Fallen Apple Farm

What an absolute wreck of a space the Workshop was.. packed with rubbish and old machinery ? We forgot to snap an earlier pic before we cleared a significant amount of it.

We stuck in and were able to make a space for the washing machine while we work on renovating the space into a proper finished room. ?

We had gone to push the fridge in only to discover it has side vents on both sides – not something we nor the cabinet fitter had anticipated ? So it’s been sat in the middle of the kitchen floor for the first few days ?

Fortunately, he popped back in early this morning and sorted out some additional ventilation down the sides… it’s in now and fantastic ??

6.5 years in Macroom… Longest K’s ever lived in a single place. A bit sad to go but excited for what’s to come ?

After a dreadful morning of Kelly sitting cold and drenched on the kitchen floor with her thumb pressed over a spurting hose, we managed to successfully do a bit of DIY plumbing and got the tap in.

The left side of the sink anyway… Now to sort out the right side, the dishwasher, and the boiling water tank! ??

Our new range was surprisingly delivered early one morning when we weren’t home so has been sitting in an outbuilding for a couple of weeks. We built a trolley to get it in the kitchen door.. took every ounce of our combined strength to get it in ? but now it’s in and it’s lurrrrvely…

Now we just need to get it wired to the mains!

I’m kicking myself for not taking a photo of this wall when I was ready to patch it up. So much of it crumbled away, leaving a large hole at bottom and top left, large chunks out of the window edges and the whole bit above the window just fell off. Not to mention big holes wherever a nail had been, a lot of it was crumbly. The window sill is gone now too, it’s basically rubble under that.

So I took a couple of days to try and peel off the paint without disturbing it too much and scratched away at the concrete underneath to get it ready to patch up. A man at the builder’s merchant who used to be a plasterer advised me to cover the lead paint with PVA, apparently it helps to keep it from being airborne dust.

I started covering it with concrete today. I’ll plaster over it, but it is super wonky. It’s really hard to get straight lines when there are such large differences in depth.

Again, I’m not bothering to do it neatly directly around the window because they’ll be replaced (hopefully soon!) The skirting boards will be interesting work on this wall, there is nearly an inch difference in depth between the left corner and under the window. I’ll try to even it out but my priority is covering the lead paint. We’re moving in a couple of weeks and we were planning on doing other things!

I’m so proud of this bit above the window. As you’d expect, concrete likes to just fall off when applied to the underside of whatever. It was slow going but I got it eventually, even if the left wall comes out further into the room by about an inch! I’m not too concerned about things like that and Tim actually likes it. He never wanted a cookie cutter house.

So yeh, long post but it’s been a long few days ?

I tried to put a wall board onto the wood frame that you can see along the right of the photo above but had to take some of the wall away in the corner to do that. Plasterboard and styrofoam were covering this green paint on crumbly plaster. Pretty sure it’s lead paint. All other projects are on hold now until we move in so I can spend the next couple of weeks taking care of all the walls that are lined in this way. It took me all day to uncover this one wall, being as careful as I could to not disturb the paint too much. I didn’t enjoy myself today and won’t enjoy working on the walls until the paint is covered.

I definitely don’t enjoy taking these five inch nails out of the concrete ?

It’s amazing how much a kitchen makes a house feel like a home. I’m glad Tim was with me today because we had to have a long hug after seeing this. Still a way to go but seeing it start to come together was quite emotional, we love it. And look how smooth that plastering is! ?

Except for that top corner ? We ran out of time. The kitchen needed plastering but we hadn’t been able to fill in the hole from the old oven extraction. You can just make out the hole with a shaped brick and expanding foam in it. Will cover the hole and plaster the rest of the wall soon.

Waiting on the electrician to complete the kitchen now and we can go ahead and put the appliances and the boiling water tap in ?

Shout out to the lovely kitchen delivery guy Alex! I was disappointed when he told me he wasn’t the fitter (he starts tomorrow), but it was exciting to see it all laid out ready. The blue cupboards look rather nice against the tiles ??

There are two of these worktops!

This is the undercoat that I did yesterday. It was easier than I thought to put on, owing to its slight grittiness. Trowel marks weren’t much of a problem. It was annoying to work around the wires and holes though, I made much more of a mess than I would have otherwise. I didn’t bother around the windows because they’re being replaced soon.

And here’s the finish coat I did today! It doesn’t look much different, just smoother. Harder to keep smooth as every swipe over it shows marks, but as Tim reminded me several times I shouldn’t waste time on perfectionism because it’s being covered with cupboards and tiles anyway ??

Definitely a good first attempt at plastering though, as long as it doesn’t crumble off the walls ? Hopefully the amount of research I did pays off?