New Year, Renewed Enthusiasm...

Tracy Hart
Jan 26, 2021
4 min read

Updated: Oct 7, 2023

Never has a 2 week Christmas Holiday seemed so long! Covid and no building work going on at The Dunlins for 2 whole weeks was pure torture for me. The up-side was that we did get to see the kids briefly, but the 3rd of January was like Christmas Eve for me as I knew that my best Christmas Present ever was going to arrive on the 4th January. My beautiful Aubergine Everhot, sourced through Kernow Fires, in Wadebridge.

Everhot had given us a delivery time of between 8am and 10am on 4th of January and of course I wanted to be down at the house at 7:45am waiting just incase. Tim persuaded me that there was no way that they would be their by 8am and so we took a more leisurely approach and arrived at 8:30!! And guess what, Everhot had been the first trade to arrive at site and were sat waiting in their lorry for our builders to arrive at 8am. By 9am she was in place and they were on their way. Amazing as she weighs 500kg, but was delivered and installed by just 2, but very professional Everhot engineers. Now for the kitchen to be built around her :-)

An hour later at 10am, the kitchen fitters arrived and boom our very large kitchen, dining room and snug was filled with everything from fridge freezers to saws and massive pieces of wood. By the end of the first day you could start to see the bones of the kitchen and by the end of the week they had installed enough for the Quartz supplier to come in and template.

The utility/bootroom was also transformed. Its amazing to think that this room was the tiny dining room in the pre-refurb Dunlins. This space will stay a mess for sometime yet as it also has the main boiler and fuse box in it and the wood for the coat corner, shelf and under the sink will not arrive until early March.

The Bar has been started but the top half can't be completed until the granite top is fitted, which will be a couple of weeks yet, at least. Once the Kitchen fitters had cleared out all their stuff the tilers were able to finish laying the floor in this huge open plan room.

Not much going on upstairs, but we did get the last of the radiators and towel warmers installed and the heating on!

The finishing of the external works also got underway. The plan is to work from back to front. Get the back walls and parking area completed and the back garden terrace levelled and laid. The first job was to bring the patio levels up to the same levels as the inside floors and get it ready for the patio slabs to be laid, all 270sqm of them! Probably about 140sqm in just this back area.

The back porch has been a "work in progress". The builders built to the architects spec, but once it was up, to me, it looked top heavy. The posts were always going to be painted black, but I still thought it needed to be balanced out, so I asked the builders to build it some boots. We will top them with slate and paint them white to match the rest of the render. I think they have made big difference and we are getting there now. Still not happy with the top bit, so a bit more tweaking to do.

The render is starting to go on everywhere now. First it was making good, lots grinding lines in the old render and then red paint that apparently helps the new render stick to old render. When the finished rent dried, it really transformed the look of the place. It is going to be amazing when it's all done and it gets the first coat of paint.

I thought it was time to start thinking about the planting needed to soften all the hard landscaping we are building, the garage being the biggest bit! I am completely clueless when it comes to gardening. I know where I want to plant "things" and what I want it to look like, but felt I needed some help choose the right plants to achieve the look I want. Below is the mood board I sent to Kim of Landscapes of Distinction who is putting together a planting plan for me.

In amoungst all the building progress, for which I am so, so thankful, we also manage to fit in some lovely walks in on most days. These are a few shots of Padstow, it is very rare to see it this empty and peaceful. So, so lucky to live in this amazing place.

The tiling is also coming along. Much slower than we would have liked. The tiling, although extremely rewarding to look at once it is done, has been the least enjoyable to organise.

Our other small wins over these three weeks has been picking the sofa and colour for the upstairs lounge. Seeing the units fitted in the downstairs guest loo and the oak frame go around the picture window in the snug.