We love our smallholding/homestead. Our year is dictated by the seasons. In winter we decorate the inside of the house, clear and tidy barns and build/repair coops. In Spring it’s all systems go with planting and growing fruit and vegetables as well as hatching chickens. Summer is tending and harvesting which leaves Autumn/Fall for building maintenance.
You’ll have recognised our lovely cottage in our YouTube videos, social media and this blog post, but we also have a barn steading and this is where I’ve been working. All of the doors and windows have needed painting. Unfortunately one of the barns has a wooden window and it also needed some serious repair.
Before we go any further, you might assume Hugh is writing this blog but it’s me, Fiona. This house doesn’t have gender assigned roles only roles that each of us are either available to do or we are good at.
I started the work on the window by removing the rotten wood, digging it out until I took it back to something solid. It took a while…there was quite a lot of it.
The next step was to ensure that the base wood is fully stable and I do this by painting on some wet rot hardener. I think of it like a superglue that soaks into the wood making it much more durable. I had no idea this stuff existed before moving here and it has been so helpful you wouldn’t believe how much!
Next step is to fill in the holes!
The good news is that the windows have no requirement to open. The barns are not accommodation and if we ever need and airflow all we have to do is open the doors. That means I don’t have to consider how the windows open, I just have to mix the two part woodfiller and plonk it into the gaps. I do try to spread it smoothly but this stuff dries so fast it’s difficult to get a perfectly smooth finish.
So that means I have to get the sander our to smooth everything down.
For some reason this is my least favourite part of this job. I suppose it’s probably because everything else is building something new but this is removing something I’ve just added. It’s the contradiction.
Finally I can get to painting. This I find really therapeutic. I pop a book on Audible to listen to, paint on some primer, have a cup of tea and then paint on the gloss and voila…the finished job.
I just have to get on and refresh the masonry paint now but I’ll have to check the weather forecasts first……
English Country Life 