Snow Day

[LadyArowana]

Lovely to see the pictures, thanks everyone.

LadyA, your wish is our command! Hope this is rural and snowy enough for you! What's it like where you are?

I am not in the UK at the moment. It's about 30 degrees outside and there is a tropical storm bending the palm trees. I am hoping that our apartment in London is OK!

What dog? I can't see one.

View attachment 1

Can you see him now? :lol:

Although this picture suggests that we have excellent loft insulation, .....

Looks good to me.

 

[JoceAndChris]

The above pictures are all absolutely marvellous. DaveBrigg, can we swap houses please? Surely you're bored of yours by now, and this one suits children very well. Penners, your little dog is adorable and MdB, the landscape is everything I could have dreamed of. (I've never properly seen Cornwall)

But I am now imagining LadyA wafting around in a diaphanous shell-embroidered kaftan amongst fallen frangipani blossoms, sipping scarlet Bellinis prepared by the pretty maid in her beautiful, traditional wood and thatched Isaan home, outdoing us all!

 

[LadyArowana]

Sorry to disappoint Joce, black skinny jeans, very tall modern apartment building. Those traditional houses look lovely but tend to be more porous when it comes to the local wildlife. The odd cockroach I can dismiss as an annoyance but snakes on the countertop, as happened to a friend with a colonial era house, no thankyou. She told me it didn't look like a cobra and was probably harmless :shock: , I put her relaxed attitude down to being Australian and more used to poisonous beasties.

 

[JohnB]

I woke up on Saturday morning, on the drive of my new place because my van is cosier than the house, to find it snowing. Just what I needed when my stuff was being delivered from 170 miles away in Somerset! Not much of it though, and the delivery went well.

The snow on the roof could well be because there's no heat in the house, but there is a fair amount of loft insulation, at least in the parts where I can easily see into the roof.

I went out in the van yesterday and had to reverse half a mile or so down a lane before I could turn round, when I lost grip!

Got a 35 mile drive to collect a uPVC door and some uPVC windows today :wink:.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Got a 35 mile drive to collect a uPVC door and some uPVC windows today :wink:.

Is that the sound of a red rag being waved at the PPUK bull? :shock:

 

[JohnB]

Is that the sound of a red rag being waved at the PPUK bull? :shock:

Shall I explain now, or let everyone get wound up and make wild speculations first? :wink:

 

[FamilyWiggs]

My guess is you've been given them and will eBay them to raise cash for some of Biff's nice oak windows?

 

[JoceAndChris]

The only explanation is that they're free and JohnB would like to create some rudimentary cloches for the bringing on of winter cabbages!

Nice house JohnB!

(and LadyA, how exciting to live amongst that rich plethora of creatures, and skinny jeans and tall modern building sounds extremely glamorous - I've always been a big fan of the modern style.)

 

[Flyfisher]

This was the view from our neighbours, (whom we have fortunately never met)

I wonder if any of your 'neighbours' ever lived in your house?

 

[Penners]

What dog? I can't see one.

Can you see him now?

Thank you, Your Ladyship. SHE looks very fetching. (But try getting her to fetch. No chance! :evil: )

 

[LadyArowana]

Thank you, Your Ladyship. SHE looks very fetching. (But try getting her to fetch. No chance! :evil: )

Apologies for that, if I had known I would have found her a cute little doggy Mrs Claus outfit.

 

[philpjuk100]

Not a lot of snow down by the trent! phil.

 

[Moo]

I've just discovered that it's possible to register for a National Express* scheme that will send information by text message and/or by e-mail should there be any problem with one's regular train journey. All you have to do is let them know when you will be travelling morning and evening and which days of the week.
I've just signed our daughter up for it, as she has begun commuting between Norwich and Cambridge (catching, believe it or not, the 5.30am train!!!) and it's going to be a godsend for her. Today, for instance (before I discovered the service) she had to wait at Norwich station for an hour because the 5.30 had been cancelled. And at that time of day there's nowhere warm to wait because the cafe isn't open.

* I can't imagine that National Express is the only train line offering this sort of 'paging' service, so if anyone here is a commuter it might be worth searching the relevant website.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Ah, yes, an excellent service- we get a message every morning - and from time to time the delay allows an extra 10 minutes in bed which is most welcome at 6 am. However, the service is pedantically reliable, and any disruption to the train routine, I am amazed to report, is generally caused by Chris drunkenly falling asleep and waking up in Leeds!

 

[mivec]

Here's our in Haslemere. These were taken last Friday morning. We haven't had anymore snow since but it hasn't gone away.

View attachment 1

 

[biffvernon]

Got a 35 mile drive to collect a uPVC door and some uPVC windows today :wink:.

Is that the sound of a red rag being waved at the PPUK bull? :shock:

Don't panic. I know this guy. Greener than the lot of us!

Nice garden, John. Plenty of potential!

 

[JohnB]

Don't panic. I know this guy. Greener than the lot of us!

Nice garden, John. Plenty of potential!

Is that green as in naive or tree hugging :lol:

Ok, I'll put you all out of your misery. Here's the picture again:

It seems to have been two houses originally, but the 1891 census lists one house occupied by a family of 6 and 3 borders. I don't know when it was built, but have found a date of 1856 in the only bit of the deeds that still exist, so it may have been then. I've been told that the single storey extension was built about 70 years ago. I think it's got brick cavity walls. The original house is stone. It was sold in 1966 as one house. It has a separate electricity meter for each end, and they are pretty modern digital ones. The official address is "1 House Name". So it looks like it was built as two houses, lived in as one in the 19th century, but was two at the time that electricity was installed and the Post Office started numbering houses :?.

So anyway, the single storey bit and the downstairs of No 2 (the nearest bit in the photo) is the only part that's habitable at the moment. No 1 (the far bit) downstairs, and the whole of the first floor, is unfinished. A previous owner knocked through on the first floor and put in a staircase to replace the ladders in both houses. No 1 doesn't have a door, but just a big hole in the wall where a door should be! Until I can make proper plans, I just wanted to get hold of a free or cheap door to fill in the hole and make it secure and less draughty ASAP. So I saw this uPVC door on Freecycle last night, and collected it today!

If you look at the far end of the house, there's a very scruffy single storey bit. This is a very rough temporary "workshop" built by the previous owner about 7 years ago, to use while he was working on the house. As it's there, I'm going to do it up a bit and make it more presentable and usable by repairing it, sticking in a few windows, and adding a door in a place that means you don't have to cross an ice rink like bit of decking to get into the house. This uPVC door comes with 5 uPVC windows!

So at the moment the nasty plastic is for temporary use on the house until I can make proper plans, that will need planning permission and building regs. At that point it will all be removed, and I'll fit them in a couple of garden buildings that need doing up. If they're not needed there, I'll build a greenhouse with them

So I'm rescuing them from going into landfill, and they will see out every possible useful moment of their life being used for something productive .

The bad news is that the hole in the wall in No 1 isn't high enough to take the door, so I'll fit it in the scruffy bit. I'm now on the lookout for a temporary timber door that I can cut down to fit!

 

[jocelyn plummer]

And our street.plus that cat again

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Is puss looking furious because he's outside, or furious because of the plastic windows?

 

[JohnB]

Is puss looking furious because he's outside, or furious because of the plastic windows?

I could add the plastic windows to my collection, and Biff could make some lovely replacements. They would make a nice greenhouse .