Blue rain

I read in my clever RHS 'Gardening through the year' book how to cut back wisteria so that it'll flower well next year. I did as it said, and it's started flowing again already this year!

The German name for wisteria is Blauregen = blue rain.

If you look carefully at the photo you can see the top of the house in the background.

recycling the kitchen

The kitchen from the first floor is going to go up to Zoe's flat. The doors are solid wood but in a clour that doesn't fit Zoe's plans. So, she's painting them. But before you paint you have to treat the wood so that it will take the paint. And for that you need fresh air, a wallpapering table and goggles.

Lazy Sunday afternoon

After all the hard work of the past week we had a lazy Sunday family afternoon in the garden discussing how to cut back certain plants and what to do with the enormous amount of damsons on the tree at the back of the garden.

We even managed to get Oma to escape from the care home for a couple of hours.

The girls now come with added boyfriends.



But we only have one step ladder.



Anke's apparently going to make a cake, or some jam, or something else sticky from damsons.




Me and my mother-in-law under the magnolia tree.

real men wear dust

Some of the tools of Mr M's trade...

Skeletons

This is what a skeleton wall looks like. This is going to be Zoe's entrance area which will seperate her living room from the stairs and give her somewhere to leave her shoes, coats and million bags.

(Hmm, maybe it's not big enough for all the stuff she has...)

new walls emerging

As soon as the old walls disappeared and light flooded through the large open spaces of the house, new walls started to get built - although the angles did give Mr M a bit of a dusty headache.

With a lot of imagination this will be the entrance to the bathroom,bedroom and spare room.

And here I am in the (soon to be) shower.

The downstairs toilet door was in the wrong place, so we're knocking through a new one.

Rubble

There was a lot of rubble.

Ever such a lot of rubble.

We got ourselves some help.

Sometimes ingenious help, even though the rope was too short.

And the two skips turned into three...

.

Destruction Day

Today the destruction began.

Mr Mürder murdered the walls with all manner of heavy machinery.

Timber frames were revealed in the living room (as was the uneven floor - not sure what we're going to do about that yet).

And we got two skips.

Somewhere for the post

We bought the letterbox two weeks ago, but it has taken that long to get the metal plates we need to support and hold it made up to measure. It was a real family effort: Werner measured and planned the system, Zoe picked up the metal parts, and I held the box against the fence so we could put it up (and I got the additional keys cut).
At this rate we'll be able to move in by the middle of the century!

Although we have been doing other things too: we've chosen and planned a bathroom, chosen but not quite planned a kitchen (but have made an appointment to do so), and measured all the windows for the millions of curtains and curtain rails we'll have to buy.