Tag: House

Mixed mushrooms

Cook them with a good sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper.

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Image 110 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

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Mushrooms are such a useful cooking ingredient, they add a lot of savoury flavour to any dish. Cook them with a good sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper and a little olive oil (or butter if you prefer) and tip them onto hot toast – mmm… Try this search for mushroom recipe ideas.

When: December 2023
Where: At home, Cirencester

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Fog…

If you can see further than a kilometre it’s mist, less than a kilometre and it’s fog .

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Image 109 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

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Here’s a foggy day about a year ago, captured by my camera. When warm, moist air mixes with cold air – this is the result. Some of the moisture condenses into tiny droplets, distant objects are obscured, and closer object lose much of their contrast and colour. Everything looks washed out and grey.

Everything is still (even a light breeze will sweep away any hint of fog). The world seems mysterious because so much is hidden from view. Do you know the difference between fog and mist? it’s all about what is hidden from view; if you can see further than a kilometre it’s mist, less than a kilometre and it’s fog (technically). But in everyday life it’s normal for the cut-off to be much closer, around 180 metres.

Time for a Haiku, perhaps?

Winter fog and mist
Hidden heavy blanketing
Cold and damp and grey

When: 6th December 2023
Where: Cirencester Park, Gloucestershire

See also:

Mist, fog and haze– Met Office

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Chastleton window

The panes of old glass are held in place with lead, reinforced by a horizontal iron bar for additional strength and rigidity.

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Image 108 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

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I wonder what past events might have been witnessed by this lovely, old window at Chastleton House in Oxfordshire? Windows are not made like this any longer, the window frame is stone-built as part of the structure of the house. The panes of old glass are held in place with lead, reinforced by a horizontal iron bar for additional strength and rigidity.

Chastleton is on the eastern edge of the Cotswolds, between Stow-on-the-Wold and Chipping Norton. It’s famous for its amazing plaster ceilings but it would still be an architectural gem without those. It’s managed by the National Trust these days.

The house was built in the Jacobean period between 1607 and 1612; it was owned by the same family for almost 400 years until the National Trust took over in 1991.

When: 15th December 2023
Where: Chastleton House, Oxfordshire

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If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome!

Update on the house

Until those doors are in place neither the kitchen/diner extension nor the bedroom extension can receive their floor screeds…

Our builders have done much of the work that remains, but we’re waiting for our bi-fold and sliding doors to be fitted by the supplier. Until those doors are in place neither the kitchen/diner extension nor the bedroom extension can receive their floor screeds, and those will need a long time to dry out before floor tiles and wood flooring can be laid. For the same reason our new kitchen can’t be fitted – it’s stacked in boxes in the lounge.

We feel badly let down – not by our builder, Jack, and his team – they have done a grand job, but by the door suppliers. Those doors were ordered before Christmas! And the knock-on effects don’t stop there; because the lounge is full of kitchen units, we can’t unload the bulk of our furniture from the steel container parked on our drive. And the boxes containing summer clothes, paperwork, crockery, cutlery etc are blocked in by the furniture we can’t yet unload. Argghhh!

Ah well, it’s summer time. Now, where did I put those summer clothes? Oh… Wait a mo…

Meanwhile, here’s a view of the kitchen/dining extension. You’re looking in through bi-folds that are not yet there, and the opening on the right is also filled with bi-folds that are not yet there. Ho-hum.

BuildingKitchenDiner

Our new home in the Cotswolds

Work is well under way now and we are close to moving back in.

I thought it was time to share something about our house project. In April 2017 we moved from St Neots to Cirencester, selling our 4-bedroom 1950 home where we’d lived since 1998, and buying a little 1960s home as a replacement.

The lounge in chaos
We used to watch TV here!

We already had some ideas about the changes we might make, so soon after moving in we searched for an architect. We found Rural Workshop online and invited Tim Francis to visit us and talk about some possibilities. We were impressed by his ideas, flair for design and clear explanations so we asked him to go ahead and draw up plans for us. Tim made it easy for us by arranging the planning permissions for us; we have ended up with planning consent for an en suite bedroom as a side extension with a sympathetically designed pitched roof, and a flat-roofed rear extension to contain our new kitchen and dining space. Both new rooms will open onto a patio connecting the house with the main part of the back garden.

Plans in hand, we started looking for a builder who would be able to turn the design into a well-finished structure and renovate the old part of the house at the same time. It needs rewiring, replumbing, and generally updating, repairing and refinishing. We found Jack Rzasa in the nearby town of Cheltenham and decided that his team management skills and ‘get it done’ attitude were exactly what we needed. Work is well under way now and we are close to moving back in after four weeks out while the dusty and messy tasks of rewiring, knocking through and plastering are completed. We’re delighted with progress so far.

Note added later

In the end the work ran over time and our builder left the site with some items incomplete. Although we remain delighted with much of the work, it was not a happy completion to a mostly excellent project.