It's June already!

I can't believe it's the middle of June and we've been living in the rented house at Drumoig for 7 months now! Things are progressing slowly at Sandford. The sandblasting that Ralph did has been very successful and we have some lovely new windows made by Colin the Joiner . The roofers have now got the roof watertight and will hopefully be back in the next few days to finish off the dormers at the front of the house. I've painted the new windows with Farrow & Ball Castle Gray which is much more in keeping with the Arts and Crafts style of the house rather than the peeling black paint that is presently on all the woodwork. The challenge at the moment is to get our painter and decorator to arrive when he says he will and to get moving with painting all the other external woodwork before it disintegrates completely. We've been doing some more work on the garden and I bought a second hand ride on mower which has made grass cutting so much easier.

Well, we've finally got going - Sandford is ours! It took exactly one year for the sale to go through and in the meantime we've been looking after the place and trying to stop the deterioration that has been happening in the 3 years it's been lying empty.

So far we've uncovered the sunken garden to find a pond, some paths and a weeping willow tree. We've ripped out all the old carpets and had some spectacular bonfires, we've taken damp plaster off a couple of walls, we've had a chimney re-harled and last weekend Ralph got to work with his new sandblasting machine on removing the glossy black paint from the old oak beams - and what a difference that's made! We've also removed some of the external cladding that's on the outside of the loggia as we want to open this up.