Cat and Mouse

27 August 2015

Back home, tired.  Found the house overrun with mice.  The cats obviously have been on strike while we were away.  I caught one almost by accident on the kitchen windowsill, and showed it to the cat to explain what we were expecting of her.  We later released the mouse several fields away. 

 Our automatic watering system had worked very well, so we returned to a good crop of courgettes, including one monster that was the size of a marrow.

While I did all the tedious washing and unpacking, Dave started constructing the lintel for the front door.  This isn't easy, as we want the walls to splay open in welcome, so the lintel is a parallelogram, and needs a plywood sheet fitting in underneath.  This is a bit detailed and technical, so we took it nice and slow.

Then on Monday, George finally came to fix the overheating chimney.  We deconstructed the music room, and George moved the stove and took out the pipes, to get replacements and ask for our money back.  He will return on Friday to build a concrete block chimney.

The wood behind the 'insulated' chimney is showing scorch marks, only little ones, but even so, it is scary.  George is going to install fireproof concrete board and the chimney blocks will go through the wooden roof to a height of at least a metre.  That will be a relief for this winter.