Great Spotted Woodpecker - Dendrocopos major
Well it has been a while, and lots has changed since my last post, but I could not pick-up the blogging baton again in earnest without mentioning another visitor to The Farm, a Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major).
The photograph is not great I am afraid, but I think you get the idea! It makes a right din when it arrives, and it was the yakking sound that alerted me to the visit first.
You may remember that I wrote a while back about how much I hate removing wallpaper (here) and how I promised to get some photos of the welded on wallpaper in the stairwell and the lack of plaster in one of the bedrooms. Well, at last the photos are here!
This one shows how not only did the wallpaper come off, but also all the plaster including the original clay plaster, so now we just have the original clay lumps left! Thank goodness areas like these will get re-plastered as part of phase 1 as I’m not sure our daughter (whose bedroom it is) will want to be lying under that mess every night!
I hate wallpaper – it’s official!! OK, maybe that’s a little unfair … it’s not wallpaper I hate, it’s stripping wallpaper that really makes me mad! Lately I’ve been finishing off the stripping in one of the bedrooms and also the stairwell with mixed fortunes in both. In the bedroom, some of the wallpaper came off fairly easily whilst other areas took ages with a steamer. Much of the plaster is blown in there, and there is a huge chunk of wall where there is no plaster left as I took it down because it was so loose! I will take a photo of the offending wall so you can see, but basically you can now see the clay lump ‘bricks’ as any original clay plaster that would have been covering them also came off! It’s a bit scary, but we’re having to get a lot of re-plastering done, so it will get ‘fixed’ eventually! (more…)
The stables are finally cleared, and it is a really satisfying feeling! I was quite amazed that we managed to get to the bottom of the right hand one, particularly based on the picture!
However, we needed to clear it so we can patch up the holes in the roof to stop the water damage. This then buys us some more time as we decide what we are going to do with the stables longer term.
This week we have been mostly removing wallpaper! So far we’ve done the entrance hall, corridor and snug, and each area has thrown up some surprises for us! The kids have joined in and really enjoyed scraping (and peeling!) the wallpaper off. This photo shows the entrance hall. There were at least 2 layers of wallpaper in this room, and on the wall in the photo, all the different colours you can see are the various layers of paint under the wallpaper! Some of the plaster is sound whilst some just totally came away on the back of the wallpaper – yikes! In one corner, where we know there had been a recent leak, a lot of plaster came down and there are now sizeable holes near the ceiling! I have to say that when the plaster also comes off, the wallpaper is really easy to remove – always try and find the silver lining has become our motto this week 
