Cool Room Project - A-Team to the Rescue!

Last summer we found the house downstairs pleasantly cool most of the time, and on the hottest of days the little room sandwiched between the two storerooms maintained a pleasant and pretty much constant temperature of around 22 degrees so it was there that we ended up eating most of our meals. It seemed logical that this room should be sorted out to become a functional dining room or additional sleeping space when needed so that has been one of our priorities lately. The room had originally been used as a kitchen and there were tiles on some parts of the walls and a large ceramic sink that needed to be taken out. I started doing some of the easier bits but taking out the sink by myself seemed pretty daunting. Also, on closer inspection of the floor it was discovered that lurking under the carpeting was an almost totally rotten wooden floor that would definitely need replacing and that kind of job is completely out of my realm of experience. Dithering around for a few days and wondering just what to do next, our good friends Lisa and Ewan came up with a plan: like my own personal guardian angels they organized their very own A-team! First of all Ewan came over and took out the sink, took a professional look at the floor and made up a list of materials needed to tackle the job. On Lisa's next trip to Popovo she brought over all the materials: wooden batons, flooring panels, sand, undercoat, nails... And then just to pull the whole thing off they arranged for Chris (their volunteer), their friend Molly and her mum Liz to come over and do a full day's work. In addition Kathy let us have our volunteer Ben back for the day. What a team! To say that it gave the project a push is an understatement. It was really fun and although the job is still not finished it is definitely at a stage where I can carry on single-handed. Since the guys were busy tackling the flooring the gals got up on the roof of what is to be our summer kitchen. This small outbuilding has suffered some serious rain damage and needs to be pretty much dismantled and rebuilt.... another project which I shall write about in my next post.