Chapter 7: The Dolls House

Through the looking glass of the windows

I have always loved doll houses. There is something quite magical about them. When I was a child, there was one that sat in a shop window in St.Ives and I would always stop to look at it.

If you look through the windows of a doll’s house, you will find a whole world waiting for you. If you open the front of it, there is even more. As your imagination takes flight, you decide which room to enter, which world to go in; it’s all yours and you control it all.

When I was a child, my dad with my granny made us a Cindy house. I remember the moment our worlds met. I remember the thrill. Do you? I remember every nook and cranny of every room as If I were walking through my own house. 

Is that not what a house is, after all, a container of worlds? A place that lays witness to those worlds and the people who come in and out of it. 

A home that draws us in from the cold. And how cold it can feel when we are left on the outside, looking in. We need to be part of it.  We need to get inside.

If you walk past a house, are you not tempted to look through its windows just like you did a doll’s house?

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So that is where we are going to start. We are going to start with the windows of our Hall House. Let you have a peep inside. You will see the past and the present, the work that has taken place there. You will see where our imaginations have been.

If you were to look through the windows of our Hall House, you would see many rooms. To the front: ‘The Blue Room’; ‘The Dining Room’; ‘The Living Room’. If you look up: ‘The SW Room’; ‘The Princess Room’; ‘Our Bedroom’- can you see us there? Are we sleeping? 

If you walked around the back, and looked up, you would see: ‘The Bathroom’ (that was once a bedroom) If you look down, you will see ‘The Living Room’ again- Is Blue in there? Is he on the sofa where he shouldn’t be? Look up again, there is ‘My Office’- am I there? Maybe I am writing this very story? You will see ‘The Utility Room’ down below. Can you see how wonky the windows are? Next you will see the window into ‘The Toilet’. Can you see the bugs that only come alive at night? Then there is the big window into ‘The Kitchen’? Did you know that once it was a secret door? You will see ‘The Boiler Room’. Is it still full of pots of paint? 

If you were to look through the windows when the house was first built in 1475 you would not have seen ‘The SW Room’, (it may not have even had windows then) you would have not seen ‘The Princess Room’. In fact you would not have seen any rooms apart from one big room and maybe an attic for the hay and a dairy to the side. For our house is a timber frame Hall House, (try saying that out loud and see what reaction you get- “a what? Oh I thought you said…”) and it’s more than 550 years old. At the heart of the Hall is a large fireplace where once people would have congregated, most likely the whole village and their cattle.. Do you have any toy sheep?

In June 2021 we became custodians of this Hall House. Now we are just part of its long history, part of a generation of people who will come and go. Those who will live within its walls, long after us. The walls, thick with memories. From the moment we walked through its doors, we have treated it with the utmost respect. For she is worthy of that.  With our hands, our love, and sheer grit, we have restored and renovated. So please play carefully, because now she is yours.

WATCH VIDEO: The Heart of the Hall

When we first saw the house we did not notice her windows.. It was the dining room that we saw first. Maybe some vikings and a ship, but that is another story.

The windows looked okay to us, from a distance anyway. We were just happy to get her. 

Can you believe she was valued at £0, our new toy?  We had to fight to get her, to prove that she was worth more. The previous custodians had spent much more than their pocket money on her, doing the real work, laying floors and building walls. Stripping her of the 1960’s and bringing her back to timber and stone. 

If you were to draw a house, you would most likely start with a perfect square. You would add some windows, some doors and roof. All that you need to protect you from the weather outside. To protect you from the wolves who say: “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll….”

Our Hall House used to be thatched. If you look carefully you will see a place where it would have reached the chimney. The roof is now tiled. There were tiles missing, and flashing that needed replacing. But the roof is as steep as a ski slope and nearly as big as one. Not a job for us.

Our Hall House has doors and the walls are filled with cob and stone. The walls are nearly as thick as a bus, and as wide as our boat! As a friend once said,  “you could murder someone in here and no one would know”. Good to know if that moment should arise? Something to consider on our return, maybe, a rental for murders?

The windows however were NOT okay. How did we know…? Because I put my hand through one of them…

There are 21 sets of windows in this Hall House.. Did you count them? We did and we got to know them very well. With Winter looming, it is the windows that we get to work on first. We renovated every single one of them.

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“You must do your jobs before you can play”. That is what my mother taught me and that is what we did. If you want to go and play, go ahead. We have work to do.

Before too long, Sam has done all her research, watched all the YouTube videos on windows, and brought all the tools needed to repair them. This includes a melting lamp, that is supposed to melt hard putty (but ends up melting the glass) along with endless supplies of sandpaper, filler and paint. The 7 dwarfs are back, and the workshop is in full swing. 

I have never repaired windows before, and by the state of the windows the people who did them before had not either. There is putty in places there shouldn’t be, and paintwork lazily left on the glass, much of which is scratched, cracked or ends up broken.

WATCH VIDEO: Broken Windows

To start with we have to get rid of the old putty, replace broken glass and then get on with repairing what is left of the window frames.

Sam becomes a dab hand at making templates when there is a window that needs replacing, taking them down to the glass shop to get the perfect cut and then carefully tacking it in with nails. Nothing in this house is straight and that includes the windows. Every job in this house is a challenge, a process that we have to learn and adapt to as we go along.

Whilst removing the putty was hard enough, the window frames are something else altogether. We discover window frames with gashes in them like gaping wounds, holes that you could stick your fingers in and reach Narnia. There were frames that were so soft that as you dug into them, it was like discovering your favourite breakfast cereal of shredded wheat. Just as you thought you had got the last bit of rotten wood out, more would fall away. Just when we thought we had finished the windows. We would find more repairs that needed doing.

WATCH VIDEO Even more windows to repair

Wood filler becomes our friend. Like tar and feather I manage to get it everywhere. Luckily for passers by, I am not naked. It feels wrong to fill the windows with so much filler, like we are bodging the job. Our Hall House is listed and with listed buildings 70% of the windows have to be damaged before you can replace them- we were not far off. Also after receiving a quote for replacement windows for £40K just for the front windows, we decided that ‘filling’ (and where we could slicing new pieces of wood), was our only option. 

Sanding and filling is our life once again. A review of costings shows that in the months doing Misty Waters and then the windows of the Hall House, we spend £1000 on sandpaper and filler alone!

I sand the window frames that have wood left in them and sand those that don’t. There is something satisfying about sanding. As you go deeper into the grain, you discover more and more layers, just waiting to be brought to the light. Or filler that with a light sand is as smooth as a plaster cast- I don’t write my name on it but it makes its mark on me. When evening comes (and often even after that) I come inside looking like a DIY Geisha. 

WATCH VIDEO: Sanding again

The 21 windows are: repaired; replaced; sliced; filled; sanded; painted; corked and grouted. We use special paint from Sweden (always special paint) that has been recommended by a friend who works for a heritage company. First there is the undercoat, then the layers that come after that. 

It is not until writing this that I have remembered (or blocked it out) that we actually painted the 21 sets of windows twice! -And more recently some of them a third time. First painting them white, then green a few months later. When I suggested we might want to think about painting them a colour this was ignored, in the view that we just need to get them ‘done’ for the winter. When we painted the house however we decided that the frames would in fact look better in a colour! We decided on French Grey ( which is actually Green) and a theme throughout the house. My failure to get my voice heard, cost me 21 windows!

Then came the putty.

The song ‘pass the dutchie/putty on the left hand side’ comes to mind. This should be the easy bit. The fun bit. It looks like the easy bit. But It certainly is not the easy bit. One could say there is an art to puttying!

Even getting the putty onto the frame itself involves a level of skill. Knowing how much to put on in the first place then shaping it around the window. We both develop our own techniques and like children, become competitive- secretly looking over the shoulder of the other to see who has the best technique (or maybe that was just me!?). Sam has the best technique of course. She takes a large ball of butty, and then carefully spreads smaller balls, dragging them from the window to the frame with her thumb, stroke by stroke, this helps to give an even spread of putty. You can also use your fingers which is even quicker. I have since read that where there are bits of old putty and new putty you should always paint the wood first otherwise the oil from the new putty can seep into the wood causing the putty to crack.

Then there is the art of spreading the putty in order to seal your window.

 TIP 1 : Use the correct tool- A putty knife. They are worth every penny. 

I watch Sam as she uses the tool to carefully spread the putty, making it as smooth and level as possible… Remember there is nothing straight about our house or windows. This makes it even more challenging, especially when on some of the windows there is no actual frame to attach to, just filler!

TIP 2: Listen to Sam

“The trick is, once you have done it, leave it…don’t keep going over it, however tempted you are coz you’ll end up messing it up” 

TIP 3: Don’t listen to the voice in your head that says, “oh I’ll just smooth that little bit”… 

I dutifully spread my balls of putty. I am also hanging upside down out the window as I do it (trying to ignore the song that is playing on the radio with the words “it’s a long way down from the top to the bottom”) I take hold of my special angled putty tool and start to spread out the putty. This is fun. I hear Sam’s words in my head.. “The trick is once you have done it, leave it”. But there is just one little bit that needs smoothing out. I ignore TIP 3.  I take my tool and go over it again. Sam’s words repeat in my head, they have now turned into my mum’s voice, but I can’t help it. Just let me do that one little bit? And with that I have messed up the whole smooth line that I created a moment ago. It takes many windows to learn my lesson. It also takes many windows until I learn TIP 4: (Window 19 to be precise)

TIP 4: You can apply water to the putty to smooth it instead of the tool.

WATCH VIDEO: Some windows done but many still do to

By the end of November. We have made it around the house with only 4 windows to go. I fall asleep to images of putty, filler and window ledges- such is the level of my exotic thoughts. Keen to get the windows sealed before winter we have stopped working on the insides of the windows, (some of which are equally as bad as the outside), and are now focusing on the outside only.

I carry on, right into winter and often working into the night.  Such is my grit.. Sam is predominantly on other jobs now and just helps when I need her.

I fill, sand, paint, putty  and paint again… until the very last window.

Extract from my Diary

It is getting dark. I’m determined to get the window painted with an undercoat so Sam can get the glass in and I can putty them tomorrow. If we don’t get it done today, then it puts us back a whole day. We need to keep to the schedule. For some reason my filler has not set. I clearly forgot to put the hardener in, but have no recollection of this. Since discovering the impact of this on the boat I have been more vigilant. (Or at least thought I was). So I am pissed off when I think I am ready to sand, only to find my sander is met with a soggy mess. The soggy mess that has to then be removed and filler reapplied. I am not happy. The sun has gone down and the temperature is starting to drop. I have to get this done.

In my last house, I spent 6 months getting it ready for sale.  I spent hours and hours working on it from top to bottom, from one end of the garden to the other. The neighbours would come and check on me suggesting that perhaps I might want a break. I am like a wound up toy that keeps on going until it can’t go any further. Then I will go some more. Or an old Walkman that has run out of batteries. I will keep on playing even in slow mode, ignoring the signs, until I am made to stop and the Walkman dies altogether.

One night on the scaffolding ‘seeing to the windows’, Sam tries to get me to stop. “It is getting dark”, Sam says, from the other side of the window. I know I say.. “I’ve just got to finish this bit then I’ll be in”. . I don’t tell her that it is also starting to rain.  

I am determined to get the job done. Cars drive past.  In my head, everyone is looking up at me on the top of scaffolding and laughing. 

“What the hell is that woman doing?” “I think she is painting?” “Does she not know it is November?” “ Has she not noticed that it is dark outside?” 

Neighbours are looking out from their curtains.. “look Harold she is still there?”  “Do you think we should go and check on her… Check she hasn’t frozen to death?”

I am ‘The Snowman’. Every time people look out their windows I am there. I am flying high. I have a mission to complete, or I am just there. Until I am not there. Until I am just a melted pile of snow, with only a scarf left on the ground that’s twisted and limp. -The last trace.  Along with the 21 windows and a sign that says “She did her jobs, now she has gone to play”

WATCH VIDEO (1): Number 19 

WATCH VIDEO (2): Number 19

It took nearly a year to make our way round all the windows. By Christmas we have repaired the ones that need it the most. Making sure that the house is dry for the winter. 

WATCH VIDEO: The Last Window! or so we thought!

Sadly, on some of the windows at the front of the house, the grout on the window sill cracked -Maybe because it was too cold when it was laid, meaning water started to seep into the wood again. We also discovered that we had carpenter ants which burrowed into another 2 windows making holes in the frames. So 2 years later they had to be filled and painted once again.

There is a cyclical nature to jobs.. it seems jobs are never ‘done.’

Next time you look through a window. Before you start to play and imagine and wonder. Take a moment to think about the house itself, with its roof, its doors and it’s windows and the people who made them, giving you the eyes to see the magic inside.