Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024

I cannot believe that on Sunday it was time to bring down the Christmas tree from the attic yet again. This photo looks almost identical to last year’s, but there is a big difference — the new windows behind it. Last year (and presumably every year from the time the house was built), whenever the nighttime temperature fell below 6 degrees, by morning water would be pouring down the glass in rivulets from top to bottom and creating pools on the windowsill. It was a major job to get the breakfast room looking reasonably inviting for the occasional guests who come at this time of year, and reaching behind the tree to mop up or use the window vacuum cleaner was not possible. Trying to keep the windows dry was soul-destroying because no sooner had the last window been mopped up than the first one was already building up a layer of condensation. This would continue until midday and sometimes all day if the humidity levels were high. With these new windows, the condensation problem is all but eliminated as long as the indoor temperature is not allowed to fall too low. As we approach the darkest weeks of the year, it is important to make this isolated rural house feel cosy.

Friday, October 18th, 2024

The fig tree has had its hair cut while it still has its leaves on to make it easier to shape and style. If it were not pruned back vigorously every year, with light trims in between, it would soon overwhelm the turning circle to the extent that vehicles would no longer be able to drive around it. Before they drop off, the leaves take on a luminous lemon yellow hue, casting a golden glow into the breakfast room.  We will enjoy the tree’s autumn colours for a short while only, as the leaves are easily dislodged. Fortunately the garden is very sheltered from winds at ground level, being enclosed on all sides by a thick ring of trees that keep getting taller as the years go by.

Saturday, September 28th, 2024

I am not sure that I ever posted a picture of the rebuilt Annexe in its finished, white-coated state.

This second photo shows how the removal of the Thuja Pliccata tree (see previous post) has allowed the rear of the Annexe to benefit from a lot more afternoon and evening sun.

For the sake of comparison, here is the front of the Annexe as it was in 2023, before the rebuild. The footprint is exactly the same, and all the brick walls up to the ground floor ceilings were retained. Only the middle portion of the building was extended upwards. A very detailed account of the reconstruction has been given here.

Tuesday, September 24th, 2024

Just outside the house on the west side was a huge Thuja Pliccata tree. It was already there, in the form of an overgrown hedge, in 1960 when my family came to live here, thirty years after it was planted. But the Thuja eventually grew taller than the house and its enormous trunks and roots threatened to break the sewage and waste water pipework that run underneath it. It was a crazy idea to plant such a species right on top of the house’s main drainage system in the first place, but I don’t expect the residents in the 1930s ever imagined that their small hedge would still be alive almost a hundred years later.

The vast tree was taken down in sections earlier this summer and today we hired a stump grinder to flatten some of its stumps, along with many other stumps that are dotted around the grounds. The larger Thuja stumps will have to stay to let nature deal with them.

Friday, August 9th, 2024

I don’t go away very often, but when I do I always keep an eye out for anything that I might usefully implement here at Bressenden. While staying at a Premier Inn recently, I looked around my room for instructions to access the WiFi, or a code or password. I had not stayed in a hotel since the days when a hotel receptionist would hand you a piece of paper with log-in credentials scribbled on. The guest information leaflet told me to scan a square-shaped box that was filled with tiny black and white squares. I’ve never had to use one of these QR codes before, though they came into their own during the Covid pandemic. QR stands for Quick Response. Most adults now apparently own a smartphone or tablet with integrated camera and built-in software that is able to recognise and use QR codes.

I had no idea what I was supposed to do, or even whether I needed a special app. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. So I got the camera up on my phone and pointed it at the patterned box. A message came up inviting me to join the WiFi network, and that was it. How simple and convenient! It was so quick and easy, compared with fiddling about in my phone’s settings, choosing the correct network and inputting a password, that I decided to look into the possibility of having a similar system for use by Bressenden’s guests.

Back home, I set about finding out how to create a QR code. It was surprisingly straightforward and, best of all, it was free. I have now put QR codes in all the rooms — not just for accessing WiFi, but for phoning me or sending a message. This is easier than having to key in a phone number plus, for overseas guests, a country code.

Thursday, July 25th, 2024

Summer has been disappointingly cold and grey, with just a few warm and sunny days. There have been no hosepipe bans so far and the lawns and fields remain green. When the tiger and Nile lilies in the garden bloom, it is a sign that autumn will soon be upon us. Let us hope for an Indian summer.

Saturday, July 6th, 2024

The new windows are all in, the scaffolding has been removed and everything is mostly back to normal. The guest rooms and breakfast room are fit to use once again. The only major piece of work outstanding concerns the stairwell and its flat roof above it. The former’s outside wall is saturated and will have to be replastered and painted. The roof needs to be recovered with fibreglass to replace the leaking, cracked felt that is beyond repair.

All of Bressenden’s windows have now been replaced save for those in the “new” kitchen, whose 1980s double-glazed windows still have life in them. I cannot overstate what a difference the new windows, both the wooden ones in the East Wing and the metal ones everywhere else, in the house have made. Mettherm’s aluminium replacements for the Crittall windows are airtight, well fitting, double-glazed, multipart locking, rustproof, maintenance-free replicas of cold, leaking, warped, wet (in winter), mould-prone, rusting, single-glazed eye-sores that were impossible to maintain and for which nothing could be done to improve their aesthetic appeal because paint never adhered for more than a few months before flaking off, and the frames kept collecting pools of condensation which encouraged the growth of black mould. Keeping around 100 windows and a few doors looking fresh was no joke. The most depressing thing when running a B&B in winter was the morning routine of vacuuming the breakfast windows which were dripping wet whenever the outside temperature went below 6 degrees. By the time you’d wiped off the last window you had to start all over again because the first window would have already misted up. With these new windows, shown in the photo above, I will be spared this work when winter arrives.

Taking a bathroom window as an example, what looked like this —

now looks like this —

Tuesday, June 25th, 2024

The window replacement programme is nearing its final stage. There are just a few left to replace out of the 75. They look wonderfully authentic and far exceed my expectations. The two styles, Georgian panes on the south side and leaded panes to the north, replicate the original versions almost exactly, with a few adjustments made to tidy up the original mix of styles on the north facade and to reduce the number of opening windows and unneeded top vents, especially downstairs. All the windows on the north side are now leaded. The photo shows the two styles.

The last few windows are going in today and tomorrow after a busy day yesterday, with six men on site dealing with windows, two scaffolders moving bits of scaffolding around, and two ladies plastering and filling indoors. I also had guests due to arrive in the (unaffected) East Wing!

I am delighted with my new Arts & Crafts windows and cannot praise the Mettherm Windows team highly enough.

Wednesday, June 12th, 2024

New window

Yesterday the first new window was fitted. This is the first of 74 windows and one door which will installed over the coming fortnight. The original windows are draughty single-glazed Crittall steel windows, warped and rusted with old age. They produce buckets of condensation in winter and encourage the growth of mould. They are a nightmare to maintain because modern lead-free paint simply does not adhere to them. Some are more than one hundred years old as they were sourced from reclamation yards when the upper floor of the house was rebuilt in 1942 following a devastating fire caused by a lightning strike. Crittall still makes steel windows, but they cost a fortune, and the properties of steel are such that rust will always be a risk. Aluminium windows are rust-proof, almost maintenance-free, more affordable and have a better thermal rating than modern steel windows. They only became an option relatively recently when the “thermal break” technology was perfected. Their slim profile matches that of the steel originals. It wouldn’t be possible to replicate the character of these windows with plastic or wooden versions, since they require much thicker frames, thus limiting the size of glazed area. In a house surrounded on all sides by mature and very tall trees, we need all the light we can get.

Here’s a comparison of new and old. The new one is on the left and the old is on the right. A pretty good match, I’d say!

Wednesday, May 15th, 2024

Mid-week, mid-May and mid-rhododendron season. This view from the breakfast room on 2nd May has become more spectacular every day since. This year’s display of rhododendrons and azaleas has more than made up for last year’s rather poor show, with big splashes of colour exploding like fireworks in slow motion all over the garden. Here is a small selection of photos from the past fortnight.