On a September Saturday, my friend G joined me for some work on the cottage. The main task of the day was to tackle the pile of bricks that was laying in the driveway.
But first, I had to prepare for the pickup of this carpet. It's a nice enough wool carpet, but not my style at all. It was in need of professional cleaning so I opted for donating it on Tori (an online marketplace). It was picked up by a nice person who is also renovating an old timber house.
When we were moving the sofa I noticed that it was actually a sofa bed. It got me thinking that it might be worth keeping. But I wanted to see first if it would fit in the room under the other window, otherwise it wouldn't be worth the trouble. So we had to shuffle some furniture around.
Behind the bookcase, I found some insect damage. The trim was destroyed by woodworm. The wall also felt soft at the bottom. My professional verdict? Super gross.
Also, there was a distinct hole in the floor. I didn't remember to photograph it, but I did some bushcraft temporary patching with a piece of board and a few screws. Mainly, I just want to keep the mice out. This will be repaired properly in due time.
The room felt so much more spacious after the re-arrangements! The sofa fits much better in this location. It's also low enough to not block the window. I will keep it for now, I'll have to find out how much it would cost to reupholster it. It's from around 1950 and clearly pretty good quality so probably worth the effort. It's not necessarily the style I want to go for in the cottage, so we'll see.
The yellowed book case could also be worth keeping. It could be repainted and hung above the bed for book storage. There isn't a lot of space so wall-hung storage could be practical. If I haven't mentioned it already, this is the bedroom/living room. The bed will be placed on the wall opposite from the sofa, there's a nice windowless cove for it there. Might even add a curtain for coziness and separation.
Ok, back to work! These bricks would not stack themselves. We found some pallets, laid them on the edge of the property, and started piling up the bricks there. The bricks were really dirty, covered in moss, dirt and fungi and crawling with slugs, spiders and ants. But they are technically new, or at least left over from renewing the fireplace and chimney, so I thought they might prove useful later. We brushed off the worst of the dirt and stacked those puppies up.
It was really hard work! Special shoutout to G for helping, this would have been so depressing to do alone. It seemed a never-ending task. The more bricks we dug up, the more appeared. Ugh.
The last ones...
And all done! Look at this handsome pile! Before actually using these for anything, they will need a good wash. But the most important thing is that they are no longer in the middle of the driveway, and I'm one step closer to be able to drive my car into the yard. Yay!
All gone, nothing to see here!
This is what the driveway looks now. I'm going to fell all the trees in the foreground, level the driveway and cover it with gravel. Oh, that sounded horrible 😄 "Just level the trees and pave over paradise!" But yeah, basically this small area needs to be cleared so that I have somewhere to park. It will also be a practical work area for cutting firewood and similar tasks.
I'm currently working on emptying the wood store of garbage, so that I have somewhere to stack the trees that I'm going to fell. But I've ran into some issues, so it may be a while before my next update. Also, October starts this week...winter is drawing closer. I don't yet know how much I can realistically work on the cottage once the snow falls. The blog may be quieter in winter as a result. But we'll see! Have a nice autumn! 🍂 🍁 🍃
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