A lot has happened since we last posted(not necessarily with the cottage), we had a beautiful baby girl just a couple of weeks before Christmas 2016. That kept us both very busy, so between November and February there wasn't much work going on at the cottage. Again I'll let the photos tell the story.
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Fig.6 The chimney halfway down. Unfortunately the cresote had impregnated the earth mortar most of the way down, so we decided to take it down to about ceiling height. We'll either build a block chimney to replicate the original or use twin wall insulated stainless steel flue pipe and make a mock chimney breast.
Fig.7 the chimney down to ceiling height. You can see the debris on the floor from the demolition. It took about 4 times longer clearing up the mess then it did knocking it. Better not forget to thank Aroul for helping with this, many hands make for less shoveling and some of the stones needed two people to lift them.
Fig.10 In May we decided to hire out a 3 ton mini digger to tidy up around the place a bit. We took down the cavity block wall that enclosed the concrete yard beside the milking parlour, this gave us more space. The yard the sheds had a layer of scraw/sod on it from years of disuse so it was easy to just scrap off. There was a mixture of gravel and stone underneath, but we'll have to put down a cleaner layer in future as its still dirty when its wet.
Fig.11 We took off the galvanise sheeting from the two sheds behind the cottage, we had initially wanted to keep the shed directly behind the house and one day convert it and connect it to the cottage, but one of the end gables was badly damaged and also the was a hawthorn tree growing out of the back wall. Thus the decision to demolish it and one day rebuild an extension with a similar footprint and size.