There's a JCB in the sitting room...

A footnote at the beginning: Still no broadband due to a BT cockup but we've got ourselves organised and are now sitting in a festive and cosy bar in Tintern drinking Prosecco. The password is, and this is GENIUS, tinternet. We'll be coming back again just because of that.

It's been quite a week. We thought last week was exciting, what with taking the conservatory down, but OMG this week has been bonkers! Partly because the builders couldn't do anything on 'the other site' (there's always another site) due to the hard frost, and partly because OMG they work really hard!

So it's going to be a pictorial week, just because so much has happened. This is how the sitting room looked before we moved out. A bit Swedish Sauna, but really quite cosy.

And this was it by the end of Monday:

Lovely wallpaper eh? We've kept a bit of both the Swirls and the Brown Curry House types and we'll make Christmas Tree decorations out of them just to remind us, in future years, of what it was like.

By the end of Tuesday the kitchen and the bathroom had gone. Just LOOK at that damp... in the kitchen floor where there had always been a weird lump (we were expecting at least a body) the builders found 4 layers of vinyl under the carpet. And four layers of still water between the vinyl. We said it was damp...

On Wednesday the ceilings vanished. Along with the stairs. Mac, who is removing the plaster upstairs, has to get upstairs by going outside and climbing up a ladder and in through the window. He's young and agile - he's fine.

When the ceilings were removed the builders found most of a chimney. Which would be fine, if it hadn't been installed on top of the joists. Interesting construction or what? This was in the bathroom which, along with the old kitchen, was in the 'new' extension. That'll be the new extension with no foundations then... It's going to need underpinning...

On Thursday they started excavating to the side of the house for the oak framed extension (WOO HOO!!). It's a big hole. Please also note the lack of a front porch. Or, indeed, a front door.

And it's nearly a Sarah deep. The builders have avoided upsetting both the maple tree and the flowerbed - it doesn't look like much now but it's given us flowers for the house continuously since March. Amazing continuation planting so we're very keen to keep it!

On Friday we arrived to find a JCB in the living room:

That's it in front of the wallpaper... They started taking out the floors.

Which left the back door in an interesting position:

Today we've been emptying out the lean-to on the side so that it too can be demolished. There's been a huge bonfire, so our Sunday lunch was biscuits, a cuppa and two plastic chairs sitting in the sunshine near the heat of the fire behind the rubble. Bliss!