Tag Archives: stone house

Nov4

Living in the country – Needing to react 2

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We have five stone built buildings on our land, plus a couple of sheds, as well as a range of wood and tin barns. Our original plan when moving to Wales in the summer of 2013, was to focus on the main house first, and once that was done, we’d work on sorting out our field and building a shower and toilet block to offer a camping retreat, and a retirement income for us. But in February 2015, the front of the byre attached to the house came down in a storm and the tin roof blew away, exposing the delicate, fragile roof timbers.

 Our plans had to change, we threw all our time and money into saving the byre. Once the builders had left, it was down to us to lime mortar the walls, inside and out, and then begin applying the layers of lime wash that keep the building watertight.

After last week’s flooding, and water coming up into our lounge, we’ve backed off from our plans to complete our growing room, to grow vegetables throughout the year, and switched our focus to finishing lime washing the byre, and lime mortaring and repairing the kitchen and lean to at the back of the house, ready for the winter. This later extension wasn’t built as well as the main house, so we’re going to need to dismantle the stones above the kitchen window and rebuild it, but this weekend, we made a start.

There was a lot of rain in Wales over the weekend, so I didn’t manage as much as I’d hoped. The front of the byre has another coat of lime wash. Lime mortaring the end kitchen wall is underway. I’ll need a dry day to lime mortar the back wall, as dripping off the tin roof makes it impossible.

While the rain poured down, I weeded and cleared the last remnants from our raised beds and covered with cardboard, weighed down with stones. My partner, Mike, has some of the framework up on the inside of the lean to, ready to take the new roof panels, but we can’t take the old roof of until we can see two dry days in the forecast…we might have to wait a while.

It’s been a busy weekend, but a frustrating one in so many respects, as the rain and the daylight leaving so early have thwarted much of what we hoped to achieve. Join me again for more updates, as we renovate and repurpose our land, here on our little hillside in mid Wales.

Oct28

Living in the country – needing to react

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There are so many benefits to living in the country, but also potential problems. While we planned to move to Wales, we made sure we took into account the location of any property to a river that might flood. We chose and bought a house on a hill, with a riverbank a long way below it. Last year, at the beginning of October 2018, our river burst its banks and our riverbank was flooded for the first time in over thirty years.

We hoped it was a ‘one off’, but this October it has rained and rained, and every morning on my walks, I’ve watched the river rising and surging. Last week the rain was torrential, with strong winds gusting on our hill. On Friday morning, the river was three feet from flooding, and by four o’clock in the afternoon, just one foot away.

This weekend we were planning a tidy up of the land, a final clear around and clear out of barns, and last bramble and nettle hack back, plus internal lime mortaring. Instead, we found ourselves having to react to another crisis.

The river didn’t burst its banks, and the fields around our neighbour in the mill house didn’t flood, so she was safe in her home from flood water but….we hadn’t realised that the water had gathered behind our house. The back of the house has always been an issue, the kitchen having been added on in inferior slate and the ‘lean to’, has little footings, a broken plastic roof and neither have any guttering. Our builder performed the necessary work to stop the stone built extension moving, and we’ve insulated and whitewashed inside to make it ‘useable’, but we always knew we’d have to put serious work into repairing this part of the house…we didn’t realise it would have to be so soon. But on Saturday, it was all about reacting, saving our possessions and trying to use the minimum effort to work temporary repairs, as the water behind our house seeped beneath it.

We’d already cut part of the carpet away due to the actions of a naughty cat (!), and stacks of towels was our best bet keeping the flood water contained. And then we began to dig. We didn’t want to dig too close to the house, but the drip water was settling close, so I began by cutting a small trench a few feet from the house, and then digging smaller ones from the drip water to help it drain away. These photos do not do justice to the hard work it was! I thought I was going to be peeling off turf, but the ground is stony.

We dug round the front too, pulled out all the grass and leaves from the concrete ditch around the house, and dug across the driveway so the water could drain into our overflow pond. The ditch used to protect some of the house when it only had a tin roof, but the thatch pushes the ‘dripline’ out further, so one job we have to schedule is digging and concreting in a new ditch around the house.

But we stopped the water rising further, and when the rain stopped on Sunday, the trenches began to dry out, as did our lounge.

We’re now behind with our clearing up and indoor lime mortaring, but mattocking and digging for so much of Saturday, I was exhausted on Sunday, and chose to rest up a little. I did make food though, so do pop back for whole food plant based recipes that you will love!