Château and garden maintenance
Armed with a prioritised list of jobs from the château owners we were free to get stuck in during lockdown.
Restoring the cellar hatch
Fee took on the task of bringing the cellar hatch back to life. This involved brushing off the rust, applying a rust treatment and then finishing off with a hardwearing exterior metal paint.
By the time she’d finished it was gleaming to the point where it was hard to look at without sunglasses!
We’re convinced her all-in-one outfit caused the neighbours to think there’d been a murder, and a forensics team were investigating…
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Back door restoration
The back door was the next recipient of Fee’s hard work and OCD. This tired old door was given a new lease of life after multiple rounds of filling and sanding, and all metal work de-rusted and painted with protective paint. What a difference it made.
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Finishing off a door frame repair
A section of this door frame was replaced and the plaster behind it repaired by the local builder, so it just needed to be finished off. I tidied up the shelf while I had the filler and paint out. Good as new.
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Wallpaper removal in the utility room
This was one of those jobs that you could do a little bit of every time you walked past and noticed a bit of wallpaper lifting off. Then once all the easy-to-reach bits were off the compulsion to get the rest off kicked in… Once it was off it gave the walls a chance to dry out as the paper had allowed moisture and mould to build up behind it.
Taking care of the gardens
Things grow fast in this part of the world! We loved looking after the gardens and did our best to keep a balance between neat and tidy, and leaving it as long as possible between lawn mowing and pruning to support the wildlife. We removed ivy from parts of the wall where it was doing a bit of damage, but left it in other areas if it wasn’t doing any harm as it’s such an essential source of food and shelter for birds and insects. There were sections of the lawn containing flowering clover that we didn’t mow for a couple of extra weeks so the bees could enjoy a feast.
The ride-on mower was out of action for a number of weeks when we took it in for a service and repairs, which gave the grass in the walled garden the opportunity to bolt. It grew far too long to cut with the mower, so we borrowed a scythe in an attempt to bring it down to a more manageable level. After multiple attempts we had to admit scything wasn’t our forte, although our inability to cut it for a number of months resulted in a gorgeous wildflower meadow. Thankfully the owners bought us a new grass trimmer so we could get the job done before winter.
There came a time when the pile of brambles and ivy roots needed to be burnt on the bonfire. Conscious that the pile had been sitting for many months we moved everything to the outside edge before adding to the fire so there was no chance of inadvertently barbecuing any nesting animals.
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