I saw in the paper the other day that a mild winter and warm spring were responsible for “an early and abundant harvest” but I was still surprised to see ripe blackberries growing on (through?) the shed in August.
The hedge was fairly well laden too so I stuffed my face. They were so good, I slightly regretted removing all the brambles from the front wall before the blackberries were ripe but this evening the stonemason called and said he’ll be starting on Monday morning 🙂
I was about to “pen” an over excited post about mini diggers when I realised I’d not written about some of the work we did a few weeks ago – so this post is a bit long – sorry.
Now that I’ve got planning permission but not yet got building regs (another saga) I can get the wall knocked down and the new pillars put in. One of the conditions of the planning permission is that this is done before the access is used. I’ve got a stonemason coming to knock down the wall and build to pillars on either side. I said I’d prep the site by removing the ivy, brambles and extra shrubs and clearing the soil away from the wall.
I forgot to take a “before” photo so here is a photo of the outside of the wall from February – imagine this but much worse (another season’s growth plus leaves on all the brambles).
Here’s the inside of the wall also from February – I actually can’t believe how much it has grown – I swear there was another foot on top of that privet in the middle. So basically everything in this photo between the tree and the oil tank had to be removed.
I was pondering how I was going to clear all the stuff and I asked my friend Joe who has a tree surgery business (ABC Tree Surgery) but does all sorts of landscaping stuff as well and he brought me a trailer to “fill up like a skip”. I thought he meant a dinky one which I could tow to the tip myself but he showed up with a beast of a trailer.
That’s my friend Dave stomping down the foliage in said trailer – Dave kindly put in a few hours hard labour on a very hot day to help me out – aptly wearing a t-shirt which declared “What a difference a Dave makes”. Speaking of stomping down brambles, was anyone else sceptical about all the princes who died by becoming trapped in the brambles surrounding Sleeping Beauty’s castle? Like, they’re brambles – how hard could it be to fight your way out? Now I know, really hard…..and mine weren’t magical brambles….
That’s the wall after all that ivy and brambles were removed – bit different eh? That’s the difference a Dave makes.
And the inside (I took this photo in the middle of a thunderstorm the following day). The privet is hacked right back (I had planned to move it to the back garden where there is a dead privet in the party hedge but it was too close to the tree to dig out), there was some massive laurel type bush which is gone, a pine bush which was removed, the craggy old rosemary plant has been transplanted into a pot and we tried to pot up some of the crocosmia but I don’t think they’ve take well to that. We emptied some of the stuff from the old compost heap (which was where I’d been dumping everything I couldn’t shred) and chopped back some stuff in the back garden too (e.g. the out of control escallonia). Joe didn’t pick up the trailer for a couple of days so I carried on filling it – there was some wild privet all around the tree, the elaeagnus next to it got a decent hair cut, I gave the mahonia (next to the yew but out of shot) a good prune (it was probably about 10ft tall in the Spring, I’d pruned a couple of stems back and it resprouted fine so I cut the rest back – now it’s a much more compact plant, about 4ft high), the yew got a thinning (but I’ve more plans for that yet) and the red robin in the back garden was choking the apple tree so that got hacked to the ground. The trailer ended up looking like this (stomping it down was no longer possible).
So that was a few weeks ago. On Friday, I finished work and went to the house to discover a mini digger in the garden 🙂 I was ridiculously and inappropriately “mini jazz hands” excited – I just grinned at it for about 15 mins until my face started to ache. Is that a typical reaction to a mini digger or is it just me?
Anyway, Joe showed up yesterday morning to show me it in action – see how it moves those rocks? No sweat.
So yeah, it’s a massive trench! You can see how high the flower bed was from the tide mark, the ditch is now slightly (6 inches or so) below road level – it will have to be dug out some more for the foundations for the driveway but this will be enough space for the stone mason to work. We did hit some tree roots but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been – the driveway opening will have to be further away from the tree that I had hoped but I’m thinking of getting gas anyway (a controversial decision in the Isle of Man) so the oil tank can probably be dispensed with.
So I bet you’re wondering if we found any treasure? I asked Joe if he’d ever found anything interesting and the response was “a dildo and a Blackberry phone”, hmm, not really what I had in mind. Anyway…. there was a load of old metal, a bed frame, perhaps part of a barrel, a piece of copper pipe, a lead pipe and some other unidentifiable metal stuff.
Plus an old “Boots the Chemist” bottle – it’s not cracked or chipped but it is dirty on the inside and I haven’t got anything to properly clean it. It’s not worth anything (I checked) but it’s still pretty cool – I wonder how old it is? The other weird thing about this is that I remember Boots opening in the Isle of Man – it was around 1994, so I wonder if there used to be a Boots here years ago or if this was an import!
Seriously, the dilemmas I’ve been having about wardrobe placement have made me hate myself a little – all the clichés regarding “first world problems” and “knowing your privilege” have come to the fore in my quest for the biggest bed and wardrobe possible.
It all started because I had to tell the electrician how many sockets I wanted in each room – as you generally have a socket either side of the bed I started planning where all the furniture will go.
So to set the scene. There are two double bedrooms and a single (see floorplan) , the largest bedroom with the blocked up fireplace, will be the “master” (i.e. my room) and the other two will be spares. My aunt and uncle kindly gave me all the furniture from their London flat which they sold earlier this year. This included four single beds, which were far from cheap (e.g. over £1000 for a mattress) – I’d like to use this furniture where possible.
In the smallest bedroom will be the bed I got for £4, as a small double it fits perfectly.
In the second bedroom I will have two single beds pushed together or apart according to the needs of whoever is staying (I think with a decent joining device and a mattress topper pushed together beds are fine) – I might put a small wardrobe or chest of drawers in here as well.
In the “master” is where all the difficulties arose. I had planned to use two single beds, a chest of drawers as a dressing area in the alcove and a 2.5m wide wardrobe (I have 3m in my room at present so this would actually be a downgrade) – I was a bit concerned about whether two single beds would feel a bit cramped but I thought it’d probably be ok. The room seems big enough. Hmm, turns out this is an illusion created by never seeing it when it containing any furniture – these are the actual (rounded up) measurements.
So when I tried to draw it out on the floor to decide where to best place the sockets I quickly realised it wasn’t going to work (I’ve also switched the way the door opens as the other way was silly). I’m calling this Option 1.
It’s partly because I didn’t realise wardrobes are as wide as they are – I used the measurements of IKEA Pax and the option with the sliding door (as this would have to be) is 66cm wide – for some reason I thought they’d be about 50cm. Obviously the gap between the wardrobe and the bed is ridiculous, the bedside table is 60cm wide which I don’t think is unreasonable – the radiator also sticks out 15cm so if the gap on the window side was any narrower you couldn’t really get past. So that pretty much ruled out the single beds.
Next I tried a regular 4ft 6in double – this is Option 2.
Still not enough room on the wardrobe side for a 60cm bedside table – the window side is still cramped. It looks ok on paper but remember I mentioned, ‘drawing’ these on the floor – I bought some masking tape and I planned to do it that way but then I rediscovered all that 80s 12in LPs – perfect for marking out furniture with imperial measurements! This is how this option looked (ignore the crosses – that was another idea) – oh and that’s a 50cm wide not 60cm bedside table:
I’m also not sure how many people have a 4ft 6in double anymore, as this room is to be the “master” I don’t really want to come up with a layout which will prevent anyone from having a larger bed in the future. So I reckon a 5ft double (king) should be the minimum, which unfortunately is also 3in longer (6.5ft).
Option number 3 – Wardrobes on either side of the bed – there is about 75cm to 80cm of space on each side (skirting board and bed frame dependant).
Lack of bedside tables will be an issue, but as I’m getting the wiring done I can get wall mounted lights. In the furniture showroom they have full over the bed built ins with narrow wardrobes and nightstand combinations but this would probably reduce the wardrobe size to 50cm each side and given that they were talking in the region of £2500 there’s not a chance I’d do that for 100cm of wardrobe – besides, I hate built in bedrooms. I considered a shelf over the bed but figured it would only be a matter of time before I had a glass of water on my head in the night. So I reckoned my best bet was 75cm Pax wardrobes from Ikea (which they don’t make doors for) and I’d make the doors so it left the bottom bit open and I’d have an “reach in” bedside cabinet. Would it be like sleeping between two fridges though? There’s got to be a better option yet.
So on to Option 4 – I decide maybe I should think outside the box a bit, here’s a bed with the headboard against the chimney breast.
The chimney breast is only wide enough for a regular 4ft 6in double so there is that disadvantage, there’s 64cm at the end of the bed which I think is ok. There is no option other than an overhead shelf (or possible a narrow shelf on the side of the chimney breast) bedside table wise and I just find it really weird in relation to the door. I’m loving the huge wardrobe though….
Bored yet? Reliving this is boring me!
Option 5 – bed on the same wall as the door
To be honest, bed along the door wall is probably the second option which went through my head but as there isn’t really any room for a wardrobe on the side wall, I dismissed it.
Option 6 – bed on the same wall as the door – wardrobe in the alcove AND along the chimney breast
You might have been wondering why I’d not considered putting the wardrobe in the alcove, there were a couple of reasons for this 1) the alcove is only 96-98cm wide and I wanted a larger wardrobe than that, 2) the depth of the alcove is only 36cm so a wardrobe would have to come out further than the chimney breast and I thought it would look weird.
Ikea do “slimline” Pax wardrobes – they are only 38cm deep – I’d not considered them for any of the other options (like Option 2) because the clothes have to hang face on and I imagine it would be a bit of a pain to get to stuff at the back. In this plan I’m intending to use two shallow wardrobes and put one in front of the existing alcove with no back on it – so I do get some side hanging space. In the wardrobe in front of the chimney it would just be the shallow hanging but as you can hang side by side there is 76cm of hanging compared to 100cm in a full depth pax. So overall I’ll have more hanging space than in Option 3.
I know I could still have the bed along the side wall with this option and there would be more circulation space but it make the positioning of a dressing table difficult and there is something about the bed facing the window which I like.
There are a few disadvantages with this option:
So that’s where I got to – the electrician is starting on the 11th August – so I definitely can’t change my mind after that!