Chez Spud

I wouldn’t say we are on ‘full on’ house restoration mode…but we’re definitely out of the warm up lap. Drains have been done, at astonishing expense for something you don’t see. New heating/water system has been done…likewise eyewateringly costly but at least you can see it and appreciate the warmth and the kind of water pressure that knocks you off your feet. We’ve made a start clearing some trees and ‘scrubland’, ready for the creation of a kitchen garden for herbs and a cutting garden. We’re also ready to go for the vegetable garden to be dug out and fenced.

And then there are the ‘by-product’ projects, the ones we didn’t plan but which have crept in. The ancient loo in one of the bathrooms couldn’t cope with the fally-over water pressure, and quietly leaked all over the bathroom one night. This involved putting that loo out of action, ripping up the (frankly) disgusting peach carpet, ripping up the (frankly) disgusting green carpet in my writing room since it leaked through the floor in the bathroom in to it. It also involved me redecorating my writing room in a kind of hasty half-baked way. Then it involved a whole new bathroom since the we ended up with a shut off loo, no flooring, a shower that couldn’t cope with the new water pressure and the taps on the sink seized up a while ago.

The downstairs loo (it’s all about the loo…so very British) decided to sneak in a bit of rising damp. Which involved having the plaster drilled off the wall to be treated. Which also involved taking the loo and the sink off the wall and re-plastering the whole room. Which, yup, now means we need to completely re-do that room.

Even these few, relatively small and non-intrusive projects have involved more thought, planning and co-ordination than I ever thought possible. There’s always a snag, always a problem… but what I love is how the house is slowly revealing itself to us. Everyone who does work here shows us something …

… we now know that the brick built part of the house is made from Aldeburgh bricks. Alas the brickworks are winding down and their bricks are now prohibitively expensive, but it’s lovely to know what our house is made of…

… we now know, having never noticed it, that the first metre or so of the bricks are ‘wire combed’, very unusual. No idea why but it helped us work out that the level of our drive and flower beds around the front of the house has risen by 50cm or so since it was built. It all needs digging back down again because it’s not helping the damp! It also helped us finally resolve the issue of whether our garage is original or not. It is, it has the same wire combed bricks around the bottom …

… we now know our ‘Jack and Jill bathroom’ (sits between two bedrooms with doors in to it from both bedrooms) isn’t original. I always thought it was a strange one for a 1930s house, though the doors match ever other door in the house. Stripping wallpaper from the bathroom revealed an obvious doorway out on to the landing which is no longer there …

… we now know what is under the hideous green carpet which graces the entire ground floor. Lovely, lovely tongue & groove parquet. It’s stained quite a dark colour and it’s a bit scratched. But it’s beautiful and, with a sand and an oil, will be gorgeous …

… we now know what is under the hideous green carpet in the downstairs loo (yup!) … very cold quarry tiles …

… we now know, courtesy the gentleman over the road who was a very small boy when this house was newly built, what the odd kind of bumpy ‘line’ of rubbish and molehills is that leads down our garden. It used to be a path, as we suspected, which led to a gate which went out to the fields that surround the house. There’s an obvious gap in the trees. It all makes sense.

There is so much still to know, although I already know the history of all this house’s previous occupants. I adored finding all the workings for tiles under the old wallpaper in the bathroom, all imperial and fractions galore. I love (and fear) the fact that our fuse box (and it is, it’s definitely not a ‘consumer unit’) requires actual WIRE to replace a blown fuse. I’m learning to live with the fact that our front door bell sounds the same as the many other bells all over the house from days gone by when its occupants would press a bell to get someone to do something for them rather than yelling, ‘MUMMY!!!!!’.

Revealed …

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