I think this is where I left off with the building work updates: acrow props holding up a third of the rear house wall while two steel beams were put in place. The door you can see was the original back door. When we moved into The Gables almost a year ago it opened onto a large uPVC conservatory, which at 20 years old was a little weary, as ageing plastic structures tend to be.

The conservatory that is no more

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We knew at once it had to be turned into a properly insulated room, ideally a new kitchen-dining-room. And so began the process of having a designer draw up plans and submit them to the local authority for planning permission. That took a few months.

But now the photos. The acrow prop view shows our main sitting-room, looking from front to back of house. (There’s a second smaller sitting-room across the front hallway). Originally, when the house was built in 1922, there was internal wall running behind cupboard, presumably with a door through to a run of two or three narrow rooms. We’re guessing scullery, pantry, W.C. and also boiler room for doing laundry. This last possibility we discovered only two days ago when builder Alan was investigating the plumbing in the downstairs loo of many surprising colours. In the corner (left) he found signs of a small flue that had been re-used for the pipework when the upstairs bathroom was installed. (Tell-tale soot in the cavity).

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Anyway, at some point, in more recent times, the big sitting room was extended into the rear rooms to make an ‘L’ shape with a galley kitchen (running off to the right). The far end access to the W.C. was walled up in order to put in a big range cooker, and a new doorway to ablutions installed in the back corner of the smaller front sitting-room (not ideal!)

So: we’re knocking out part of the rear wall into the new kitchen extension, and reinstating a wall on the inside right to turn the (until last week) old kitchen into a utility room, and also restoring the door to the cloakroom and blocking up the sitting room access.

The big knock-through

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In the meantime, while the internal wall goes up for the utility room, I have makeshift arrangements in the new kitchen. This is currently only a shell awaiting its lantern roof-light, window, French doors, oak floor and kitchen units which are being made by Shepherd Hills, a Mennonite community of craftsmen who have their workshop in the next village.

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Utility room and downstairs cloakroom with restored doorway

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As for the outside, the brickwork is done, but I’m not revealing all until the windows and doors go in. There are always drawbacks with flat-roof extensions, not least the look of them, hence the addition of a lantern roof-light to offset the plainness of the rectangle. It is a difficult space to make the most of, in reality not very big. Nor was there much room to manoeuvre due to the position of the upstairs windows. Most of all, we didn’t want to add anything too fussy to this modest little house.

Looking back to the winter, some of you may remember the wall of bricks, saved by builder Alan from the conservatory demolition. They are now incorporated in the new build.

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I can also show you our other structure in progress, as in Graham’s shed. He’s building it from scratch, inspired, he tells me, by a Great Western Railway goods waggon. It will thus have a curved roof, and as he’s forgotten how he built the Sheinton Street shed which also had a curved roof, the process is involving much pondering, followed by phases of making and unmaking. You may notice that some of  the hundred year old battens from the rebuilding of the house roof are being repurposed. Also four panes from the old conservatory are going into the window slots.

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And as for the garden, well, after all the rain, it’s coming along rather vigorously in this interim phase of development (i.e. until the autumn when I might make more of plan that will involve finding homes for all the stuff presently in pots. At the moment I’m more interested in growing food. (On the plot: assorted tomatoes inside and outside the greenhouse, runner beans, Russian kale, perennial kale, onions, leeks, a few beetroot, Romanesco cauliflowers, cabbages and oak leaf lettuce).

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I think I’ve finished digging up the lawn, but there’s still the Hedge of Horrors to sort out, with more chicken wire extraction required, plus the unravelling of weigela, privet, elder, sycamore, ash, holly, hawthorn, ivy and some devilishly prickly berberis.

But on the plus side, the sweet corn is growing purposefully in the front garden, as are the Charlotte potatoes amongst the  toadflax and achillea.

And that’s it for now chez Farrell. I’m leaving you with a single very lovely rose that snook out of the crocosmia thicket this week. It’s scent is delicious and growing by Graham’s shed.

Happy days amid dust and debris.