Lilac and stairs

 In the attempt to make the garden better, we have covered a flowerbed towards our southern neighbours with some plastic and started to plant new things (maybe I will share how it looks another day). Anyway, I was checking how it was coming around, in an evening walk in the garden, while picking one apple or two, and I saw that one of our lilacs is not in great shape. 

The lilac with a glimps of the flowerbed

Detail of the leaves

After an inspection, it turns out that it is affected by armillaria, some sort of spore that has basically killed the plant.

At the same time, and after non few discussions around paint and where to paint, we are maybe hopefully finalizing the stairs to the basement.

This was after a first hand of paint, if I understood right, it doesn't look like painted at all to me. But I will take pictures when there is some relevant different. I believe it will take 2-3 hands of paint.

It will be nice to see this finished. Then, of course, I wish that the banister would be still shining green and not covered in a dark patina and that the leaves would not keep falling...

Kitchen stairs

 After the beauty of five years, we hav finally replaced the old broken stairs (see first blog post,  second blog post and third blog post), which of course - as most of things in this house - needs to be specially ordered, specially made, special everything. Not only, our speed in making things happen has become galactically slow and, this operation did require some intervention from our carpenter, John, who interceeded for us with some concrete casting company, that otherwise would ignore us. 

The stairs towards the basement

Close up pic

We took also the occasion to refresh the stairs that lead to the basement, as humidity have eaten them up plenty.

The basement stairs

The first step has been to remove the banister, which was not the smoothest of the operations. I had in mind that all the leaves would fall down just by looking at it - since that is what usually happens when any kids pass by.

The banister was placed on the side of the house, hoping no kid would play football against it.

The old stairs needed then to be destroyed. New steps and platform needed then to be put in place, which required a small tractor to be in our garden - the usual big truck would never manage to pass through our gates, of course.

The old stairs

The new steps and.. a dog.

The concrete casting firm came with a dog. Our cat, Romeo, didn't appreciate the company, and neither did I (seems that asking if it is ok to do one thing or another in other people houses can be optional). The dog spent 20 minutes barking and trying to pull as hard as he could to attack Romeo, who was not very comfortable. I was trying to work and the dog pitch noise was not music in my ears. 

The stairs are being destroyed

The happy owner of the dog

Tearing this down must have not been that hard...

Preparations for reparation of the basement stairs

Close up on the basement stairs

After some even better dialogue with the concrete casting firm, about how to park the tractor on a flower bed (just fixed up by our gardener) and a rhododendrum cut in half, the new stairs have been put in place and the banister has come back as well.

Final touch on the stairs

Details of reparation

The basement stairs look so much better

Proud John, finally can get rid of this problem

Maintenance

 There is always lots to do in our house that it is general maintenance. Let's not talk of the cleaning, painting, whatever we would have to do to keep things in order, considering that everything always break.

Anyway, we need also to do some preventive cleaning/maintenance, that should be done at least seasonally.

A typical "autumn" activity should be to clean the gutters. This because when all the trees lose the leaves, we need to secure that the water flows properly through the pipes, considering that there should be rain/snow during the winter season.

Now, the thing is that autumn means often also storms, dark, cold, so doing this job after the trees have lost the leaves is completely uninviting. Hence, we often end up doing it in spring/summer time.

Professional cleaning (Mattias)

Our house is also incredibly practical when all of this needs to be done. So, as the gutters are about 6 mothers high from the ground, it is just a pleasure to climb of the ladder and hang there with a water hose and a brush and hope for the best...