We flew back to Ireland together for a change - at least as far as London, then - silly booking glitch - we got on separate flights to Dublin and met at our favorite airport hotel for one good night's sleep before going back to face whatever challenges awaited us at the house.
It didn't keep us waiting: mold pretty much everywhere. We've had it worse, but everything cloth had to be washed. The washing machine broke. (Mike fixed it.) The shower broke the first time it was used. (Tania got a shower. Mike got a bath, then fixed the shower.)
The GOOD news was that the underfloor heating worked perfectly. Mike had finished tiling so close to departure last summer that there wasn't time for the floor to set long enough to try turning it on. It's not quite enough to really heat the house, but it brought the temperature up a few degrees, and it's only half the floor. When the kitchen is done, too, it'll be very, very nice!
v The old trailer is now in the orchard so we can see the garden. It has worked overtime making up for the lack of guest room in the house. We don't actually have even a bedroom - it's open floorplan in the house, with the big room upstairs serving as bedroom, office, recording studio, rehearsal room... whatever we need the space and light for.
We played a couple of medieval music shows (more about those here) with our friends Sam and Ferris, and the big room upstairs was very useful, fitting in our lot of instruments and theirs!
On to the work downstairs. That woodstove HAD to go in.
< And it did. July 17, 2014, we had our first actual fire in our woodstove, in our living room, in Ireland!
Still no kitchen, but the camp stove and our little counter-top electric oven (a much appreciated gift from one of our visitors last year!) keep us well fed.
Comfy couch, rough stone walls, friends (hi, Nan!), woodstove, heated floor. It just keeps getting better. More about our Summer in Ireland here.
