Out with the aga, in with another hole (or two)

Now that the chimney is down, 

it's time to start on the opening between the kitchen and utility.

It's very messy work and has made the room completely unusable. 

Here's the view from the utility through to the kitchen:

And again after the openings had been made:

Plenty of supports in place:

And all the doors, surrounds and salvage put to one side:

The surround for the old toilet has gone:

The steels have arrived:

 

And the blocks ready for filling the holes: 

A big hole in the roof over the utility, but with bolted doors, screws and no way of getting out once you get in, I think we're pretty safe!

Clearing out the Cider Barn

We were in the cider barn today, on a clearing mission. There is so much character in this room, so lots of it to save! Soon we will be taking out the old cider press, to reinstate in the new kitchen as a island. We'll worry about quite 'how' another day, but for now it's a case of taking the old apple shelves down and clearing out space for the hopper...

 

I really liked the look of the panelling on the partition:

So after some testing, Mike agreed that it should remain, 

rather than take it down to essentially build the same thing again!

The space looked great when we'd finished:

The chicken shed looks nice a full now too!

It will be nice to have this hatch in operation again:

and with a bit more room it was also a good excuse to try out the press:

A little bit of bricklaying

Now that the tank had arrived it was time to get the roof back on. Before that though, there was a little bit of repair work to do...

An old and battered window needed our attention:

We had intended on replacing it but, after some advice from Hendys (the treatments that we will be using in the pumphouse are light sensitive and so may not work if we expose them to daylight), we decided to block it up. Mike got very excited by this as this meant he could put to practice some of the skills he had picked up from his bricklaying course

Good job we'd salvaged those bricks from the front of the house:

After a chisel and a scrub with the wire brush they came up good as new:

Ideal for what Mike needed to build up the surround:

We also removed the old door frame and reinstated a new one:

After using up the last of the cement and a bit more patching up, 
we were all done for the day:

    

Whilst we'd been repairing the pumphouse, 

Steve and his team had been filling in the pipe trench, cementing the floor of the plant room and finishing off that entrance to the walled garden:

Another good day's work!