For the last couple of months we’ve been enjoying the fruits of our labour, having finally finished the kitchen. Having finished the floor earlier this year and installing underfloor heating and my new range cooker, there was still a few more important things to attend to… more lights needed fitting at the glass end. With…
The start to 2021 has brought big changes to the skittle-alley-that-was and it’s beginning to look more and more like a kitchen. One evening, shortly after snagging a Black Friday deal on some hand made floor tiles, the whole family made a human chain to get them off the pallets, in the old pub car…
In the last few months we’ve brewed tea for a steady flow of tradesmen, from plasterers, to electricians and plumbers. Prior to these works we had some jobs to take care of ourselves. The first being windows repair… The linseed paint goes on like a dream and all the detail in the woodwork can still…
Life got busy and keeping up with the blog went to the bottom of the list, but we’ve been plodding along getting things done in this gigantic project of restoring this beautiful old pub. The last post showed the finished glass end, new green oak frame and old slates back on the roof. So we’ve…
5 years ago when we moved in the pub had a skittle alley, which we discovered had been a smoke house hundreds of years ago. It has always been the plan to turn it into a kitchen / diner / living space and to also make it possible to allow ‘happenings’ to take place there.…
Except for a couple of doors that need to be hung we finished the oak room, formerly known as the dirt floor room! With the wainscot panelling coming together bit by bit in Owens workshop we got to work on the walls. We used beautiful clay paint and to top it off the colour we…
We have been trying to get a mortgage since February when the pub was officially granted residential use and it’s been a slog to be honest. Our mortgage brokers deserve a medal having got their heads around our unusual set up here and then conveying that to banks who prefer boxes to be ticked! Well…
It’s been busy with the business and on the pub restoration front, so it’s a good job school is off for a while! After getting the lovely oak floor down we’ve oiled it with linseed and got a building regs approved fire door in place at their request… Obviously with the big gap above the…
We took receipt of the beautiful character grade oak floorboards recently and they’ve kept us busy… I can confirm that hammering cut nails into solid oak is hard work! Owen could whack them in with a fair few hits, whereas I was still banging them with about 30 smacks of the hammer – I kid…
Since Christmas we’ve started a few things as they often take as long as they want to take! We’ve put in our plans for the new timber frame roof and glass end for the skittle ally (one day to be a kitchen diner) and had a few companies in to see the project and quote…
Well, not strictly new, but they look like new. I haven’t posted in a while because we’ve been working on 4 doors and so I thought I’d wait and do them all in one post. The first door we repaired I don’t have a clear ‘before’ picture so the finished one will have to do.…
As you know we have moved our work outside while we have no risk of frost, because lime mortar doesn’t like it. In the last post we showed some pics of the back of the building and it’s that job that we continue with… Having hired a concrete saw and smasher and a skip we…
Having finished a room in the attic, we’ve now moved outdoors to finish and start some other bits and pieces. We need to get to the Windows in the top of the picture and also tear down this lean to at the back of the building that was put up by the brewery without consent.…
Last weekend we actually experienced that thrilling feeling when you finish a room. It’s been a long time in the making but we did it! With a radiator we found in a reclamation yard Owen did a spot of plumbing to get it in and ready for winter. Before it went in there was the…
Just a catch up post as we’ve been busy doing bits and pieces up in the attic over the last few weeks. We’ve been working on the stairs leading up to the attic, I stripped off some old paint which took some persuading. We’ve also repaired and repainted the panelling we found under…
The Restoration Tale 