A winters tale.....

How pretty does snow make your garden. I couldn't resist nipping out and taking a few pictures of the garden on a wonderful snowy morning. All the snow drops are growing in the shadow of the copper beech. It will be nice to post a summer comparison even more so once the building work has started and big changes are happening!

Drive through the lakes to bag a bargain!

A little trip through the lakes today, Wow I just love where I live. Fabulous early morning winter sunrise over the fells. A gorgeous crisp frosty Autumn morning, I couldn't resist a quick stop at Thirlmere to snap a few pics of the lake and the fresh dust of snow on the fell behind me. So much space and room to breath, clears the cobwebs and refreshes the brain. I made the trip to Ambleside to call into a hotel there that was closing down and selling up their world. I felt like a bit of a vulture prowling through every room adding my name to various items. All tallied up, car fully loaded and away back home. Just a quick morning round trip, but what an enjoyable one an a day like today.

 What a sight in front of me, fabulous autumn colour on the lakeside at Thirlmere.

 The lake was so calm like glass as the early morning sun crept over.

 Helvellyn behind me dusted in snow.

My Haul, one hotels misfortune to close down, an opportunity for the next one. #circle of life

Slow Progress, but the plans are coming together!

Things are moving much slower than we expected, probably because it is difficult working full time and still having the energy to work late every evening and all week ends. We have had a very good run of dry weather recently though, which has enabled us to make a good start out doors with hard landscaping. Progress made on the exterior includes all of the windows now changed and we have new front doors. We have changed the entrance from one single very wide and large front door into two slimmer doors. It looks good and quite fitting, like it was always meant to be this way. We carried that change on into the hall and made the vestibule entrance door also into a pair of slimmer doors. We started on the front entrance steps, taking off three layers of tiles! Shocking they were, including the top layer being indoor bathroom tiles! Finally reaching the original stone steps underneath, but think they would look much smarter with new bull nose capping. We’ve passed a cutting pattern for all the steps to a local stone mason to create these caps in local sandstone, waiting to see what he suggests. Meanwhile indoors we are fighting with years and years of paint, the only way to get through the layers on the woodwork is either hot gun stripping or scrapping. It a very dirty job, requires all windows and doors wide as the fumes are horrible. Planning permission shouldn't be too far away now, plans are drafted and a pre-meeting has been held with the local planning authority to discuss the adventure!

A rather difficult old fire place proved messy to remove. The main body of it was baby brick, but the back of it was filled solid with brick and cement, this made it very difficult to get out. It wasn't long before the hand tools were abandoned and the big boy toys came out. We had to use the large electric breaker to get it out. Clearly one reason being the use of old tradition Whitehaven brick, made locally for many years 1800 - 1900's and renowned for it's strength!

A great shame the original Georgian fireplaces have all been removed.