The RUC is up!

I was out at the farm yesterday when the house movers lifted the RUC to its final height. It doesn’t look that high in the picture until you notice the two people standing under it.

I’ve been working on sanding and varnishing the doors for the past few weeks. I’ve nearly finished three single doors and have only got nine sets to go. Oh joy! I don’t even want to do the math.

If you look on the veranda you’ll see the French doors I’m dealing with (above and on either side of the ‘oversize’ truck). There are five sets of them that lead from the main house onto the veranda.

The door that has taken most of my time is the front door. It’s all oak and had over six layers of paint on it (it’s not in the picture but will be soon).

I’ve been given eight sets of French doors that are very old but in excellent condition. I’ll be using those for the spare room and my bedroom and was going to just sand and repaint them – BUT – when I began to scrape the paint off I realised they are all very old red cedar. I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with red cedar, but I’m smelling pretty sweet these days and people keep asking me what perfume I’m wearing. Once I’m finished one I’ll put up a ‘before’ and ‘after’ shot.

Before I went to the RUC on Monday morning I was reading some blogs and kept seeing something flutter out of the corner of my eye. After a while I got up to take a better look and saw this fantastic creature drinking the nectar of the flowers in the garden. I got a picture and Googled it. It’s called a Cairns Birdwing Butterfly. And it really is the size of a bird!