Christmas Eve afternoon and all was still

Dave stripped one of the external walls today. A few days ago he took up the lino to reveal some nice floorboards underneath, but had the annoying job of having to take out a thousand rusty staples holding the lino on. We think the room is a lot colder with no gib on the inside, which should hopefully make insulation the walls very effective.

Leadlight No. 1

For the past 6 months or so I've had a new hobby: leadlighting.

Our house has a door with five windows around it (there must be a name for this kind of door but I don't know what it is and nor does mr google).

As you can see some idiot has painted the top window mud brown. (what is it with painting things brown in this house?!) And the two panels either side are not glass but chipboard (with holes in).

So I enrolled in a leadlighting course with an idea that I would replace the mud brown window with a leadlight. I hadn't got much further than that idea when I showed up and the first class was very stressful as I had to design my leadlight and didn't really like any of the designs I'd found.

Because of the diamonds in our existing hall leadlight (the one stained with nicotine) - see...

http://joandsteverenovate.blogspot.com/2010/06/few-cosmetic-improvements.html

I decided I'd go with diamonds as the main theme. Anyway, after my second week on the course I'd already decided one window wouldn't be enough and that I would in fact replace all five windows. You may recall my vision:

The leadlight teacher tells me it'll take me 2 years to do it all. I told him I was going to do it by Xmas 2011 (18 months).

Leadlighting is not difficult, but it is fiddly, with many different stages, which are, in summary

• Design (probably the most difficult) as so much potential to get it wrong early on and later have to fix it
• glass cutting (quite easy, but if you get it wrong you have to grind down to the right shape which can take ages)
• Leading (the lead is U-shaped and the glass fits into it, if that makes sense) - a bit fiddly as you have to cut the lead to exactly the right length
• Soldering the lead points together
• Cementing (very messy)
• Blackening (a purely cosmetic procedure)

So for my window, which is about 85cm *38cm, it has taken me two 8 week courses (and that includes some working at home). And here's the end result...

I'm still busy designing the other four panels but I'm thinking I'll do the two small windows at the top next (because I will get more skilled and it's best to leave the most visible sections to the end). I will get them all fitted together, aiming for December 2011.