March 2011 progress	back to progress page

A rather belated project update for March 2011 – the last progress update was posted in early November 2010.  At the end of October we had pretty much spent our original budget, and for the moment there was no other money for anything significant.  We decided to agree a priority list that would be within our monthly income, and to focus on getting things finished. The weather as we went into the winter was not permitting us to do very much outside so the decision to work inside was a given. We felt it was an excellent time to muse on the natural light and consider a palette of colour that would work throughout the house. We had gone for a fairly contemporary look and painted everything white so far, but we wanted also to consider the house in its seaside context.

		The light can vary greatly between the front, with a southerly aspect towards the sand dunes and the north, looking towards the marshes and the Little Cheyne Court wind farm. Each space for the first time was looked at in detail - the detail is what has taken the time. Up until now the house has been liveable and generally comfortable, for example we have had a lot of visitors, family coming to stay from July and into the autumn.  Most of the effort had gone into getting basic building work done and technology working, we felt however that now was the time to push through with the next stage and look at how the house is to live in. November was hard, just the two of us for most of the time, no tradespeople to distract us, the weather was awful and at times it was difficult to motivate ourselves.  We had opted to go with basic Sterling board floors downstairs, which work really well with the underfloor heating but weren’t looking too good. We had originally started painting the boards with a chocolate brown floor colour which didn’t work, and then experimented with white which looked good for about a day. We spent a week researching colours and painting test swatches using colours within a palette of light greens, blues and neutrals taking the window and door frame colour as a starting reference point. We finally came up with a colour called Hopsack which seemed a good solution. Once the floors were sorted we started to experiment with colours on some walls to complement the floors. The upstairs has the original pine floors now sanded and looking fairly good, although we’ve been experimenting with mixtures of floor oils to give more of a “limed” finish.  Up till this stage the house had been hastily decorated, walls and ceilings to give a clean spruced up look, but when you look more closely there are lots of rough edges. Now was the time to look critically and start to redo the house with a greater consideration to finish.

We took a short break in December, and had family visiting for Christmas and New Year.  When everybody had returned home in January we struggled to pick up from where we left off, still struggling to get things done with the awful weather.  Somehow we had managed to go into the worst winter for many years with an unfinished and unproven heating system, but it actually performed pretty well – we were never cold although we burned more logs than we had bargained for.

		In January Helen’s studio was a priority – the basic structure had been completed in November, now the interior needed to be finished, flooring laid and electric installed. We’d had a bit of a delay just before Christmas when John tried to cut his arm off with a chop saw cutting reclaimed floor boards, and spent half a day in A&E in Hastings, fortunately John is now pretty much recovered although the saw went to the tip.  We decided to go for completing it by February with no excuses – by this time Helen had been without a studio for 6 months and was desperate to get back to doing some art work.  Quite a bit of February was spent retrieving stuff from various storage places to be organised and sorted, and organising storage in the new studio.

Each year around February seedlings appear in trays dotted around the house, waiting to be planted out by Helen when the weather permits. There are now 4 raised beds with beans, winter salad leaves, carrot seedlings, onions, garlic, spinach and beetroot. It seemed that the all this needed a potting shed – something Helen has hankered after for a while - and luckily still hampered by budget came across a very nice ex-display potting shed at a good price. So no more leaking trays around the house!

		One of the problems of being on low lying ground on the edge of the marsh is that the back garden gets very waterlogged in wet weather. We had planned to extend the decking from the front garden, down the side of the house and round the back to deal with this, but also to provide level access to the whole house. We also wanted to link the studio and eventually the garage, and make access to the raised beds easier too.  In February we ordered in a load of timber and with help from Danny and Tim and a few solid days work we had it all pretty much done.

Finally, the bottle installation is looking as Helen visualised it and still creates a great interest with passers by, mainly a smile and a compliment. So far it has about 1200 bottles, more photos to follow soon.

s around the house!