I have just realised that it has been far too long and way too many things have happened since I last posted in August 2018 so I need to do some catch-up posts.
Since that last post, the world had been turned on its head with the Covid19 pandemic which changed everyday life in ways that we could never have imagined.
Pre-pandemic, Kevin and I had a number of projects in mind, which have been completed:
With the help of a good friend, we built a new workshop with power and lighting for Kevin at the end of the garden (Summer 2019)
With the help of another good friend, the fireplace in the sitting room was damp-proofed and a fireproof insulating layer installed and plastered. John, who did the work) managed to make that gravestone into more of a feature by plastering up to it smoothly.
In November, John came back and helped us to remove the steel bath tub,
and install a (more-or-less) walk-in shower. We used Aquaboard on the walls for a neat finish and for ease of future cleaning (November 2019).
Using a local company, we replaced the horrible brown UPVC windows with a more sympathetic window frame in a gentle grey-green. The work was completed just as the news about Covid19 began to break (late February 2020)
On March 7th, I did my first (and last) volunteer duty at Lanhydrock – Kevin and I decided to self-isolate from that weekend, due to his severe asthma – and as everyone knows, the official lockdown began two weeks later.
There was plenty to do in the garden and we managed to get online grocery slots, but my pantry is always pretty well stocked and I’d been making our bread for a while. The local dairy stepped up to do milk deliveries, as their commercial customers weren’t taking the milk for cheese or ice cream production and the village rallied around those who needed help with collecting prescriptions or groceries. We’d managed to secure some supermarket slots and a friend brought our eggs each week, as usual, leaving them at the front door.
With the lifting of the first main lockdown, we were able to get on with the conversion of the conservatory into a workshop and studio for my sewing and craft work. This involved removing the old UPVC conservatory frame and building a new insulated wood-framed and clad structure on the block base. Again, much of the external work was done by a friend (socially distanced) and Kevin and I did all of the internal insulation and cladding work.
We did manage to make two visits to Lanhydrock – once to the house and gardens when the house was closed and again when the limited route round the house was opened for six weeks – I visited alone in costume two days before the house closed again for the season but it felt very odd not being there as a room guide.
Before the next set of lockdowns, we managed to see both of Kevin’s daughters and their husbands – we’d had a Zoom get-together with his elder daughter and our granddaughter and grandson (who had contracted Covid19 but had recovered) and we had used Facetime with the younger daughter who had managed to move house just before the first lockdown. She has a face-painting business, which obviously wasn’t able to operate, so she threw herself into redecorating and renovating their new home.
Kevin and I had the required vaccinations early on – he because of his asthma (and age, but we don’t mention that!) and I because of my volunteer work at the Food Bank.
In May 2021, I returned to Lanhydrock in quite a different role, as a Victorian gardener, along with two other volunteers as a Butler and a Housemaid – no more room guides, but Experience Makers, trialling the role to bring Living History to Lanhydrock. This was really successful – a totally different experience to room guiding. I have returned to the same role this year.
We also invested in an electric car and home charging point, trading in the VW Up! for a SEAT Mii EV. The range in the warmer months was great – 165 miles to a charge – though we were lucky to get 125 over the winter; that didn’t really matter as we were only making local journeys anyway.
Now we are all facing quite different challenges – the war in Ukraine and the financial knock-on effects of the pandemic. Heating oil hit £1.99/litre – we got our 500 litres at £1.03 including the VAT and we fixed our electricity tariff last year until October 2023. In the meantime, we are having a 12 panel solar array fitted, with a 10kWh battery at the end of May. It won’t make the cottage roof look quite so pretty, but it should reduce our electricity bills!
Now we are considering whether we should switch to LPG, not least because there have been oil thefts around here, and although it is insured, that really isn’t the point. Far more difficult to steal LPG, even though it isn’t anywhere near ‘carbon neutral’. An air source heat pump setup would be difficult and expensive to fit to this old place, not to mention disruptive – and we’d still have to find a way to heat our water (we have no water tank).
Tales from a little white Devon cottage 