Wednesday 28th August 2019

A week has flown by and already good progress has been made. I finished clearing out the kitchen and pantry ...

... and have also swept out two of the upstairs rooms.

There were more exciting finds up there including two gorgeous thick bed throws, which I'm taking back to Gostilitsa to clean up, an old hand sewing machine, and this brilliant Russian record player, the turntable of which actually turned for a few seconds when I plugged it in.

Seems like I'm all set for retro 80's night.

Sunday was my first sleepover at the house. I'd decided to take two of the cats over so they could get used to the property before the builder starts taking the house roof off, but didn't want to leave them totally alone the first night. The poor things were really freaked out by the new surroundings, and promptly went and hid, though they are more lively and relaxed today.

Sleeping on one of the old beds was an experience I can tell you. I used one of the cleaner looking duvet quilts as a mattress (having hauled the mattress itself down to what will be the veggie patch) and brought a pillow and cover from home to use. All the beds in the house are metal framed with bases made up of wire mesh which is wonderfully springy, almost trampoline like, but means you end up sagging with your bum inches from the floor when you lay down. That's to say nothing of the creaking and groaning every time you move. Passion, in the old days, was clearly something the entire household would have been party to! It was stiflingly hot that first night, so the second day I cleaned out the neighbouring room which doesn't get so much sun, and last night was much more comfortable.

Stanimere the roofer began work yesterday on replacing the big stone barn roof with a tiled one so that I have a decent storage area over winter. The poor guy's workers let him down by not returning after a week's holiday, so so far he's been at it alone. I was very worried for him the first day, not knowing just how stable the roof was as he walked over it to start the dismantling process, but he soldiered on merrily and by the end of day one had pretty much single handedly removed the entire roof. Materials also began arriving for the new roof and have been stacked in the yard ready.

The battle of the rodents continues unabated. The tally so far is two rats and three mice, with at least another live one who managed to pinch the cheese bait last night whilst avoiding the trap. This is all from the pantry area, so once the house roof is on I think I need to look at getting someone to plaster the walls and ceiling to make a nice tight seal everywhere, hopefully putting an end to the invasions. I want to have the three freezers and electric oven in there, as well as most of the stored food and cleaning materials etc. One slight issue is that the doorway is currently too narrow for the chest freezer, but my calculations say if the door frame comes off and a layer of plaster on the stonework, it might just squeeze in. We'll see. The back of one of the shelving units had an intriguing design:

A souvenir from a nuclear plant??

Apart from the re-roofed barn, I also had a better nosy in the first, smaller barn and discovered it's actually quite dry in there and will make a good wood store. It's divided into four areas which I imagine were animal pens at one time, so that means I can store wood in one place to season, whilst still accessing wood to burn from another area. A lot easier than having to shift it all to do a stock rotation each year.

Oh, and by the way, if anyone has any brown things in need of a new zip, I'm your woman!