Schoolboy error that nearly cost a fortune!

The merry month of May has passed and happy to report a much more settled few weeks as far as the Dogs are concerned. If you remember April was a disaster and we spent more time at the vets than we did in the garden, that role has been reversed i'm pleased to say.

Our Sky is doing very well and adjusted brilliantly to the loss of her sight and with the blood sugar levels settling down we don't have to take her for tests every other day. Her old character has well and truly come back and if anything she's even more cheeky now she is blind, I reckon she knows she can get away with a bit more, the other dogs know it too and just let her get on with it.

On the garden side of things, the spuds are going wild, the raspberries are about two foot high and the tomatoes are coming along just fine. We have a few varieties in big tubs up against a very sunny wall that will be perfect for a decent crop, we hope. First time we have done tommies so anything will be a bonus this year.

On the decorating front we almost finished off the morning room, it used to be a very busy green patterned wall paper on all four walls and now its a lovely Farrow & Ball salmon pink which is officially called 'Setting Plaster'. It just tones down the place totally and gives that feeling of a peaceful place to sit.

As in all projects where we are concerned it didn't go without a hitch or two, we had a combination cast iron fireplace on the main wall, it was purely decorative as the previous owners came up a brilliant idea of removing most of the old victorian features in this part of the house, including coving, ceiling rose and most annoyingly, the chimney.

Anyway the said fireplace was screwed to the wall so obviously I needed to strip the wallpaper behind it. I undone the screws took the fire away and did what I needed to do. This fireplace weighs a ton and with nowhere to put it I decided in my wisdom it would be ok to just lean it up against the wall not far from where it first stood.

Everything was going swimmingly well with the painting and I was quite pleased with myself how it was coming along. One thing you should always guard against in life is that when you think everything is fine and dandy just beware of what's around the corner, well especially when you have three big GSD's and blind Husky.

Ben and Shadow decided it was play time and foolishly I had put the said fireplace right in the middle of their wrestling ring. Anyway to cut a long, frustrating story short the cast iron was unable withstand three rounds with Bruno and Tyson. It crashed to the floor snapping in bits like cast iron does.

After the dust settled a quick search on google told us putting the fireplace there was about a £400 mistake. A real schoolboy error if ever there was one!

One thing about us lot is that we are never defeated and more often than not we go about things in a logical way. We were undecided about which way to go as fas as replacing the fire, we watched a few items on ebay and spotted a second hand fire insert in a shop down the road. The second option would need a surround and Suzy had seen some old fire surrounds outside a shop during a dog walk to Birkdale.

I popped down there to see if they were for sale or just waiting for the scrap man. Anyway they wanted £20 for them. Then lady luck chipped in, as she does if you try hard enough to find her. 20 yards away from these fire surrounds stood an old black cast iron combination fireplace, just like the one we bounced earlier. I immediately asked if it was for sale and was told we could take it away for the princely sum of £30. Hands and Snap spring to mind and it was quickly bundled into the back of the Audi. A free fret later and we had a new fireplace. I made an insert out of some wood and painted it black and now it looks a million dollars, all for about £50. Phew, got away with that one!!

The morning room will have its coving replaced and a nice Tiffany light is on the shopping list and that will complete this latest project.

Speaking of projects, we have just unearthed even more gold that the previous owners decided to hide, it's like a flipping treasure hunt living here! We wanted to originally put some shelves or draws under the stairs, it was just a waste of space as it was. Anyway we thought it would be wise just to clear the stuff out from under the stairs and take the front panels off, that way we would see exactly what space we were dealing with. It took me about 5 minutes to realise what was under these white thin bits of hardboard. It was original Victorian oak panels! Now why you would want to cove these up is a mystery to me, they have cut into them to make a door way but we are now looking at something completely different. To be continued...... as they say.