Another fine day so went to B&Q to get some more gravel bags and then we went on a mission to find the right (and heavy) pot with the right architectural plant to go in it. Henry was driving so its always an adventure but with the festival people going home at the same time, I'll just say phew we're home!
Being a bank holiday weekend, but one where we're trying to save money, we hadn't planned anything to do today. However, it was gorgeously sunny so Sara decided it would be the perfect time to attack the front "garden". We had originally planned to simply prune and weed it, but as we got further in we realised it would only look good if we sorted it out completely.
So, after two trips to the tip with top-soil and rubble, oh, and all those plants, we headed off to B&Q and got ourselves some weed underlining and some bags of Cotswold chippings. Not enough mind you, but we'll fix that when they open again tomorrow!
We're very pleased with how it looks - it needs a plant pot or two, but generally it lets lots more light in to front room and should require a lot less maintenance. Hopefully people might stop using it as a rubbish tip now too, although I doubt it!
Last night Mr. Jenkins came round and said that he could start tomorrow. So we said OK and at 7.45 in the morning the builders were round. They begun digging straight away. And we ended up with a great big hole where the flower bed once was. No more weeding for me!
The steps are beginning to form with some landings as well. It seems like we're going to have space for a herb garden and a water butt right near to the back door which is great. We weren't sure as to what we were getting in terms of the steps finished look, but I kept hearing talk of concrete. Henry and I had a chat and have decided that was rubbish. So we're having some slabs instead. Haven't chosen them yet but they've still got to get the concrete out of the garden before anything else happens.
Having realise the garden (if you can call it that in it's current state!) was beginning to resemble a jungle, we decided it was time to get the lawnmower out again (or more accurately, borrow it from Ben and Katy again!) to attack the "lawn". As well as that it was a good opportunity to do more weeding, and also move some of our new plants around.
Hopefully in the summer we should be having the builder round to sort the steps and door out, so we've also been planning what to do with the remainder of the garden when he's done. Suggestions are more than welcome...!
As with most of our big purchases in the flat so far, eBay came in to it's own again last week when we managed to snap up a Garden Heater (or an Alien lamp as Sara calls them) for the bargain price of £80. It was a self-assembly job, and after a few botched attempts we managed to get it up and running nicely. We didn't realise quite how tall it would be, and now have a very large feature in our very small garden. Never mind, I'm sure we'll appreciate it when the Autumn starts drawing in...!
Also this week, Henry finally rolled out the Green Carpet and got a good Scalextric track up and sort-of-running. One of the tracks seems to be a bit dodgy, so we're in the midst of investigating that at the moment (finally, the Multimeter I got for Christmas comes in handy - thanks Mark!!).
I'm writing this update about a week later, so my recall of what we did is pretty slim! :) Needless to say Henry put some Trellising up, which was harder than it sounds due to a mix up with some 100mm and 160mm support screws (see below!) and the need to buy a big new ladder. But we got there eventually. Sara was also hard at work, both painting the wall of the garage, repotting more plants and digging all the weeds up from the mud outside the kitchen window.
Henry also found time to tidy up the garage, which resulted in a trip to the carpet shop - Sara suggested putting the Scalextric up in there, so we went and bought an off-cut of green carpet (4m x 2m for £20!!!) and will hopefully have that up before our next visitors come. All in all a very productive day.
Once again today we were lucky enough to have the help of the might Claire and Dave (and Otis the dog - not that he helped much!) and decided we'd give the garden a go, since the weather was nice. The original plan was to do some weeding, cut the grass (with the lawnmower Ben and Katy kindly lent us) and paint the walls. However, that quickly changed to accomodate the HUGE plant which was virtually pulling the wall over. Claire and Dave set about hacking it all down from the wall - it was so entwined that it took the trellace down with it - and about 15 rubble-bags and 2 trips to the tip later it was done.
The plant destroying took up most of the day, although all the weeding and some new planting also got done. Henry didn't take a huge part as he spent most of the day in the car, queuing for the tip. We finished the day with a lovely barbecue, and a good time was had by all.
On Sunday Henry and Sara had a taste of parenthood when they babysat for William. He was VERY cute, and did lots of fun stuff including helping Sara on the computer and falling asleep on Henry's chest - Awwwww! All of which you can see below :)
As is often the case on a Sunday, Sara had a pile of work to do for the week ahead, so Henry decided to retreat to the man-sanctuary of the garage to do some spring cleaning. With the christening fast approaching, the option of having somebody actually able to park in there seemed useful, so it was decided that the place should be tidied. This involved getting rid of a whole bunch of wood which had been piling up as a result of various cupboards, wardrobes and doors being ripped down. A lot of it was quite nice wood, so Henry cut it up in to small pieces - Henry's dad will hopefully be taking these away to use as kindling for their nice log fire. The rest of it however was now sat in the middle of the garage, and most of it was too big/heavy to go in the bin...
Everybody knows that if you ask a boy to do a simple task like disposing of some rubbish, he'll turn it in to something a lot more dangerous - like a bonfire for example! So, using a large pot he found in the corner of the garden, Henry proceeded to make a rather small but still non-inconsequential bonfire. To his credit he made very little mess, although it did make adding the final coat of paint to the skirting boards all the more difficult - trying to keep floating ash away from white gloss is more difficult than it might seem!!
Sara wisely stayed inside while all this was going on, and it's probably a good thing too - if she had seen how many plants Henry was throwing on the fire, she might not have been as happy...
Well, contrary to what we had previously thought, exchanging and completing wasn't half as exciting as we thought. The solicitor called at about 9.30am and told me all the funds were ready, and that he would be completing any second now. Well, that was a bit of an anti-climax if ever there was one!
So, I (Henry) then spent the rest of the morning waiting for the new Futon to be delivered, after which I was able to go down to the (useless) Estate Agents to collect the Key. We've just got back from looking round the flat again to check what needs doing before we go back later this evening with Sara's mum, and it's all looking good. The electricity works, as does the water and gas. We can't figure out how to open the garage yet, but since we couldn't get up on to the curb anyway, it won't matter for a while!
Later on in the day we took Susan and Claire to see the flat, and then received our first tiny visitor - no, not a rat, a William! Accompanied by Ben and Katy of course. Note the bottom photo - six (plus the photopgrapher) people in our kitchen - wouldn't have been even close to possible in our old place. Roll on the parties...
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