Pews, patio furniture and paint!

We are now proud owners of an old 8 foot church pew taken from our local church in Welburn. According to the church warden it is at least 200 years old and made of solid oak! After an unsuccessful trip of trying to get it in johns car (sorry John and Alan!) I managed to secure the services of Will who was painting our peeling windows (he owns BDR Décor, is ace and comes highly recommended!!). So Will and John (his very able assistant)drove me to the barn where the pews are stored and promptly shoved it into the back of his van - unfortunately the back doors didn't shut so John had to ride in the back holding the doors together hoping he or the pew wouldn't fall out!! We have cleaned it up now and oiled it and its lovely. You can still see the old graffiti carved into the wood. A neighbour saw it and wondered if any of the graffiti was hers as she spent many hours in sunday school. It now has pride of place by our wall for tired souls to rest their weary feet! We also have now got some new patio furniture which has been right royally christened both by ourselves and my brother and his brood a couple of weekends ago. Along with our new firepit which doubles as a BBQ we are now sorted! Lets hope summer continues!

Patios and arbours!

So finally the patio is finished - we are just waiting for our garden furniture to arrive and it will be in full use! We also bought a fire pit at the weekend and spent 2 long evenings with it lit, listening to Pink Floyd and watching the local bat population swooping around us once the sun went down. Big thanks to Creative landscapes for their great job and we would certainly recommend them (www.creative-landscapes.co.uk) We also have finally spent the rest of our cash from the sale of our motorhome and bought a lovely arbour from Castle Howard garden centre. It came flat packed and with lousy instructions so took Mr R nearly 3 hours to build. But again it looks great especially next to our new wall. We have put it in the bottom of the garden in a spot that has the sun all day. We christened it with a lager and its a great place to sit and ponder!!!

More walls!

Dick, our builder, also said he would tidy the ends of the walls we had removed to get an entrance into the garden. This also meant remodelling the coping stones too. It did seem to take ages especially as Dick actually went off for a weeks holiday just as he started and his helper disappeared after 1 day in the job!! Anyhow the end point again is great!

Walls and builders!

It's been a busy few months for various workmen! The good weather has finally meant that we could get the jobs done that were outstanding! Firstly the gate into the other field at the bottom needed removing and the entrance blocking up. Amazingly we found a huge stash of stone, presumably from the original wall that once stood, buried in a corner of the garden so our builder, Dick, although a little slow and slightly unreliable managed to get the wall built and what an amazing job he did too!!