Balintore Castle Restoration Project

As you can imagine, works at the castle do not come cheap, so when you manage to furnish the castle with bargain purchases the joy is all the sweeter.

I am installing a couple of chandeliers in the newly restored drawing room.

We have been working most recently on the Drawing Room on the south elevation of the castle, and have now finished plastering and painting the room.

fourth-level ferry remote Restoring Balintore Castle has given me an unprecedented understanding into the meaning of the word "remote".

Books about the restoration of Balintore Castle are now available on Amazon - hurrah!

An update on the multi-lingual versions of the Balintore Castle Restoration blog...

I have recently been approached by a couple of undergraduate students, called Lorenzo and Dylan, from the University of Toulon.

In my previous blog entry, there were some photos of a cast iron address stamp for Balintore Castle sent to me by the purchaser of this historic item.

I received an email out of the blue a couple of weeks ago.

In June of last year, I published two blog entries Botanical Notes 1 and Botanical Notes 3.

In the last few months, I have been telling myself to get out the car whenever a scene that makes an impression through the car windscreen, might register as a photograph.

David Renwick Grant (5th May 1941 - 5th June 2022) Foreword When my neighbour David Grant died in 2022, I made a pact with myself that I would write a remembrance.

At 4:26 AM this morning, I was awoken from an ultra-deep sleep by a violent and heavy pomelling on the base of my neck.

Amidst the slings and arrows of the current battlefield that is Balintore Castle (await future blog entries), there are still small day-to-day restoration wins that lift the heart A couple of original drawing room doors were re-hung in their original posi…

Many thanks to everyone who responded to a previous blog entry, offering food and shopping services while I was snowed in at the castle.

Osbert Lancaster, the illustrious and witty commentator on the history of British interior décor, has much to say on the Early Victorian period, including: The mantelpiece is transformed into a parade ground for the perpetual marshalling of rows of Bristol

olive pâté and heat-liquified olive oil One of the disadvantages of being snowed in at the castle, as at present, is being unable to shop for food.

I got back to Balintore Castle from Orkney on Tuesday of this week.

As the Isles of Orkney are surrounded by the North Sea, their climate is much moderated by large bodies of water.

The "family update" Chistmas letter is, according to reknown and soi-disant etiquette expert William Hanson, not read and by inference, not to be sent.

Gavin has done an amazing job tiling a mini kitchen in a servants' room in the basement of the castle.

Is hard to believe that this classy item of furniture below is a composite of a £10 bookcase (top-half) from Curr and Dewer auction rooms in Dundee and a converted pulpit (bottom-half) from Lochee Parish Church in Dundee.

While Angus Council has banned banquets of any form at Balintore Castle, one must I feel, be ready for the call when neither budgetary contraints nor bureacracy inhibit lavish largesse at scale.

As my eyes run over the interiors of the newly restored rooms in the basement of the castle, I am most discomforted by the lack of coving.

Well Gregor sanded the slab of reclaimed wood that I bought recently at Steptoe's Yard in Montrose.

Having friends banned from visiting me at the castle, has made me realise that I need to take little trips into the world for mental health.

I have been sourcing tiles for the large female servants' sitting room in the basement of the castle.