Music Room ceiling begins

Friday 10 August 2018

So much smaller and easier than the living room!  The batons, insulation and panels go up a dream.

 Naomi pops round to continue filling and sanding the Music Room door

First section finished.  Easy!

Roof edge boards

9 August 2018

Where the diagonal rafters meet the vertical walls there is a gap, the thickness of the wood frame (12cm), so to make a neat join with the ceiling, we are putting boards of tongue-and-groove in these spaces, after filling them with insulation.  Otherwise there would be uninsulated gaps all along the edge of the roof.  We've done this all round the house, as we go along, and the six in the Music Room are the last to do, hurrah!

 Dave does the first three back boards, from left, including the tricky one round the chimney

 Then he started to feel the vertigo again, so he cut the boards and I fitted them, but not off a ladder, I set up the small scaffolding to make it easier.

 Meanwhile, the unpainted batons and useful bits of trim are treated ready for use

Then we set up the scaffolding ready for Friday.  There has been no Lefkogaia volunteering for a couple of weeks, as the electricity supply to the warehouse has needed updating.  Better for us, as we have an extra day to work, but not good for Lefkada's recycling.

The workforce

Tuesday 7 August 2018

Back from our sailing weekend, and keen to get moving on the next ceiling, we accepted help from Paris and her friend Naomi to get our 18 ceiling boards and 12 long batons painted.

Salty Sea Dog

Saturday 4 August 2018

We decided to take the boat out for the weekend.  We wouldn't normally venture out there in August, but we wanted to try out the new electric outboard, and get the dog accustomed to the dinghy and the yacht while she was still young (and not too heavy!)

So we set off very early on Saturday morning, as the sun was rising.  We arrived at the water, unloaded the boat, all the bags and the dog, launched, loaded all the bags and the dog, then found the engine wouldn't start until Dave had fiddled about for a while getting the connections right.  This gave the dog a lot of time to get used to the idea, and being frightened of getting left behind, she was keen to leap aboard.  We took off across the bay, with the dinghy loaded to the gunnels and the dog squeezed into the bow with me holding tight to the lead.

With Angel tied to the binnacle, we cast off and took the yacht round to the nearest deserted bay, where we anchored and Dave and I threw ourselves into the water.  Angel fretted on the sugar scoop until she lost her footing and fell in.  She came up swimming and doggy paddled between us.

After breakfast we made the lengthy (30 min) crossing to Meganissey, aware that the dog was exposed to the sun all the way, so we found a mooring up the coast from Port Athene and settled in for the day, with the shade tent up.  Lots of swimming, and a few dinghy crossings along the land line for the dog to have a wee ashore.  She was very good and didn't soil the boat at all, holding herself in all night.

The next day we moved all of ten minutes around the coast to a favourite bay and did the same thing all over again.  Overall a successful trip - well done, Angel!

In the Dog House

3 August 2018

With the last delivery of wood for the Music Room ceiling, we also ordered a kennel.  Litsa, the marvellous assistant at the woodyard, who is always helping us, asked why we weren't making one from scratch, we said we were too busy building our own house to take time out to make one for the dog, we'd have a readymade one, please.

However, it did come flatpacked, so we spent Friday on construction, with Angel growing more and more suspicious.

 The location, behind the big olive tree near the log store, where a big pile of brush had been standing, so the ground was quite clear.

 The pile of brush, moved along the edge of the thicket by me, while Dave rustled up breeze blocks to keep the kennel off the ground.

 Angel on the alert ...

 ... and dumped into the half-built kennel.  Not good body language, but she doesn't like power tools.  We got the large size, because we expect her to grow into it.

Finished

Mushrooms and other growth

2 August 2018

Much sooner than the paperwork had led us to expect, our first box of mushrooms burst into life.  Apparently there are three main colours of oyster mushrooms, cream, grey and pink, we have cream and pink, and the pink are the earliest to fruit.  Who knew?

 2 August - first fruits

 4 August, the cream ones catch up - just when we'd finished the first flush of pinks.  They should flush again if we keep misting them

 Meanwhile, Angel - while being shut out of the house when we're working - has trashed the insect netting.  Luckily I've just received an order of organic cotton muslin, so I can make a new one that isn't plastic

On the subject of fruiting, we have the strangest crop: brussels sprouts in August.  A couple of the random seeds we flung around last spring have produced enormous stalks of brussels.  They are a bit stressed by the heat, but enough sprout remained after trimming to be worth cooking and eating.

Streamlining the process

Weds 1 August 2018

The Music Room ceiling insulation is the next job, so we took measurements, Dave working his way round the room on a ladder, me sitting with my feet up making notes!  The width measurements were more regular than we'd found on the other side of the ridge beam, in the living room, and we are not constrained by the 'A' frame cross-bracing to make each one an exact fit, so we arrived at a working average that should fit every aperture.

This means that we could order 18 boards all the same length and width, and Dave could drill and sand them in batches, streamlining the preparation process.

Utility ceiling done

31 July 2018

Just making it into July, we managed a surprise finish of the utility room ceiling boards.  After Rowan helped fit the two difficult centre ones (the room is a slight parallelogram), Dave and I measured for the remaining spaces.

A friend of Rowan and Paris's, Naomi (not the other Naomi) offered to help, and came on Monday evening to spend a couple of hours painting the utility boards.  We were measuring and cutting the third while she was painting the first two, so it all went very quickly.

Then on Tuesday, while waiting for the Music Room wood delivery, we second-coated and fitted the boards.  A bit of filler, and whoops - job done!

 One of the boards painted by Naomi, and the Music Room door screw holes filled

 The other two boards, second coated by Dave

 While I got on with the insulation

 All finished - photographed after dark.  The back right hand panel is removable so we can feed new wires through the wall if we need to.  (For example, to fit an electric car charging point!)

And, just after midnight, the first oyster mushrooms from the box we opened 4 days ago are starting to pop out - how exciting!

Puppy-dog tales and other stories

29 - 31 July 2018

Angel-pup has been sleeping inside, since the really stormy weather a few nights ago, and has proved to be naturally house-trained (how can that happen!).  At first she was in the Music Room, but now that's been stripped bare, she's in the living room.  She seems to like being under something, so I made a little roof for her space.

 Having a kip

 Our one and only carrot from the garden, grown from randomly strewn old store cupboard seed

 A couple of boxes to see if we can grow oyster mushrooms on the kitchen window sill (I hate the plastic trays they come in from the shops)

 We have been having a lot of trouble with the sink drain blocking up.  This baby gecko is a casualty of slow drainage, it has drowned overnight

 The poo- and pee- pen.  Angel is having trouble identifying where to leave her poo where it won't be any trouble, so I made a rickety enclosure - now, how to explain to her what it is for ... ?

Some small portion of our enormous glut of tomatoes.  Pasta sauce again, Dave??

To the beach

28 - 29 July 2018

On Saturday, we climbed ladders and measured the Music Room for the wood order, then went into Lefkas town to place the order.  At the same time we took Angel-pup in to the vet for her injections, which wasn't too traumatic.  She coped quite well with the car - scared but not too many emissions (from her), and took the jab without a sound. 

So on Sunday, we thought we'd try a trip to the beach, a tiny beach in Perigiali, which we thought might be deserted.  It wasn't, but it was so small, it had a community atmosphere and the other couple of people were very nice to Angel. 

She bravely took to the water, and just started swimming.  As much to her surprise as ours, we think.  Realising she was out of her depth she reached me and tried to climb on my head.  She wasn't too sure about it all, but it was an encouraging start.

 Back in the shallows, she's still not certain about this cold wet stuff.  It's much safer on my head!

Dave (in the shadow of the tree, with Ian) considering the logistics - helping Mark move his caravan out from behind an olive tree.