It's a heatwave

Summer has arrived at last, we hope. This last week has seen temperatures of 30C for three consecutive days here in our borderland corner of the Netherlands, and before that it was rising for a few days. I don't know why it is but this always happens when Koos goes away. He's been wanting  to take a photo trip for some time, so when he suggested a foray into France last weekend, I encouraged him to go because there were some jobs I wanted to do at the Crumbly Cottage that would be much easier if I were alone. One of these was to re-paint and put new carpet treads on the stairs; the other was to renovate the kitchen floor.

So on Wednesday morning, off Koos went to Maubeuge with gentle promptings from me to take all necessary precautions against the heat. Once he'd disappeared around the bend, I set to work. I'd already prepped the stairs and removed the old, worn carpet. The handrails were also done, so now I just needed to paint the steps and replace the carpeting. The bigger job was scrubbing, scraping and sanding the kitchen floor's old pine planks. It's just as well it was too hot to work outside on Vereeniging, but I have to admit the heat nearly floored me (sorry) inside the cottage as well. I did it, though, and in between, Zoe and I had some lovely early morning walks. Here she is up close and in context (for Rebecca, of course).

And don't you love these gorgeous wildflowers the farmer has planted in a strip along the side of his field. This is a relatively new practice to help encourage nature's pollinators. Isn't it lovely?

Anyway, here are the stairs 'finished and klaar' (ready) as we used to say in South Africa. I am really pleased to have done this at last. I still have to do the uprights, but those I can paint one step at a time..

And this was the kitchen floor after scrubbing and sanding. Phew! I wasn't sure I'd ever get it looking good or the colour even, but I used some teak-coloured stain to cover the really worn areas and then applied a finishing lacquer specially made for wooden floors. It's water-based, so it dried very quickly in the heat but will need treating gently for a week until it's hardened fully. I'm quite pleased with the finished result... for now, anyway!

Before

After

That's another two projects ticked off the list, then. There are still several more to be done, so watch this space in the months to come. As you can see life's never dull in this part of our world; there's always something that needs doing in an old crumbly cottage. For now, have a great week ahead, allemaal, and I'll look forward to catching up with you all. Here are a couple more photos from our lovely home.