Aluminium Delivery

We were up early this morning as Costas was coming with our new aluminium doors and panel.  It is quite sad when you get excited about this sort of thing but we will be clad to put a tick in the box for two out of three projects we have been working on.

The panel is under the windows by the kitchen in the conservatory.  The original panel was not insulated and I have found that, under certain weather conditions, the condensation settles here and is awful.  Not just running wet but forming mould particularly if the heavy curtains were pulled across.  

The plan was to have a new panel, fully insulated and the existing panels would be removed and used to build the doors for my potting bench.  The new panel is in one complete piece so no grooves for collecting dust or mould unlike what was there which had been a series of panels one on top of the other.  Nice clean lines and the big catflap that had been fitted into the kitchen door has been moved and is now the flap to the outside world.

Here is my potting bench awaiting its doors.  John has made racking to hold our recycling boxes and the waste bin so they will be neatly hidden away.  The doors will be made from the panelling from the conservatory and then John will stone clad the sides and we will get a nice piece of marble to match the window sills to put on top.

Here is the same area with the doors fitted and it looks so lovely and neat and tidy.  John is now itching to get the sides and top finished so that can then be ticked off of his 'To-Do' list - what a difference from the old anniversary bench which was great and served a purpose but was only ever intended to be temporary.

Here is the woodstore before the new doors have been fitted.  John has made sure he has a good stock ready for the winter.  I was given the job of cutting back the plant which grows up the side so that Costas had a clear run at the job.

And here is the same place with the new sliding doors in place.  Again, clean, neat and tidy and really finishes off that space.  

Costas said he would arrive at 9.00am and he was true to his word arriving dead on time with his son and they worked really hard - building the doors to the potting bench in situ.  We are going to ask him to give us a price for the permanent fly screen at Mum's - it will be easy enough to get him there as he lives in Lemba (the next village!!).

We designated this evening as Date Night and once we had tidied up after Costas I set about cooking.  We had some bloody marvelous fillet steaks from Paps which were absolutely first class and I made a sauce, a simple salad and some wedges and we had them with a bottle of special Vasilikon White Wine which had been a gift from Yiannis at the Winery.  The whole meal was simply delicious - the steaks were cooked to perfection and melt i the mouth.

 It was a beautiful evening with an exceptional sunset.  In the middle of this picture in the bottom you can see an angular construction - this is the new bedroom that Persephone is having built on top of her kitchen.  For most of the day her builders have been here starting the construction.  We are fascinated and can't wait to see the finished result.  They appeared with a cube of metal this morning and craned it into position.

I had picked up some cherries in Paps for us to have for our dessert and we decided to move out onto the daybed to eat them in the cool of the evening.  We had planned to eat them and then go watch some TV but it was such a beautiful evening we didn't get any further.

We are loving the daybed area now because it feels secure and robust and it is super cosy with the lights we have - I have ordered a couple more although god knows when they will arrive.

We had a lovely message conversation with Wendy - it would be lovely to think we might see her and Bill this year but somehow I doubt it which is a shame.  As I said we spent the remainder of the evening outside and it was lovely.  As we keep saying to people Lockdown has made us fall in love with our home and garden all over again!