Maybe this would have been easier?

Further to the earlier post about how we've been sorting out this new to us house down here. It's always after you've started (or got nearly to the end) of a project that you realise that there might have been an easier way to do this. Instead of our repairing the extant stone and brick buildings, we might have done better by simply demolishing and building anew.

For example, the use of steel buildings makes things a great deal faster...and thus, dependent upon labour costs, a great deal cheaper as well. There are also a number of useful ways that you can make them green buildings. Glass in the ceilings, greater insulation: and of course the building itself is recyclable at the end of its life.

Not to mention that prefabricated buildings are, because they're made in a factory, not onsite, likely to be a great deal better built than what you get when employing the local likely lads.

Hey, maybe instead of converting one of the outbuildings into an office I should simply have got myself one of these mini-storage prefab buildings and put a desk and a heater in it?

As I say, you always find these things out later, don't you? Ah well, perhaps for the next project.

Lighting the house

As regular readers will know we're in the process of sorting out this new to us house down here and we've now got another part of the place near finished. One of the outbuildings, the old washroom, has now been converted into my office. Yes, finally, I will be able to write from a heated room! Rather than what I have been doing for the past year and more, scribbling away in two jerseys and a jacket in winter!

Of course, with another part finished comes the thought of what do we do about lamps?

Of course, the basic set up of the room includes lamps and lampshades in the ceiling, but for an office, something that's going to be used 8 hours a day (for I do indeed work from home) that's not really enough is it?

So I'm roaming around the Farrey's site (very good indeed actually, click through any link to see it) trying to work out what it is that I should supplement them with. Table or desk lamps? Floor?

I have to admit that I've a soft spot for torchieres....maybe that's the solution.

Anyone got any bright ideas (sorry, couldn't resist the pun)?