Fallen Apple Farm

In December, Tim was digging along the length of the kitchen waste pipe to see if it had collapsed or something further down because it was constantly blocking. And found a large jar with an actual snake in it!

Pretty gross, right? Tim poured it out onto the grass and the sound it made as it slid out made me actually retch. I have a photo of it laying there in all its pink grossness but I don’t know how to grey the photo unless you want to see it for some reason and click on it. Tim’s busy at the moment so I don’t want to ask him how to do that. So if you don’t want to see the photo, don’t scroll down.

Seriously, it’s nasty

I’ll add another paragraph in case the photo is still on your screen..

Hummm, hmmm, HMMMMMmore gaps for you.

Oh I can give you an innocuous photo to really spread the page out

Ok. Maybe that’s enough space. I’ll post the snake now. I’ll try not to look at it while I do that

It would be nice to have a room finished to take photos of “tadaaaaa” but I suspect it will be a while before a whole room is wholly done. So here’s a couple of pictures of the done bits of the tiling around the window and range.

The ceiling is bare plywood holding up insulation fluff so we left a line of tiles out along the ceiling line, which you can just see in the dark top right of the photo below. There are a few things left to complete in the kitchen.. remaining tiles, ceiling, lights above the sink and a few minor-ish things like skirting and waiting for the electrician to install the infrared panel. But even with that, the kitchen is miles nicer than any other room in the house, and with the view from the window it makes cleaning dishes almost a treat. Almost. A bit.

Definitely a lot more comfortable with tiling, but I suspect I make the task of adding caulk a lot more sticky than strictly necessary. I think I’ll be buying a tool for it before I do it again instead of using my hands.

We haven’t made a post since November, but we have been doing things. Just nothing to completion, everything lately has been piecemeal. We had the windows fitted in December – during a week of -8C temperatures which was.. unpleasant. Our electricity bill went up to €800 for December to warm up the frozen house once they’d left. But the windows are great. Triple glazing, much less windy in the house now. I was looking forward to taking pictures to share here but they didn’t have the right panes for the front windows so that’s been left unfinished. I’d rather wait to take photos until we have those in. I built a frame for one of the kitchen windows though. Tim had a specific idea in mind and I think I did ok!

He wanted a slightly used and dented look so I sanded some distress into it. I’m proud of it, especially because you can’t tell how wonky the window was originally. I filled in the wonks beforehand as much as I could with sand, cement, a wire frame, a spirit level and sore knees.

We had a new well dug in November and that was left chugging away for a month, leaving silt that it brought up all over the place. The water runs clear now and this week they connected it to the house!

It’s drinkable but very high in calcium so we will be adding a machine to help that. It’s interesting that the well that’s about 10m away, though shallower hardly has any calcium! I bought the final lot of bottled drinking water this week..that was €13 a week and a ton of plastic we’re happy to not do anymore.

We couldn’t get to replacing the kitchen roof until after winter, so we made the decision to fill the rafters and put up a temporary ceiling to try to mitigate heat loss – should be a bit warmer once the windows are done! ?

Nice to have a bit of light over the stove now… Just need to drill a hole in the back wall to install the ducting ???

We have this lean-to with a not-exactly-structurally-sound steel roof on it that was deemed the best spot to drill our new well. It obviously needs some demolition and cleanup work so I grabbed my trusty crowbar and sledgehammer and got to work today.

I won’t lie… I hit a lot of walls, both figuratively and literally, most commonly in the form of stubborn 3ft long nails (at least they felt that long!), clearly designed to make future roof removers absolutely miserable.

But! I got it done and the well drillers are on their way soon(ish) – good things ???

Oh my god, was I spent by this point… That last beam had some super stubborn nails in them that I just couldn’t pry out to remove the cladding… I ended up smash-cutting a hole around each nail with the end of the crowbar just to clear the metal sheets out.

Now just to clear out the rest of the log rafters and clean the rubbish out and the well can be drilled! ??

And a new rimlock with a wooden beehive knob for my bedroom door- gorgeous! And certainly better than the sharp splintery stick shoved through a hole that I was previously using! ?

Mewsli (as we have dubbed her, following our tradition of cereal-based cat names for each neighborhood cat that has graced each of our Irish homes- the other two were Weetabix and Oreo) pops round every day now, sometimes multiple times a day.

I can’t help but feel a certain affection for her already as she’s an absolute sucker for attention and loves any excuse for head scritches (clearly my spirit animal). K and the boys are quite fond of her as well, of course – shall be interesting to see how she reacts when we introduce some kittens into the mix!

Is there any threadcraft this woman can’t do? We needed some storage bags to hang from these nifty railroad spikes on the side of the island so K whipped us up these handy bags for root veggies.

Got her working on some ceiling bags and plant holders now – just bought a €75 roll of cord from the craft shop- exciting to see what she comes up with!

We quickly realized how much smoke was produced from cutting the doors with our new circular saw which seems like a major facepalm moment in retrospect… Took it outside and finished up nicely.

K’s been super hard at work constructing the frames and putting the hardware in while I languished on the sofa with a cold. She only asked me to handle the cutting while she gets accustomed to our loud new addition to the tool bench ?

Nice to finally get the doors up!