Fourth Annual Review : 2018/19
It is February 20 2019 and therefore a full four years since we took possession of The Old Rectory. Traditionally, the time to review the work of the last 12 months and discuss what is in store for the coming year. The thumbnails below are active : click on a picture to see a larger scale version. The larger pictures open in a new window so just close it when finished.
It was a period that we won't forget in a hurry as Mike's left femur snapped in mid-October while he was gardening. There were also several periods of travel. On that basis we can claim that it was only an 8 month period and not a full year! It was a wonderful summer though, with little rain for weeks on end. This review now records progress for the objectives set for 2019/20 at the end of the page.
The House
The objectives for the house, set this time a year ago, were : a new kitchen and larder, finish the dining room, complete bedrooms 3 and 4 and the family bathroom, replace the wooden windows downstairs, construct the secondary porch, fit oak garage doors and construct a main entrance porch. The work followed the same pattern as last year with most effort early in the period [before the garden became too tempting!]. There were some notable exceptions however : see below.
At the end of year three we had remodelled the larder/utility and upstairs partitions in the core of the house, all in preparation for the plastering. We had also undertaken some preliminary work in the kitchen with a view to installing the new cabinets later in the year.
In early March the plastering was done over a weekend which opened up a lot of work that could now be undertaken : finishing the new larder, bedroom 3, the upstairs corridor, bedroom 4 and the family bathroom.
Preparation work for the kitchen and larder included completing the re-wiring, decorating the newly plastered surfaces, cladding the larder ceiling and lightening up the Tudor oak beams and posts with the 'back from black' treatment. There was also the back and forth decision-making as to layout, colours and textures, equipment and so on. That took place during the long, hot [gardening] summer.
There was also the question of the badly rotting wooden window frame on the west side of the kitchen which needed replacement. The same was true of the dining room. Listed Building Consent [LBC] for replacing them with metal frame units was granted in very early 2018 [and because the old units were double glazed the new ones could be too]. Installation only took place in mid-August following another LBC application (!) to have black window frames externally.
The kitchen work all culminated in late September / early October when the new kitchen was installed, albeit somewhat sporadically. Luckily, it was completed a few days before the accident. The end result was everything we hoped for, just the new floor covering to be installed [but first we had to lift the old tiles …].
Long ago, we had selected a brick-effect foam vinyl flooring. The problem was that, if you don't apply a [self-levelling] sealing screed, the pattern of the previous tiles shows through within a year and just adding the screed on top of the existing tiles would raise the floor too much relative to the kitchen units.
The floor work, for both the kitchen and the utility room, was eventually scheduled for January 31 and February 1. Accordingly, the old tiles in the kitchen were lifted at the start of that week. The stripping of the utility room tiles had been completed back in December.
The new floor, once laid, was just as we hoped.
Work for the dining room started in mid-January [2019] with making good around the west window and decorating the ceiling and walls in preparation for carpet laying. An experiment was tried with the western window ledge using 12mm mdf to cover the shattered quarry tiles from the 1930s. This was edged with an oak slat and oak veneered on top to create an oak looking ledge.
The carpeting took place at the very start of February so that is another room finished [at least in broad terms : there is still the eastern window ledge to be sorted].
Upstairs, work for bedroom 3 was a question of decorating the plaster on the new partitions, making good old plasterwork and decorating that and fitting and decorating the skirting and architraves. However, we took a decision to keep the floorboards on show [some of them are centuries old] so they were sanded down and sealed before the skirting and architrave work.
We also took a decision to delay any fitting out in the alcove of bedroom 3 [possible wetroom?] until a later date. We would need LBC just to take out the old fire-surround, let alone incorporate a washbasin and/or toilet and/or shower.
Work on the family bathroom continued as soon as the small amount of plastering in there was complete. By mid-March the new bath was installed and the tiling was basically complete with a new [oak] door fitted. After that, glorious [gardening] weather and international travel rather disrupted work so it was another three months before the work was actually complete.
Work for bedroom 4 had not really started when the period came to an end although the oak needed for cladding the badly vandalised softwood beam under the north ceiling had been delivered.
Work for the external house projects [the secondary porch, the garage doors and the main entrance porch] was minimal, to say the least.
Nothing at all happened on the porch for the secondary entrance although all of the plans are ready and materials agreed. It is [hopefully] a project for 2019.
Progress was made with the oak doors for the garage in that an order was placed in early August on a small workshop down in Cornwall for delivery in October. Unfortunately the owner of the workshop suffered a stroke which seriously disrupted the business so the doors will only eventually be delivered in early March. As it happens, because of Mike's health issues, the delay was not really serious. The wood is raw so it will need treatment and coating before mounting, hopefully later in March.
With respect to the main entrance porch, we again submitted planning and LBC applications [two further options this time] to the local Authority and they were again refused so we have launched appeals with the national planning inspectorate. At the very end of the period we were told that the inspector will be visiting some time in May .....
The highlight of the year for the house work was [finally] the permanent move from Chelsfield Park which took place in early November on the sale of that house. There followed weeks of an extended 'Christmas' opening box after box of things that we had forgotten about. Finding places to put it all was less fun but deciding where to put our pictures in the house was enjoyable : the house is becoming a home.
The Garden
The objectives for the garden, set in the third review, were to pave the patio, construct the western sleeper wall, complete the rockery and path to Chinese Bridge, complete River Pond, spread surplus clay and establish the main path. Most were achieved, thanks to the wonderful summer, but there was one spectacular failure and one extra objective added and achieved :
Work on the establishment of the Formal Garden continued with a mix of architectural landscaping, planting and maintenance.
Work on the sleeper wall along the western boundary was started right from the beginning of the period and was complete by mid-May. The sleepers lining the east of the formal garden were also extended to near the oak tree by that time.
The paving of the patio [including the well top] was only started in early July but was finished within the month. What was not done was the building of a brick ring around the well head, a mental objective within 'pave the patio'. The problem is finding a way to cut every brick into a wedge [without upsetting the bank manager].
The first maintenance of the formal garden, of course, involved mowing, fertilising and weeding the lawn sown the previous autumn although the dry summer did slow the growth which reduced the mowing burden. Permanent planting progressed to some extent but much of the colour in 2018 was still annual planting. This was remedied towards the end of the year when more permanent planting – a mix of plants brought down from Chelsfield and new acquisitions – was undertaken.
Other than the first part of the rockery, the North Glebe Garden was not really a garden at all at the start of the period although much [not all!] had been cleared of weeds. The first rockery stones had been placed but the path to Chinese Bridge had been more or less destroyed by the earth moving equipment in 2017 and planting was very limited. In addition, Winter Stream was a mess of weeds, particularly the marsh marigold section just above Chinese Bridge.
Work on this section of garden started once the patio was complete [so at the end of July] when the path was re-established using a golden self-binding gravel. It was quickly named the 'yellow brick road'.
The next construction was a deck around the foot of the oak tree, undertaken in August. It wasn't even an objective for the period although it was on our thoughts almost from the start.
It is roughly four metres by four and allows one to sit out overlooking what will be River Pond one day.
Which brings us to the dam needed to create River Pond. It had been started in 2017 and its impact on the water level noted in the winter of 2017/18. It was duly increased in height by two brick courses in August and we sat back to await the rains and the filling of the pond. The rains came with a vengeance in mid-November and the pond was full in no time – until the dam(n?) wall keeled over because of the water pressure. Yes, the wall was strong enough – it is still intact thanks to the mesh reinforcing layers that run along it – it just wasn't stable enough.
2019 will be 'Robert the Bruce Year' [try, try and try again]. Current thinking is to have a weir under Chinese Bridge so that the dam doesn't have to be so tall.
In early October some more rocks were added near the top of the rockery which allowed it to be declared complete in terms of architectural gardening. The planting and filling out of the original part of the rockery will have to wait until spring 2019.
Maintenance work in this part of the garden was woven between the architectural gardening throughout the summer. The clay mountains from the 2017 earthworks were spread across the north bank of Winter Stream and, after a dressing with bonfire ash, rotavated in. Weeding was, of course, continuous but required more or less architectural gardening effort in the bed of Winter Stream just to the west of the Chinese Bridge. Literally everything was dug out, including a fair amount of silt and then some of the irises and the water marigolds were replanted.
One day in December saw an orgy of planting here [and elsewhere!]. Some under-planting had already occurred under the oak and that was now supplemented by groups of heucheras. Across the yellow brick road, a lot of primulas were planted on the banks of Winter Stream and, slightly further back from the stream, some astrantias and some Aruncus dioicus [Goat's Beard]. Astrantias are very promiscuous so only the deep red Astrantia major 'Rubra' were planted.
Work in the rest of the garden was relatively muted and limited to maintenance and planting. In the Wildflower Meadow the area down on the eastern boundary was further tamed with the last of the rhododendrons pruned fully, as was the yellow privet. That just leaves the section of the boundary bed further south between the privet and Black Pond : it is still a mass of cornus [red and green bark varieties] heavily contaminated with pernicious weeds. That is a job for 2019.
Towards the end of the year the bed along that border was planted with a Liquidamber styraciflua 'Slender Silhouette', two camellias, a yellow leaved acer, a group of Cornus sanguinea 'Winter Flame' and a Cornus controversa 'Variegata' [ironically, right up against the mass of contaminated cornus].
The other work in the Wildflower Meadow included the continued planting up of the Black Pond west bed where a scarlet lobelia from 2017 [Lobelia cardinalis 'Queen Victoria'] lit up the bed for months on end in the summer. The bed should be even better in 2019. We also tackled the mass of sumac [Rhus typhina] just north of the cherry tree, reducing it down to a single stem. Despite appearances it was heavily infected with fungus so only time will tell if the one survives.
In the Kitchen Garden, we actually grew a few vegetables this year, harvesting French beans for a long time because the weather was so favourable and plucking lettuce and spring onions as wanted. Having said that, it is wrong to think of it as a 'kitchen garden' as most of it is still ornamental, albeit of a relaxed [wild?] and self-sown form. At one point the area was mainly occupied by two swathes of borage and one of Verbena bonariensis. Between the two ran equally rampant nasturtiums, the grandchildren of an original sowing in 2016.
The only maintenance in this part of the garden was the ill-fated draining and re-lining of Top Pond in mid-October that resulted in the snapping of Mike's femur. The job will now have to be completed in 2019 but at least the new liner has stopped the leak, it is cosmetic work that is still required.
One highlight of the gardening year worth mentioning was the opening of the garden to visitors on the Peasmarsh Open Gardens day. [Being Inksons, we didn't serve tea and cake, we served Pimms!]. It was made clear that we didn't have a show garden, we had a work in progress and that as the years pass and visitors return they will see the [figurative] fruits of our labour.
So, despite a lot of hard work and because of the health issues and travel, we are further off track but at least the house is habitable and close to complete in terms of the first round [there is still the need to do it all again, room by room, attending to the fine details that were skipped or overlooked!]. We also achieved many of last year's objectives in the garden. Let's indulge in some forward thinking again and establish a 'road map' for the fifth year :
The house still requires both inside and outside work in the 12 months ahead :
- work on the bedroom 3 alcove [subject to LBC];delayed, maybe 2020?
- complete bedroom 4;substantially complete, just needs wardrobe door
- prepare and decorate the utility room;complete
- prepare and fit the oak doors to the garage;complete
- construct the porch at the secondary entrance;tiling substantially complete
- construct a porch at the main entrance [subject to Planning Appeal];appeal successful but delayed until 2020
If we can achieve all of that then the house work can be declared 'complete'.
The garden should include some architectural gardening but with a lot of maintenance too :
- establish the main path from the driveway to the yellow brick road;sub-base finished
- start again with River Pond [two shallow dams!];dam and buttresses complete, clay abutments outstanding; weir needs a third course
- complete the well-head at the patio;delayed until 2020
- complete the pebble path along the west side of the house;first half finished, waiting for main porch work before proceeding
- finish planting up the formal garden;well advanced ... but always room for more!
- finish planting under the oak tree;well advanced ... but always room for more!
- finish clearing the remainder of the north glebe garden;this year's area planted and paths started but needs 2020 too
- clear the last of the eastern boundary;complete
- carry on weeding, weeding, weeding ...never finished!
At the end of the 12 months we will then be half way through our self-imposed 10 year programme for the garden but then, gardening is never complete! The pebble path along the west of the house requires the foundation of the secondary entrance porch complete before it can be finished.
