Roofing for the DIY renovator
Prior to landing at Lackan, I’d never re-roofed a house – let’s face it, its not something you do every day. Throughout our search for a house, my primary selection criteria was ‘is the roof straight’, and on that basis, this cottage was winner. There are two cottages here, and on one we kept the old corrugated roof, for reasons of budget and fear, and the other we re-roofed, having a bit more money and confidence. Hopefully this post will be of use to others who are wondering what to do with their old cottage roofs.
Birch Cottage Gift Vouchers
The ideal present – a Birch Cottage gift voucher. Available in £10, £20, £50 or £100 these can be redeemed against the cost of any booking at Birch Cottage made through our website during 2018. Just quote the code when you book. We are selling these through our Lackan Cottage Farm online shop, where you can pay securely online using a debit or credit card, or paypal.
Talking about building restoration on the telly
Today we had the pleasure of welcoming the crew from Animo TV, and presenter (and architect) Hugh Wallace, as part of filming for a new RTE series about restoring old buildings. One of the restorations they are following is a cottage similar to ours, and so they came...
Book Birch Cottage direct with our new website
Over 100 people have been to stay here in Birch Cottage now, and we’re delighted at the reaction from visitors. We have learned a lot about what makes this place special to visitors, and focused on making those things even better. Where else can you find your own private woodland, horses outside the door, and the spectacular Mourne Mountains as a backdrop? We are Green Tourism Gold rated, and Tourism Northern Ireland 4 Star rated.
Off grid wind turbine repairs
When we heard that a hurricane was coming to Ireland, we were convinced that we were terribly well prepared. As seasoned off grid people we really should be. In the event, the wind here wasn’t as bad as we expected. Unfortunately we still didn’t get away...
When Paddy met Sean. Round 2.
Poor old Paddy. He woke up on Monday morning with what can at best be classed as terrible constipation. Horses are trickle feeders, and their gut relies on a small steady intake of food to keep everything moving. Colic, usually down to impactions or eating something that has decided to disagree with them, is never a good thing in horses and ponies, and down the years we’ve lost one or two to such things. Hence when it appeared that Paddy had spent a whole night rolling around his stable in discomfort, we called up Sean the vet immediately.
Our first grape harvest
We had a surprise grape harvest this year – it is only the second year we’ve had grapes at all, and it was incredible to part the undergrowth and find so many. Very tasty they were too, but we realised that we’d have to do something with them as there were far too many to eat. Luckily our friend Ingrid had lent us her steamer-juicer. This incredible thing basically juices most things without a load of messing around removing stalks and stems.
Better firewood storage
This is one of thoseobvious things that I should have thought of a lot sooner. Our woodstore is on the back of the cottage with a door that allows you to get in from inside the house. It has slatted walls to let air circulate, but its always had a solid roof because...
Simple tips for easy firewood processing
We process a lot of firewood here and these two simple additions have made life a million times easier. First, we made up a thing to put long bits of wood in for cutting. Its a heavy bottom piece with uprights made from easily replaceable pallet wood, spaced so that cutting midway between them leaves us with 10″ pieces. Simply fill it up with wood, and you can cut mountains of fiddly bits with just 3 or 4 cuts.
Late summer in the gardens
Late summer in the garden and there’s an abundance of food ready to harvest – from beans to apples.
Yet more range cookers
It seems that concentrating on range cookers for a while seems to be attracting them. Until a couple of weeks ago we’d never heard of the Wellstood Two (or WD 36) stove, and then having just put one in, out of the blue we are very kindly offered another.