Accepted a bid for the old house Sunday, 01-May-22 21:24:50 CEST

Hobby room finished Sunday, 15-May-22 21:43:31 CEST

Sunday, 08-May-22 20:49:01 CEST

Started working on the living room

I started plastering the living room. The outdoor planting season started.

Monday 2 May

Today I brought DD to the train station in the morning, and then I went to the office since I was almost there. It was not so many people in the office so I could concentrate well on my work.

When driving home after work, I stopped at the end of the motorway exit to take a panorama picture of the tulip fields. It is always beautiful with the tulip field this time of the year. It was the last chance to take a photo of this field in full bloom. On Wednesday, it was gone.

Tuesday 3 May

I worked from home today. I had already been to the office, so there was no need to go there another time. Have I told you I can concentrate better when working from home? Yes, I said that before in this blog, but it is worth saying again, not that it will matter.

This evening DW started preparing to paint the hobby room. Collect the buckets, prepare the scaffold, etc. I love that she gets to take over the project. She is enthusiastic and keen to finish painting the room. I was losing hope a little that we would finish the room.

Wednesday 4 May

DW primed the walls. Then she began painting the corners. It is vital to get the hobby room painted because that will give us more space to put furniture. We will need that to move stuff here from the old house.

I went to the office for my half-day, and I was surprisingly efficient, which is apparently also possible. After work, I took the small trailer to the recycling center to empty it and make room for more stuff. I started preparing so that the living room could be plastered.

In the evening, it was the remembrance of the Dead ceremony. This is a proper ceremony about things that matter to us in Europe and no phony ritual based on a fantasy figure. I got a little emotional about this event though I am not Dutch. The right to live freely in a democracy is one of the noblest things to have a ceremony about. Can you imagine two million Ukranians being deported to Siberia while I write this?

Thursday 5 May

On this day, we worked from our new home again. After work, I moved the sheep, and DW continued painting the hobby room.

I had included our compost heap in the sheep's fence for the first time. This is the compost heap that we got on 20 November 2020. It has shrunk a little, so it is doable for the sheep to climb on the heap.

Friday 6 May

Today it was regular work from the new home day. In the morning, it was misty. Droplets were hanging on the scaffold. Hopefully, some of that moisture came to the grass as well. It has been dry for a long time, but I am pleased with the clay's ability to hold moisture. Cracks open in the clay, especially where the ground is bare, but it holds moisture pretty well. Where we have grass growing, there are fewer cracks.

DW took a half-day off (just like that) to paint the hobby room.

She started painting the ceiling of the hobby room. When that was done, she started on the walls.

After my work, we had supper, and after that, DW decided to go and paint more on the walls. I started removing all stuff from the living room. It is the next room I will work on.

I put the protective paper on the floor to start plastering the walls. The paper project was almost finished this evening. I can indeed start plastering tomorrow.

We are moving forward with selling the old house; we will need to have both the hobby room and the living room finished soon to put furniture here from the old house.

Today we have our fourth anniversary of this house project; We started this on 6 May 2018. I talked about the early milestones on 26 January 2020. We got a black roof, but it is spot-on for the rest. We still need to paint the corners white, but that is a low priority.

Saturday 7 May

I had hoped that the last cold night for this spring would be on Sunday, but it has moved to Monday night. I can start putting out the pregrown pots from Tuesday next week. The night temperatures are the blue line. There will be a little rain today; we will see.

I got beans and corn prepared but also flowers. It will be interesting to see how this growing season will be. It is so dry in the ground, but I want to grow more vegetables this year.

Since the living room area has to be empty, I moved it to the hallway on the first floor. The sofa will not fit here. I need to get on with the plastering soon so that we can get back to a functional living room as soon as possible.

DW started painting the next layer after breakfast. I went to buy more scrim bands. DW likes to use scrim bands of paper, but I am fond of using adhesive fiberglass mesh scrim bands. The mud can flow around the mesh, and fiberglass is durable. Paper scrim bands are not my thing. DW is much better at handling paper scrim band. I tried it as well, but I got bubbles and strange things; I could not stand it, it is easier for me with the fiberglass mesh scrim band, so I am using them.

When I returned from the hardware store, I started creating a new shed for our sheep. It is three pallets with a simple tarp roof. They loved it; they found a pleasant shadow in the new shed, and there was room for all of them at the same time. I hope it will stand the wind. In the photo, you can almost see how intense the sun is. The UV index is very high right now.

After I finished the shed, I started plastering the living room. I mounted the metal corners around the windows and the garden doors. This time I fastened them with screws. The corners became much more snug fit this way; I liked it!

I cut the metal corners right outside the garden door. I recall working here before we had electricity in the summer of 2020 with that first stupid power generator. In 2020 it was sand here and no grass. When I dragged the starter cord of the generator, the generator moved in the sand when I tried to start it. At some point, it died, and I dragged it repeatedly, to no avail. At some point, the power cord snapped. I still got the dead generator in the container. In 2022, I could hook up the power cord to the outlet and cut the metal corners. 2 minutes of effort.

Then I applied the newly acquired scrim band on the seams, and with that, it was just a question of mixing buckets of coarse mud and apply to the seams and around the windows.

The hobby room looks white. It is pretty. Here in the living room, the plastering has started. We have begun. Now it is just a question of keeping it going. Tomorrow we will visit family, so I suppose not much will happen.

Sunday 9 May

It is Sunday morning, and on my way to make a cup of tea, I took a photo of the hobby room. When looking up at the ceiling, it is (a little) challenging for the eyes to distinguish where each wall starts and ends. This creates an effect of a dome that looks endless.

We still got the white protective paper on the floor, making it a very white room. DW will do the window jambs and the window heads, and then the room is finished, and we can remove the protective paper.

Outside in a pond, we got frogs. I am not sure if it is our pond. We are still surprised one of our neighbors is afraid of frogs. How could that be? I recorded this from the bathroom window, and there were also airplanes passing by, so it was not that pristine sound. I filtered out the airplanes from the recording.

Today we went to DWs parents. We helped out with a couple of tasks in their garden. Clear some weeds, and make room for new plants. I could have many wood garlic plants, which was great because the wood garlic I sowed on 6 February had not become anything. I managed to get one rosemary plant to germinate from those seeds. My mother-in-law gave us a kind of campanula and a succulent.

Mother's Day today, but we had not figured that out and came unprepared. It has not been so easy to see each other during the pandemic, so it was nice to come together again.

The parents-in-law live one hour drive away. On the way home, we made a detour via a garden center. We bought two solar panel fountains to put in our pond. We also bought a tray of water plants. When we came to our new home, DW planted the water plants in our pond. I planted the wood garlic in the flower garden.

I noticed that alliums have started flowering in the flower garden!

Then I planted 4 corn plants I sowed on 24 April and 5 pumpkin plants on 9 April. This was on the south side of the sea container.

On the west side of the container, I planted various beans. Runner beans, French beans, etc.

This concludes this week's activities.