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An attic find

I have filed this at the moment under “Gardens and Outbuilding” as it does not really fit in a specific room so I will treat the loft as an outbuilding for now.

Whilst checking the loft insulation (I know exciting hey) I noticed a pile of what looked like picture frames and an old “Steamer” type travel trunk.

As it was not a priority, I left it up there until intrigue got the better of me and I hoisted it down yesterday evening.

Contents of the trunk including 2 folders of study notes for 1968 and 1972 exams (Oxford GCE’s)

As well as the trunk being a very nice example (it is slightly warped at the closure so the clasps at the moment do not align but I am sure with a bit of research that can be fixed), its contents seem to give some form of history to I can only assume is previous owners of the house or their families.

Within the pile of frames appeared to be a single oil painting. I can make out a signature in the corner just below the frame line but for now I have just given it a good clean and hung it in the snug. I suspect that the image is local and it will be interesting to narrow down the location.

Its nice to have something from the house, even if the source is unknown hanging in the first room you enter

Once in the trunk, a number of things were found and the first items on the top were two red folders which on further inspection appear to have hand written study notes belonging to a Linda Bayliss. The first one appeared to be study notes for GCE’s in 1968 and the second one contained an essay which had been marked as a B- with the teachers comments at the end and was dated Christmas 1972 which you can only assume that the exams in 1968 were GCE’s, Linda may have done her A levels in 1970 and therefore this could be a degree based essay or additional A Levels?

The first folder contained the full timetable for Oxford GCE’s 1968 along with a number of exams highlighted in Red which shows Lindas areas of interest. The other photo shows some of her study notes within that folder
  • Final grade of B- with the teachers comments in red
  • We can only assume that this was the teachers final summary notes
First and last page of the essay in the second folder

Also in the pile of frames, the certificate below was issued to Martin Nightingale in February 1940, allowing him to “render first aid to the injured”. It is interesting seeing what we recognise as the modern St Ambulance titled with its full historical “The venerable order of the hospital of St John of Jerusalem” and it would be lovely to know a bit more about this person such as how old they were, what was their background and if the connection behind the certificate was as a result of the war and supporting the local community as the certificate is associated to Ffestiniog.

A search of the WW2 archives starts to unearth information of Manod Quarry being used as the hiding place for the nations treasures around the autumn of 1920 and you wonder if their was maybe a link to those activities.

The dating of this appears to sequence just past the start of WW2. It does make you wonder who this person was, how old they were and why it was needed in this area

These two unknown photos were in the same trunk as the certificate and the study folders. Could this be the young Martin Nightingale? The young child, was it a child of the adult in the picture or part of another family? Did they live in the house and if so what rooms did they sleep in? I suspect I will never find out but you wonder why these two photos were left in trunk with a load of other seemingly random unconnected items.

I am hoping by taking the back off these pictures more history is discovered

So finally we get to the trunk. Apart from saying “British Made” on the right hand clasp, it is your standard wooden frame and painted canvas trunk with four protective wooden bands and a fabric lining, At present the latches do not mate up when closed, with either the lower half being concaved in or the upper lid bowed out but generally it is in a good state of repair and I hope to use it as additional storage in the Cariad Room.

A small amount of research seems to indicate that these type of trunks were more used as boarding school trunks as opposed to what people tend to class as Steamer trunks.

You wonder if the initials LDB relate to Linda Bayliss who would have been 16 in 1968 and obtained this trunk, and if not who owned this trunk before her . Or are the initials from another of her generation and this was passed down along with the name?
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New Year 3 day binge! – day 3

As planned, a day off from painting today…

As it was a Sunday, it started with a quick walk up to the newsagents to buy a Sunday Paper. Now I have never really been a “paper person” but my new found circumstances are making a lot of changes in my life so I thought “well why not”. I have no allegiance to any cover so I’m slowly going through the new stand alternating what I consider “highbrow” with tabloid.

Anyway, the walk up allowed me to have a quick look at the famous Blaenau Ffestiniog Railway and hopefully when these restrictions lift I can get to appreciate its history a bit more.

Still getting my bearings but I think this is Garreg Flaenllym in the background

Once I got back to the house, a quick coffee then out into the workshops. Basically my part of the property has the old stable block and the previous ownerships have left it as a two story building with the garden contoured up to allow easy access to the upper level. Todays challenge was more about downstairs which is split into a single garage, an original stone partition wall then a double garage but with two doors. The structural survey had highlighted a number of jobs here, mainly the lintel over the double door has a crack in it the doors needing replacing and the roof will need work at some point! From what I can see and as per the report, the beams supporting the upper floor are good but the floor boards will need attention at some point as they are very uneven and made up of very irregular boards.

My main aim today was to unpack all of my workshop equipment into a basic layout so when the electrician comes, I have a rough plan for lighting and sockets. I also wanted to take a good look at the floor to see what I was working with. Whilst it is water tight, I am going to have outdoor lights and sockets fitted within the workshop as well as a separate fused distribution board.

  • yes that is a yellow Unicycle in the corner…
Rough layout on the left after the starting point on the right. Still have a bench and some shelving to add in.

I am very please with the workshop space as it will allow me to work on repairing and restoring motorcycles which is one of my interests as well as hopefully giving me a space to build part of the kitchen from scratch and also construct new wooden garage doors. I want to move away from the modern up and overs and go back to something more period for the stable block but giving a level of security needed.

Current stable block with modern up and over doors to be replaced with hand built wooden doors. The challenge with front opening doors will be the big stone buried right in front of the middle door!

Once everything was starting to get laid out, broom in hand I started to sweep out the thick layer of dust and perished lino. Once this was shoveled up, what was visible appears to be the original floor. From what I can see, there are three distinct textures with the front being a form of slate / stone, then a draining channel and the rear of the garage being a mixture of cobbles and patterned impression.

The small square section in the middle is what is currently stumping me…

The final good find was buried at the back of the garage and appears to be an original door. I think I am probably going to struggle to date it but if possible I would like to incorporate it back into the house, maybe as the entrance into the rear courtyard or into the new garage doors (maybe a permanent non moveable framework on the right hand door with this door embedded within it?)

I would love to be able to date this door…

All in all it has been a great start to the New Year and three really productive days. Back to the day job tomorrow and then back onto the lounge next weekend I suspect.

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New Year 3 day binge! – day 2

Whilst tradition says that Christmas decorations should come down on Twelfth Night, I have always found that the over hang from the Christmas festivities is best packed up quickly. For me, it creates that sense of “new” beginnings and certainly this year it was very apt. One of the lovely elements about this house is the cellar and having only just moved in, I have no plans for it so instead of using the loft as the annual decoration store, it was nice to just get some boxes and pop everything down into the cellar without the hassle of getting loft ladders out etc!

Once that was done, I could crack on with todays decorating and the plan was very much around finishing the Snug off and if possible getting all of the emulsion on the lounge walls. Hopefully that would leave me with a couple of options tomorrow, the main one being starting to unpack the workshop and if I felt inclined I would start the gloss in the lounge but I really wanted the Sunday to be a more relaxing day with a more fluid plan.

The snug work was really straight forward. I had laid down two coats of white emulsion on the places where I had stripped the lifting wallpaper and the two top coloured coats went on really nicely. Once that had dried back I was able to finish off the two skirting boards under these panels then stand back and enjoy the transformation.

The two sides adjacent to the front door have very poor adhesion on the paper and I suspect some form of damp coming from the outside wall. Stripping them back and just applying plaint should allow me to monitor it.

Once I had tidied up and dressed the room, it was time to grab a quick coffee then start on the lounge. The area behind the sofa had a lot of lifting wallpaper and I had started on the walls before it yesterday so knew I had the complex bit coming. The first two short walls around the dining room door were OK but as soon as I came to the corner it was evident that the paper adhesion was poor and even thought I started just cutting sections out it quickly became apparent that the only option was to strip it all back and see the extent of the problem. Whilst a messy task with that underlying fear that I was going to discover my first major issue, the paper came off clean with little damage to the underlying plaster and whilst there was one patch of degradation the underlying walls seemed OK.

Area of damp and and the work done previously in the cellar which has obviously address rotting beams due to damp

Now all of the parts of the jigsaw have slotted together and probably give me something to monitor / address going forward. From what I can see, this area of dampness in the walls is directly above the new floor boards and if you look in the cellar you can see where new supporting walls have been built, I assume to take the weight of the floor joists which had started to rot in the old wall supports. Without specialist investigation confirming it, I suspect it is an occurrence of rising damp with moisture being drawn from the ground where the cellar walls touch the outlying soil.

The walls next to the building works are very black indicating a longer term damp problem I suspect

I will leave the lounge walls to dry out (with a oil filled radiator next to them and also allowing the window open above to let the moisture out) then get a couple of coats of white emulsion down whilst I monitor for 12 months without any paper on them.

This was expected (as damp was highlighted on the structural survey) and my approach was always to blitz each room quickly with a fresh coat of paint, exposing the damp areas for a 12 month monitoring. The extra work prepping these walls put me behind for the day but I felt I had achieved a lot in the lounge so called it a day.

One of the reasons I proceeded with the purchase after reading the survey was the potential of hidden gems. Yesterday I lifted the lounge carpet and found a lovely set of floor boards and the next one was going to be the dining room. The sound and texture underneath the carpet indicates a solid floor and I had banked on maybe a concrete or compacted stone floor but lifting the carpet in two places unearthed I hope something potentially fantastic…

The picture to the right shows a layer of old patterned lino being used as underlay. Whilst decorative it was very brittle so in another section of the floor it came up with the carpet. The picture on the left appears to show original welsh slate flooring. We will see when we lift the whole carpet the extent of the coverage.

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New Year 3 day binge! – day 1

Well 2021 was rang in at midnight, I watched a bit of telly till 1 then nodded off to sleep (OK I did fall asleep during the Last Leg at 10:30 pm but that was because I was tired!

My intention on the Friday (1st) was to get the gloss finished in my bedroom and then finish the Snug (gloss on the stairs, strip the walls around the door and get the coloured emulsion finished). As it was, I also ended up starting the white emulsion in the lounge and a bonus job of lifting the carpet to expose the floor boards!

The gloss in my bedroom was pretty straight forward as it was just a couple of skirting boards and door surrounds. Basically all I have left now is to make a small curtain for the back window and await the grey gloss paint for the inside of the door then its done. I will post some pictures under the Ymlacio category once those small jobs are complete. All in all a really practical transformation and has created the space for the en-suite to go in later this year. Oh and my new rug arrived yesterday which was quite nice.

New rug has arrived. The mirror doesn’t work here so its going to be moved.

Once the bedroom was done, it was time to try and finish off the Snug. This is basically the front room as you come in the front door and has an incredible decommissioned fireplace and the hallway / staircase. The main issue as well as a paint refresh was that the structural report highlighted some high level of damp by the doorway and this was evident by an amount of lifting wallpaper. My plan is to refresh the area with a new colour on top of the existing paper but where it has lifted take that paper off and lay down two coats of white then two of colour then leave it 12 months to monitor the damp. I’m hoping with better heating and air circulation it does not reoccur but if it does at least I have a starting point for treatment.

Stripping the paper and laying down the two layers of white emulsion took longer than anticipated but at least I go into tomorrow with it all prepped to finish it off.

By the front door has been stripped and sanded. Now two coats of white then two of colour will be left for 12 months to assess any potential damp issues

So as it was getting to the end of the day but I had an hour left to kill, and I had a white emulsion brush in my hand and a few easy access walls it made sense to end off with an easy white coat. If only it was that easy!

The problem started with the small wall just under the curtain…

The problem hit when I got to the second wall which had no skirting to so the emulsion did touch the blue carpet no matter what I did. Luckily this was going to be behind the sofa and the carpet would be replaced at some point but I would know about it, so the only “illogical” thing to do was to rip the carpet up!

I say illogical as it was now 5pm and I had been going since about 09:30 and I genuinely did not know the state of the floor underneath. I knew it was floorboards as it is the floor above the cellar but it could have been in any state! So bread knife in hand to cut it into sections and watched as the foam backing disintegrated in front my eyes (I can not estimate how old this carpet was), an hour later I was presented with a fantastic starting point of a new floor for the lounge.

The slow and messy process of removing the old carpet

Once swept and vacuumed, what I have been left with is a solid set of boards but with two new sections. My decision now is whether I sand it all back and re-stain it or keep the original board patina and try and color match stain the two small sections.

We will see…..

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Watching the seasons – Dec 20 (Winter)

A new place always brings a sense of excitement and nothing matches that as seeing the seasons change. Ive tagged this under the “Gardens” section but really it is going to track the general changing seasons here as Glan Gors.

So moving in during the winter was always going to be interesting. As well as the usual worries about a new place i.e. does the heating work! you are not aware of just how hard the winter is? Is it very cold ? do you get a lot of snow? and are the high winds so loud it makes you feel like the roof is coming off and you end up sleeping on the sofa in the lounge the first time it happens (yep that was the first winter in my last place).

So I’ve been here about 4 weeks now and so far I’ve had 3 lots of snow.

Waking up – New Years Eve 2020

Luckily, since moving to North Wales from Bristol, snow has been a regular feature so I’ve always kept a 4×4 as part of my available cars. A little Suzuki Jimny served me well for a good 10 years but when that gave up I treated myself to an old S3 Landrover. A great little work horse if not a little bit thirsty as a petrol!

I’m looking forward to the Spring coming and getting chance to see what already exists in the garden.

Lovely blue sky at lunch time – New Years Eve 2020
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Ymlacio part 1 (refresh)

Named “Relax”, this room was always going to be mine. If I want to develop the home as a possible Air BnB type place in the future, I needed to make the main bathroom available to guests and have an en-suite for myself. This was really the only room that offered the most efficient plumbing routes to the soil pipe and being double ended was actually ideal.

The only downside was that the space to put a double bed was limited to the alcove by the front window and was only 120 cm wide which is a standard UK small double. Whilst the mattress would fit OK, trying to find a frame that was exactly 120cm was a struggle as most had a 5 – 9 cm extra width over the mattress width. Luckily I was able to find one but more on that a bit later.

My intention (hence the room name Relax) was that this would be an “occasional” room for myself, A small double, TV, extra working desk and en-suite would give me the flexibility of a room which I could use for work, writing, lazing in bed on a Sunday morning with the telly on etc when I was not using the master bedroom at the back of the house with the 4 poster bed (which I really love as a room and intended to be my main sleeping place when guests were not staying). Also by putting an open plan Ikea wardrobe it would basically become a dressing / ironing room as well!

I say intention but actually the final decision has ended up shaping the room as two things happened. Firstly my daughter came to stay for Christmas and took up occupancy of the room… yep she liked it that much she has assured me that she will be staying here much more with her partner and their dog to “help me decorate”. So I think the “Cariad” room is definitely going to be hit with guests if not my kids!

The second thing was after starting to use my room and also getting the paint down it is actually turning into a nice multifunctional room. The desk allows me to just leave my laptop on the desk in writing mode so if I wake up in the night (as I sometimes do) and can’t get back to sleep I can work on a few paragraphs. The TV allows me to retire early and just crash on the bed instead of sitting in the lounge and the open plan wardrobes gives a great “dressing room feel about it”. The colour scheme has come together and I can start to visualise the open plan en-suite in the space left so I suspect my visits to the “Cariad” room when I have no guests will be few and far between…

Goodhome Frejus Silk and skirting part completed. Door panel is going to be light grey

Now I did say earlier on that I struggled with the bed and to be honest it was a challenge at first as the space was a dead 120 cm. Luckily I was able to find a low bed frame on Wayfair. The item was called the Cheyanne Platform Bed, was a reasonable price and as it slots into the alcove which forms a natural headboard and container for the pillows, once dressed it works a treat.

The next step is to complete the gloss on the skirting and doors and then wait for the replacement runner to arrive. After that the final step of this stage is to make a curtain for the small window and basically this room is done.

Obviously until we start adding the en-suite but that’s another story!

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Hoping for a hidden gem

So I have managed to get settled in this week. The weekend was spend bringing the workshop over (but more on that later) and the last car loads of clothes and food have been bought across from the farm cottage I have been renting so it was time to start getting the trades out to evaluate my project request against the indicative budget.

With the house having a number of open fireplaces and decommissioned gas fires, I am currently relying on the combi boiler and radiators to heat the house. Apart from the big hallway which is a large space where the heat disappears up the staircase, most of the house heats well although the lounge could do with a bit of a boost. I did have a problem with the timer running at 1/3 speed so every hour only rotated the timer 20 mins (which explains why the heating was not coming on as per how I had set it) but a local company sorted this out for me straight away (many thanks to D.E.W Plumbing and Heating in Blaenau Ffestiniog for sorting this the same day).

So back to the main topic of this post. The fire places. As usual my plan is to get 2 or 3 quotations for all the work and where possible give local trades the opportunity so a quick search found one company locally who were able to come out and give me a view.

My plan was:

  • Lounge – Add a log burner either in the existing fireplace or remove the fire place and create a new hearth further up with an external flue
  • Dining Room – Recommission the existing chimney and fireplace to have an open fire
  • Back bedroom (linked to dinning room chimney stack) – has a lovely open grate that I would love to recommission as an open fire in my bedroom
  • Front bedroom (linked to the lounge chimney stack) – has a lovely open grate that I would like to know if I could recommission as an open fire in the guest room

The initial feedback was that people are now “discouraged” from recommissioning open fires due to fact that they only operate at between 10 and 20% heating efficiency and I was advised that for the two bedrooms probably the best solution for now was just to give them a good clean and make a feature of them. I could always put a small wood burner in the back bedroom as a heat generating feature if I really wanted to.

The lounge was straight forward, the current chimney stack was viable but needed a liner specific for a wood burner as the current one was for a gas installation and the indicative pricing put me just in budget for have the liner fitted, the fireplace and hearth removed and a new one constructed then a nice word burner selected.

So onto the thrust of this article which was the dining room. Initially I was disappointed as I really had my heart set on an occasional open fire but the good news was that the chimney stack once again was viable for a liner. But on inspection a ridge was noticed in the wall at a height of about 6 foot. This was about 9 inches deep and ran 2/3 of the width of the chimney breast. Also going into an adjacent cupboard was a set of water pipes.

You can see the ridge above the current fireplace

The suspicions now are that this fireplace has been significantly closed up and when we open it up we have the potential of finding an original welsh slate lintel and possible the original range (if it was not removed).

This is either going to be an exciting find or a huge disappointment but at the end of the day all I wanted was a small open fire and as I know the flue is viable I can replace that with a nice woodburner and if we find something even more original when we open it up then that really will be a lovely find.

Will keep you all updated as this progresses.

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Well we are here

So the call finally came in….

“Hi Robert, just to let you know I have had a call with the sellers solicitor ten minutes ago and all the paperwork has arrived so we have transfered the funds and completed so you are free to pick up the keys this afternoon”

Why is this significant? Well after a change of personal circumstances, I had been living in rented accommodation on a lovely farm. It had allowed me to clear my head and move forward and I had settled on the idea of somewhere rural after 30 years of hiving in big citys or heavily residential areas.

I wanted a large property to be a new “family hub” where my children could come and visit, the future grand children have space to run around the garden and I had enough workshop space to pursue my current hobbies and any future one!

This was all happening in the middle of the Covid Pandemic where people were working from home so I now had 3 weeks to get the following sorted:

  1. Get broadband installed ASAP so when I was at the new place waiting for deliveries I was able to work
  2. Order all of my white goods
  3. Order all of my matressess and bedding
  4. Arrange for all of the furniture I had bought to be delivered
  5. Do a Christmas food shop as I had 4 people now over for Christmas dinner

So on Friday 4th December at 16:00 I picked up the keys, drove the half mile to the house from the estate agents. I wanted to do something I would remember as this was the start of a new journey for me but also deep down (and OK their will be a lot of you reading this thinking your bloody stupid) I had an underlying apprehension that with the house being over 250 years old and being an old coaching in, their was a high probably that someone had met an unsavoury death their in the late 1800’s!

I want to put a rocking chair at the end of the hall but I am convinced that one night I will get up for a wee and find it rocking itself. SO as I walk through the door and entered the beautiful front room, I just said out loud “thank you for letting my buy this house, I think I’m going to be very happy here”.

It probably didn’t do anything but if their was anything kicking around I hope they know that I’m friendly and just want to have a nice life at Glan Gors.