Where is Harrison Ford when you need him?

If you've seen the film 'Witness' then you'll know what I mean by the title of this post! Firstly, no, that isn't our house after the recent wind and rainstorms, it's The Cider Barn which has been neglected for decades and is Mike's project for the warmer - and drier - days throughout Summer. (Note the positive use of the words warmer and drier, we WILL have a good Summer this year, won't we..?)

Of course, if we had all the 'menfolk' from the village helping us to 'raise the barn' then it would be re-built in no time; maybe I should start making sandwiches and lemonade and set up the trestle tables... We had considered taking the barn down and putting something else up in its place but then we had a visit from a charming couple in their late 90s. The husband lived in our house in the 1930s and told us so many interesting stories, including how this was called the Cider Barn and in its heyday, gallons of cider were produced in this small barn.

We knew then that we had to rescue it. Mike has stripped the pan tiles from the roof and will be relaying them once he has replaced most of the smaller wood batons - fortunately the oak timbers are good and solid. There will be some re-building of the timber clad side and front, and a new window. Then there's the floor to dig out and re-lay. We found some painted cobbles in the soil but we will need to lay a more practical floor as we intend to use the barn when it's finished.

Oh look, here comes someone to lend a hand...

Perhaps not, don't think he's going to be helping today, especially when there's so much for a cat to explore...

Back again soon with news of the website...

From Dreary to Dreamy...A Bedroom Transformation

So many of you have asked to see photos of our new home so I thought I would share these with you. Our house is full of feature and needed lots of work to bring out the best of those features.
Here is the master bedroom, once very different as you can see by the 'before' pictures, but now it is light and airy with its timbers stripped of black paint, the fresh, white walls and a soft painted floor. I have mixed in some of the before photos so you can see just what a challenge we had!





We have carried out more detective work and now understand the house to be almost 400 years old. Such wonderful history lies within it - but also a great deal of work! There's still plenty to do so between the house and the website, we are never short of something to do! We have some surprises planned for you regarding the Vintage Home Website and will be announcing these soon, in the meantime, we hope you enjoy the photos.

If you go down to the woods today...

Although we are keeping busy with the website and the major task of renovating the house, we are also enjoying our amazing garden.

We are lucky enough to have a huge garden which has a secluded woodland area and as you can see, our cat Dennis loves exploring it.

The garden is full of woodland plants including masses of aquilega in every shade of pink...

...and purple.



It's a very relaxing place, nice and shady on a hot day.

If you enlarge the photo above you can see the cow parsley which is as high as my shoulder in places!

Oh, hang on, who's this? Why it's Dennis again, our very own intrepid explorer!

Oh dear, I think we've blown his cover!

I wonder what he has heard, maybe the chirp of a bird - or perhaps the shaking of the crunchies!

We won't be doing much to the garden this year but we will be taking time to appreciate it, especially when the days are sunny and warm. I am currently uncovering old grapevines which we thought were long dead but they are starting to flourish. Who knows, maybe we'll be making some 'Vintage Home' wine in the future! I also discovered a gooseberry bush which is doing really well and we have several damson trees; it's been suggested we make some damson gin later in the year!

See you all soon with more photos and news of the website..