Taking advantage of this fine weather that we are having at present the Farmer & I have embarked uopon a major decorating job in the house. For years we have talked about sanding the oak parquet floor that the Farmer's father laid in the dining-room. Having cleared all the furniture out and several hundred books, we hired a floor sander and set to. The result is lovely, the oak has come up a beautiful golden colour and has transformed the room. However, as is always the way with jobs like this we then realised that a lovely new look to the floor made the rest of the room look so shabby, to say nothing of the fine layer of dust that has settled upon every surface not behind closed doors (though the dust will probably be there too if I look for it!). So I will now be wielding a paint brush for the next couple of days and trotting up & down a step-ladder. It will be worth the effort though...I do find decorating a satisfying thing to do and over the years I have become quite efficient about it and it is a good job to do when the sun is shining I find. It must be spring in the air that gets these jobs done.
Thank goodness we live in a house with two staircases! The dining-room is a room of passage; it leads to our sitting-room, office and main staircase, and now, with a floor we cannot walk across for at least two days we have restricted access to these rooms. I have been carrying bags of fire-wood up the other stair-case, through Younger Son's bedroom, through the bathroom and down the main stairs. I then have the obstacle course of piles of furniture stacked in the passage-way outside the sitting-room to negotiate with my bags of logs. The lengths I will go to to have somewhere warm & comfortable to sit in the evenings!
As well new clean paint and new golden floor the Farmer has decided to build some oaken bookcases as we have had a problem with woodworm in the old pine ones his father made.( Apparently woodworm doesn't attack oak which is good to know) so the whole room will have a 'makeover' (horrible phrase). And then I want a holiday!
While I spend time varnishing the floor the Farmer & Elder Son are busy up in one of our top fields doing some drainage work. With the frosty weather it means the fields are dry and tractors can get on the land, which for so,much of the winter is not the case. To be able to make a start on work that has had to wait over the winter is great.
We have had a stream of callers over the past few days. Our friends the Fashion Designers from London came in on Friday and yesterday, as they had been in the area visiting a mutual friend. They give us country bumpkins a glimpse of a very different world and are good company.
On Sunday a friend brought her 9 month old sheepdog puppy for the Farmer to take a look at. She was wanting some advice on training it and as the Farmer trains all his dogs so well she felt she would get some worthwhile information. Not all collies are natural workers; if they do not show any interest in a flock of sheep then it is unlikely that they will be useful working dogs, but can however go onto be good agility & obedience dogs which gives them a purpose. Bored collies are a disaster!
We have also had delightful visitors in the cottage over the weekend and various friends & neighbours have dropped in and joined the conversation around the kitchen table. I love it.
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