The seal that got away.

It seems too cruel to see a blue sky after all the rain and flooding. Although a blue sky is always a welcome sight.

This is a typical Devon scene with lots of green. It's because of all the rain we have.

In the last post I mentioned our fireplace. No fire in it now. We thought that there would never be a better opportunity of actually changing something we have always disliked in the cottage. We love the oak beam above the fire. Although who ever built this fireplace we think in the seventies, must have had a bad sense of humor or a concrete addict. This is not an original feature of the 17th century Soggibottom cottage. Neither will the new fire place be, hopefully it will look better and be so much safer than jutting out half way into the room. We intend to add another feature behind the wall and fire before we complete the project. We thought a time capsule from the year 2012. Any idea's ? Family, and friends :-) :-)

Before you start a project it's always a good idea to source the material's you want to use. Things have to be planned.
Planning isn't often used here, one of us has an idea and then things get out of hand. This time, one day's planning was long enough before we started our new project.
In our case, we are going to use wood. In a cottage like Soggibottom, it should be oak for our new fireplace. Not stone set in concrete.

There are places to find oak, this isn't one.

This is the place, it used to be the village saw mill. We never knew that.
Around here there are wood yards and so many places that sell to farms for fencing and to people for their gardens, but finding oak beams was good luck on our part at the first place we went to. Not everyone has oak beams for sale.

This really is the same room I have shown so many times on Soggibottom posts. No furniture, no floor. NO STONE FIREPLACE...  The photo is a bit fuzzy, not one of my usual one's, but here it is. The whole room had a thick dusty haze floating around, a bit like fog, so I can blame the haze.Oh, nice wheel barrow.....

A better photo from a few hours ago. I love the spade feature. This is the original fire place. Set back further and deeper and wider. What looks like a beam across the fire,, isn't, it's a concrete lintel. Not something we need to take out.

Inset into the fire place are original fire bricks, burnt black, which probably go right up to the chimney. A wood burning cast iron range would have sat here at one time. We even found an inlet to the bread oven. Concreted over obviously ! Concrete nuts...........
We still have some work to do, it's great taking things out, you have to put them back looking good too.

I can't show you more....

The dust has settled slightly, not sure how many inches of dust we will find in the morning. Better dust than water.
After the dust was cleared up this afternoon, more dust was falling. Ah, I really hate housework. Especially when I feel so dirty and my hair stands up all on it's own with dust.  We are a dirty lot.
Many thanks to our neighbour Steve, without his help and the beautiful sound of the pneumatic drill today, this would have taken us weeks and weeks. Steve, you are one of our stars. What would we have done without you today. Thank You.

To end, a photo taken yesterday of the beautiful river Dart. The river is high and there are flood alerts all around our South West Coastline. High Spring Tides and a low pressure area. Days and days of heavy rain.
To other flooded properties, that flounder on. IT ALL DRIES OUT IN THE END.

Freya is at the CATFLAP CAVALIER. She saw a seal bobbing along in the river yesterday. Too late to take a photo as we both looked at each other as to who had the camera... IT WASN'T ME :-) The seal took one look at us and dived. Ah, better luck next time.
Have a good weekend, we probably won't be back here at least until Monday.
Most of all take care and keep dry. X X X