Another visit to Gannets, July 2016

Judith and I have just returned from another great stay in Gannets and wanted to share a few things with you.

When we arrived we were amazed at the amount that things have grown! I think it's been quite wet in East Anglia this Summer and that has clearly had an effect on the apple trees, the rosemary, and the plants in the front garden. I trimmed the rosemary and Judith made the front garden nice again, but we won't tackle the trees until Autumn. Hopefully there will be lots of apples for our guests to enjoy later in the year! Judith also replanted the circular tub outside the back door and I think that's looking fantastic with red and white flowers.

We have seen in the visitors' book that the builders opposite have been noisy on occasion. We're sorry about this, but we weren't told at the time or we could have done something about it. The last time we were in Gannets, and during our stay last week, they were remarkably quiet! And they were meant to have finished work in May too. But if you're bothered by noise and you don't want to approach them yourself then give us a call and we'll get in touch with them.

You may have noticed that the house adjoining ours is the subject of a planning application. The lovely old chap who used to live there moved into a nursing home and sold the house to a developer. The developer wishes to knock it down! As you can imagine, nobody in the village wants this and there were dozens of protests submitted for the last application. A new application has just been raised so we're hoping the same will happen, but we'll just have to see.

I was able to improve the situation with the back door last week. I raised its hinges in the frame to stop the door catching on the cill and it not locking easily. The door itself is dropping a little over time, and eventually we'll have to replace it, but for now it's fine again. I certainly wouldn't want a door with less glass in it when the view through it is so beautiful!

I also put some new sealing strip on the shower screen and added some mastic around the hinge to try to stop leaks during showering. I'm not sure it's worked completely but I hope it's better.

Judith arranged to have a new towel rail fitted in the bathroom and a new radiator installed next to the dining table. We think both are improvements and hope you agree :).

And finally, we have a new Satellite dish and receiver. The controls for the receiver are slightly different but it has a good quality picture so I hope it's not a problem. Obviously we've updated the instructions.

That's all for now. As always, any comments, criticisms and suggestions are welcome so please get in touch :).

Latest updates at Gannets

Over the last few month we’ve visited Gannets on several occasions to perform maintenance and make improvements. If you’ve been before you may notice them!

Judith has been busy levelling and grassing some of the area at the bottom of the garden. When we bought Gannets the bottom half of the garden was a vegetable patch, and we kept it like that for several years. Unfortunately as time has passed we’ve found that we’ve not had the time to cultivate it in the way we were initially. We’ve just not been there often enough! And although originally it was nice to have vegetables there and available for our guests to pick and eat, in reality it didn’t happen as often as we’d thought it would. Therefore, we’re in the process of grassing half of that area. Judith has already grassed a part of it and a couple of weeks ago we levelled the next part of the area. Hopefully during the year we’ll get all that side grassed. At present we plan to keep the lefthand side of the patch available for growing things, but we’ll see how it goes.

One of the interesting challenges of a 70s house is the plumbing! All pipes inside the house are buried in the concrete floor, so we have to hope that they will continue to function for as long as we need them J. But the gutters outside drain into soakaways several feet underground, and these are pretty inaccessible too. The problem with them is that over time the porous pipes degrade and plant roots get in. Eventually the water coming down the gutter downspouts will not drain away. Although the downspouts at the front of the house still work acceptably well, we found that the one at the rear of the house wasn’t draining at all. In heavy rain the water would back up and overflow the gutter. I’ve therefore rerouted the downspout into the main drain. So you will now see that the pipe has a kink in it to reach to the drain, and I’ve also plumbed the waste from the utility room into it too. This should resolve the problem at the back. We’ll see how the other downspouts fare over time.

You may notice that we’ve also done some painting, given the carpets a deep clean, and steam-cleaned the laminate floor. We think everything looks a lot brighter as a result! And we’ve bought a new tumble drier to replace the old one that broke. Don’t forget there’s a spare fridge in the garage if the main fridge ever breaks down.

Finally, you will hopefully notice the new tiling in the bathroom. When we refurbished the house we originally expected that the oil-fired boiler would soon need replacing. When that happened, we would put a new boiler in the garage (the pipes were positioned so that would be easy), use the freed-up space in the utility room for storage and therefore empty the cupboard that faces the kitchen. The idea then was that this would become a shower cubicle in the bathroom. However, the boiler refuses to die – we had it serviced last month and it’s doing fine! – and so we needed to put a proper shower over the bath. To allow this, I removed the wood panelling around the bath and tiled the walls. This left the remaining panelling along the bathside and below the mirror looking a little out of place, and it was also starting to rot in the corner as a result of the occasional leakage of water around the shower screen. I’ve therefore removed all the wood and tiled everything. This will remove the issue of rotting wood, and we think it looks better too! Hopefully you will agree, or at least understand why we felt it necessary.

A question to our 2016 guests: is there anything else you think we need to do? What needs to be improved to make Gannets even more welcoming, peaceful and enjoyable for a great holiday? Do we need a larger TV? A new sofa? A new bed? Improved lighting? Whatever you think, please make your suggestions as comments below, email us or leave comments in the visitors’ book. We’ll listen seriously to whatever you say because we want all our guests to have a great time at Gannets.

It just remains for me to say “happy holiday!” to all our 2016 guests, new ones and returning ones. When we arrive at Gannets, we breathe a collective sigh of relief and relax. We’re delighted you’ve chosen to stay at Gannets and hope that you relax and enjoy being there just as much as we do!