By August 10th, we were back up in Manchester again and work on the house continued. Although most of the major work was done, there were still plenty of smaller jobs to do. All sorts of little jobs had to be attended to - repairs to wardrobe hinges, for instance, repairs to shelves, replacement of lampshades and so on. Most of the bedrooms were painted, and ceilings were repaired and painted too.
Most of what I did related to cleaning, of which there was plenty. All the repair work and sanding produced an awful lot of dust, and I seemed to be constantly dusting and vacuuming. I would clean a room really thoroughly and close the door, thinking 'That's finished', only to find that 10 minutes later, some man opened had the door again and gone in to sand something or even, in one case, trim a quarter of an inch off the bottom of the door, and everything would be covered in a thick layer of dust again and cleaning wasn't finished at all.
There didn't seem to be a mop in the house, so I went to the local pound shop to see what I could buy. I wanted a sponge mop - I don't really like those string mops - but the shop only had one sponge mop. It was called a Supernatural mop! I bought it immediately, hoping for ghostly cleaning help, though unfortunately, this did not materialise. However, even without any extra help, I managed to clean the kitchen floor - many times, in fact, as dirt was trampled all around the house.
This is the kitchen, finally ready at last. We had to stay an extra day to get a new oven fitted, and then a second extra day when we realised that the oven door hinges had to be adjusted so the oven door didn't catch on the drawer next to it.
The living room looked really nice, with a new wooden floor to replace the carpet that the students had burned a hole in with the iron.
The new black coffee table is a flat-pack one I built while other people were painting and sanding things. I also cleaned the black leather sofas five or six times with special leather cleaner which also treats the leather, so the two sofas now look very nice. Now we just need to be able to find some tenants who will take good care of it all.
All this work took 2 weeks, so we were not finally able to set off for home until August 22nd. I had been looking forward to going home again for some time, particularly since the weather at home in Surrey was warm, while Manchester was much colder and very rainy. At home, the hydrangeas were in beautiful bloom all up the lane.
Since I posted a photo of the hydrangeas in the lane last year, this is a slightly different one - it's just at the approach to our gate.
One of the best things about being home was breakfast on the terrace again.
Friday, our first full day home, was a beautiful sunny day, and we took full advantage of it, with breakfast, lunch and a pre-dinner drink on the terrace - it's just as well to do it while you can, Saturday was a day of torrential rain, though Sunday was a good deal better.
We spotted this windmill not far from home, at a small village called Outwood, while we were driving about through some back roads to avoid a traffic jam on the A25.
It seems to be in private ownership and isn't in a very good state of repair. But it doesn't look as if it would take too much work to turn it back into a working mill again.
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