Category: Uncategorized

Today, we discovered that we had an intruder sometime in the last 24 hours. We found a reel of wire flung across our Great Room and badly chewed. It was our double insulated 4mm cable for our Solar Panels which is very annoying.

But, we also discovered that lots of our windows have been clawed and ripped as well, the plastic showing plenty of damaged. Boxes of things shredded and strewn around.


And a bin bag full of scrap cloth and the contents scattered too.

It seems that we had the company of a fox, probably a youngster who was just exploring. We had taken to opening the Conservatory door wide open during the day while we worked on the roof installing the metal brackets etc. and this fox took the opportunity to sneak in and have a play. We know that it must have been either yesterday afternoon when the reel of wire was chewed because we had moved those reels of wires that very morning and of course, they were fine.

Then, we were working upstairs and discovered more evidence, this time a patch of water right in the corner of the floor and at first, we thought that we had a leak but we didn’t have any rain for days! But, the smell gave it away, it was urine! O Boy! This was the afternoon and it was quite hot so we were surprised that it hadn’t all evaporated away by now, if the intruder was only around during the previous afternoon. But, now, perhaps we accidentally trapped the fox indoors when we locked up the place last evening and it couldn’t escape. We had a look around everywhere and even lifted up the hallway hatches to look underneath but there was no signs of it, no paw prints in the dust. No signs of it upstairs, hiding in the corner etc.

At the end of the day we left out a bowl of water and a plate with a slice of ham on it, and put it in the middle of our Great Room and went home.

Lo and behold the food was gone in the morning, so the intruder was still inside…

We had another search and still could find no sign of it. We left the doors open whilst searching and saw a fox trot past a windows and thought it had left! But to be certain we put some more food down after closing the doors again.

We came back later and the food was gone again. So we decided to leave the conservatory door ajar in the evening and we smoothed the sand outside the door to show tracks.

We checked the sand about 9pm and saw a lovely set of tracks leaving the house! So we shut the door and sighed in relief that the poor ‘Fox’ had escaped.

We will be closing the doors when we are not in the house in the future….

This afternoon the Kitchen Cooking Section was assembled, with the worktop and the oven stack joined all together.

All the edges were rounded, rubbed smooth and filled in with Polyfilla. This will be painted tomorrow with emulsion and then vinyl silk on top. This particular unit is only temporary so it is not worth putting in the time and money to make it just perfect!

Today we put together the Oven Stack! It is made up of a 150mm open shelf starting at the bottom of the stack, followed by two 600mm high selves for the two oven and topped with a microwave shelf being 400mm high. The sides goes up another 25mm to provide another open shelf right on top of the stack for saucepans and other pots!

Also we joined together two left over worktop pieces to provide a surface for the induction hob to sit in. it was quite a fiddle to get the two edges square and flat and get the two surfaces smooth. We put in loads of a bulk PU glue to try and stick the ends together.

Tomorrow we will cut out the hole for the hob and fix on two battens to reinforce the joint at the back and front of the worktop and start assembling the vertical side panels underneath the worktop and mount the drawers.

Today we have finished the final coat of oil paint on the fronts of the eight drawers.

The undercoat went on this morning and then the full gloss late in the afternoon. It is the same mid-grey colour as the Utility Rail modules.

The drawers for the Cooking Section were painted with Acrylic paint acting as both primer and undercoat as stated on the tin. The whole thing was covered but the front and insides were done twice and even three times for the bottoms inside. This is to build up toughness and finally the front is now ready for the coat of oil undercoat and full gloss.

The eight draws were sanded down and a final touch up with Polyfilla was done today. Painting will start soon, with the primer first, then a coat of white acrylic to provide the basic undercoat and a full gloss mid-grey just for the fronts, to match the colours of the utility modules.