven’t done one big thing to require one. Just a few things that still felt like progress. Especially getting a skip to clear out some more rubbish!

This was full of bin bags with rubbish in, it was gross.. you can breathe easier walking around outside now.

I also got fed up enough of the cracks around the house when we noticed ants in them. I did not like the idea of ants digging out all the earth in between the stones of the house. So down went some poison (sorry ants ?) and I started filling the cracks in. I also thought it’d be cool to use some of the extra tiles to make the occasional mosaic in the larger cracks.

I also went to a workshop on lime mortars at Roundtower Lime in Innishannon. The guys there are absolutely lovely, very helpful and knowledgeable. I also really liked how they weren’t dismissive of me for being a woman trying to do a man’s job. I get that often enough that I appreciate it when it doesn’t happen. Which is a shame really, being pleased at basic human decency, but that’s another conversation! I came away from the workshop feeling motivated, hopeful and reassured that I haven’t made any blunders so far.

The owner of the business started it all by slaking his own lime in order to rebuild the castle in Innishannon that belongs to his family. It had burned down a century ago and was a ruin, but they did an amazing job and it’s now a family home.

They told us the story of how this was built: the decorations at the edges were a mix of hand formed and from silicone moulds. The centre parts were molded by hand on the ground and then stuck up there. The original guy who worked on it was there and could answer all our questions about it.

We were all impressed anyway but were shocked when we realised the state of the castle before they’d started. It was a proper ruin!

They gave us lunch in the family kitchen too, that was a nice touch.

In other news we’ve spent a week or two building the ceiling in the red room. We went about it all backwards because the initial idea was to have tiles and a coffered ceiling. So we put the coving up first. Then we decided we really shouldn’t spend so much money on a ceiling so nixed most of that. So then I had to plaster the ceiling with coving already up, which was just a shit time. RIP neck muscles. It’s not the neatest job but it’s ok as long as you don’t stand on a stool to examine it! We haven’t finished so ignore those parts but here’s a sneak peek to show the colours which I LOVE.

We’ve been slowly picking away at the (no longer red) red room for some time now and have struggled to get the ceiling sorted. First, taking the existing ceiling down involved painstakingly clearing the metric ton worth of grain husks that were shoved into the rafters as “insulation” – It was… not great.

It then took a bit of effort to force ourselves to put the new boards up (they’re heavy) but we got there in the end and voilá! The ceiling is ready for the next steps:

• Building a basic coffered ceiling effect using strip wood
• Installing pressed tiles in the recesses for a cool little patterned effect

There are plenty of nuisance jobs to be done around the farm that eat away at me ever so slightly until I finally say enough is enough – the drippy roof in the old workshop has been one such niggle from the very start.

We have a couple of corrugated plastic skylights that got a few cracks in them so we’d see a persistent leak whenever it rained (which of course it does a fair bit here ?). So, in preparation for next season, I bit the bullet and went off to the shop to get some new plastic sheeting.

And… it’s expensive! €90 alone just for the sheets, and more for the self driving fittings and waterproof washers. Now, I’m certainly no stranger to shelling out money in this place but we have a long road ahead of us so we’re trying to cut back where we can.

So I made the prudent decision to return the plastic sheeting and grab a couple steel sheets we had left over from the lean-to roof I dismantled months ago. Armed with our trusty crowbar and a new roll of Gorilla tape, I was able to reuse the fixings, seal up the holes with tape (lordy lord I hope that works ??) and bish bosh, job done! It kinda sucks the workshop is so dark inside now but we have lights in there and we’re planning on replacing the whole roof anyway, hopefully with proper skylights so this will do for now.

Ok Tim just pointed out that I didn’t post pics of the old bathroom for comparison. Fair enough, I was just too excited about how it looks now I didn’t even think about it.

FINALLY after almost exactly a year being in this house I am able to pee during the night without waddling and tripping all over the house. It’s right there next to my room. Of course there are a lot of other reasons I’m excited about having this room done, that’s just the top one.

The next best cause of excitement is to look at how lovely it is! Totally planned and not cobbled together at the tile shop with lots of “ummms” and “maybes” ?. We originally wanted a variety of random colours just because we love colour and where else can you do lots of colours in one place? But we couldn’t find anything suitable. I guess we’re too extra for Cork ?

So I know what we ended up with is basically what we did in the kitchen, which put us off for a time… but then we decided it doesn’t matter. We like what we like ????? And we love it!

I am so pumped to have a towel heater! I had to hug it when it warmed up. Never had one but they’re such a luxury when you come across them in hotels. That is going to be a boon in the winter.

Excuse the state of the kitchen roof and dirty window but what a view to have while you’re pooping! We were not about to cover it with an opaque window for the sake of privacy. You can’t see into the bathroom from the edge of the field anyway.

Lighting is important in a bathroom and look at how awesome this mirror is at night! It’s a de-foggy mirror too, that’s another thing to be excited about. Oh OH! We will also have a bidet which is another exciting thing, I love bidets.

We have individual switches for the mirror, under the vanity, in the shower and a main central light that I’ll never use for myself. So in the middle of the night you could only turn the vanity on and not be blinded. Or you could have a shower with just the shower light on and have it feel intimate. I love this bathroom I wish I could hug it.

Its a small thing but we’ve had these blue pendant lights sitting close by ever since we had the kitchen done.. waiting for our electrician to provide the ceiling points so we could wire them up.

Well… he put the points in ages ago but we simply couldn’t figure out how to wire them so there they sat, staring at me every time I went through into the kitchen. And there were certainly more pressing things for him to work on in the interim.

But I finally said something today and it took him all of 10 minutes to whack up on the ceiling – I couldn’t be happier ?? One more tiny step toward a finished room! ?

Round two and a fresh determination to find the source of The Leak and lo and behold- thar she blows!

Only a bit more chiseling out and I finally found it! Such a relatively small thing but a huge morale boost to find something that’s been annoying us for over a year. I quickly realized the connector had to go so I cut it out and was left wondering what the hell type of fittings had to go in to replace it.

Fortunately, our lovely plumber who’s been remodeling our bathroom was to hand to ask for advice… He sent me off to the shop for the right fittings and voilá! Beautiful!

And there it is! We cleared out the weeds and the concrete is dry for the first time.. the kids are super pleased and their soccer “pitch” is now super dusty instead of muddy… Better than it was.?

Ever since day one of living on the farm, we’ve had a leak welling up from underneath the concrete in the tractor barn that’s been a perpetual nuisance and a mystery regarding its origin; Is there an underground spring? Did we somehow burst a pipe? Is our septic tank leaking??

Well that last one was disproven when a local came by and literally licked the water and he deemed it “clean enough” so ????

When the weather eventually turned from cold and sodden into warm(er) and dry(er), the plants really took root and the kids’ makeshift soccer pitch was in jeopardy of being just a bit too muddy so it was finally time to do something about it.

So I grabbed the SDS and the biggest chisel bit I could find and got to work gouging out fair size holes to see if I could track down the source. Armed with the knowledge our friendly Latvian neighbor imparted that it was probably a hose connection, I was confident we’d finally get this sorted…

The job was slow as the holes of course kept filling up with water and I had to hoover it out before I realized turning off our main water supply stopped the leak – duh! ????

No luck but we’ll get there!

Finally have a room finished! It makes sense I guess that Owen’s room was the first one to be done. It’s tiny, so it was a quick way to feel some accomplishment. I say quick but here’s a reminder of how it started.. this photo was taken exactly a year ago..

Owen wanted a bright blue room with teal accessories and a fluffy rug. And it’s a pleasant, cheerful room to be in now. It gets a lot of sunshine!

It’s difficult to get a decent photo of it because the small size limits angles. It also doesn’t show how sunny it is – I took it in late afternoon with the sun no longer directly in there and I still had to lower the exposure so the brightness didn’t blow out! Suffice to say, it’s very nice and bright in there ??

Currently back to working on the red room and the plumber has started doing the bathroom (much excitement, I am very much looking forward to having a shower that doesn’t screech in your ear).