This is a rotten joist. Actually, it's a pair of wellies and a rotten joist. Pretty rotten, eh? We're very glad BOB spotted them otherwise we'd just have got finished, moved in and they would have started giving way... 

New joists were put in this week and now floor boarding can start in the bedrooms. Which will be a relief as this week the builders have been balancing on single joists to do work. It's been scary...

Work is galloping on on the roof - the chimneys have been newly pointed, and the back roof of the house is felted and battened.

At the other end of the house there are oak bits on the side. These are either soffits, fascias or barge boards. I used to know which was which, now I'm just confused. Pick the word you like best. And admire that fabulous blue sky!

Mike the Tile has been cracking on with the tiling, after he single-handedly felted and battened the whole roof. The front is very nearly done, the back should be done by the end of the week. We hope it will be done, because on Wednesday the scaffolding will start to come down, ready for the oak extensions. Eek!!

Inside has been galloping on too - we now have membranes and battens ready for the insulation and plasterboard. At the moment we don't have window seats, or even gaps for them. We do keep reminding BOB and he keeps saying 'oh yes, no problem'. We will keep an eye on the walls...

The stair walls are really taking shape - they're solid both sides which is giving us more wall space than we expected - we will be able to hang pictures - YAY!

We thought about building bookshelves into the highest part of the stairwell. It would look fantastic. Then Guy pointed out that we wouldn't be able to get books off the shelves without the aid of crampons and ropes. I suggested an automated 'pick a book' system (like a jukebox only with books) or one of those very long litter picking sticks. It's currently 'in discussion'...

We went to our new favourite place, Gallops in Crickhowell - a salvage yard. We picked two long slabs for the walls of the front porch, they cut them to size (mostly because then they would fit in the car) and now they're on the porch walls. The walls are looking very tall because the floor level is currently below the 'finished' floor level by about 9 inches. So the walls really aren't that tall.

We also pressure-hosed the fireplace arch in the bathroom. Which obviously flooded the bathroom. 

We  bailed it out with a bucket and a sponge... Let's hope that's the first and last time the bathroom floods...

Today the weather was utterly glorious, so we sat on the patio and enjoyed the sunshine. 'Patio' is a loose term, obvs.

Purchases of the week:

A loo, basin and shower for the en-suite. YES! After much measuring, brainstorming, visiting showrooms and trying to figure it out, we just went ahead and did it. We have a bespoke (it's shorter than the usual, apparently that's what bespoke means in bathrooms) shower cubicle and it should all fit.

Two slabs of stone for the front porch. They're beautiful, and now we need another 6 or so for the back steps - dammit we'll just HAVE to go back to the salvage yard.

Nearly a utility room. On Wednesday we drove to Taunton to see an online kitchen place who said they had a showroom. They wouldn't see us without an appointment so we drove back. Then we realised we were near Bristol so we went to see Wren Kitchens. Two hours and aching brains later, we had a £5,000 plan for a utility room. How Much??? Quite. They did give us a free bottle of Prosecco though, so it wasn't entirely time wasted... Today we went to IKEA and did a much better deal for £1300 - that'll do nicely.

Replacements of the week:

The broken light people have cheerfully agreed to replace the broken light. Sorted.

Plumbs have sent new cushions for the back of the sofa. Not very comfortable. Not Yet Sorted.

Not Yet Arrived of the week:

Beehives. Hmmm. We bought these online, nil communication from the company, suddenly the money went out of Guy's PayPal account, still no communication. Guy queried this through PayPal and got a slightly shirty response from the seller - 'They're made to order, it's 28 days, it says so on the website'. Er, no it doesn't. What it says is 'in stock' which, to my mind, means IN STOCK. It's a bit like an online kitchen saying 'visit our showroom' when what they really mean is 'only visit if you've already made an appointment'. Rubbish websites - my new bugbear.

But it's ok, Prosecco is helping...

Frazzled

Last week I was 'confused of Catbrook' this week I'm 'Frazzled of Felpersham'. No, I know we don't live in Felpersham (it's a fictional village in The Archers) but you get the drift...

Extra scaffolding had been started last week to put a complete scaffold roof over the whole cottage.

Early in the week BOB said why don't we use ply instead of plasterboard we wouldn't need all that extra scaffolding and we could crack on. Good grief.

I phoned the scaffolder along the lines of 'hey, we've come up with another way of doing it, we don't need the scaffolding' after which there was quite a long pause at the other end of the phone, followed by 'the lads have spent the last two hours loading up the lorry'. Oops. We agreed a price for the bit of extra scaffolding they'd done already, together with the loading (and unloading) of the lorry. Oops.

All of which means that they did crack on and by the end of the week we had proper insulation on the roof - and it's practically watertight.

The tiler starts tomorrow - by this time next week it will look like a ROOF!

You'll remember last week I gaily said 'this is the last of the knocking out'. Oh no it wasn't. On Monday morning the builders discovered all the old joists in the kitchen/dining room were knackered and should be replaced. So out they came... we now have a double height kitchen, but no bedrooms...

All the internal stud walls are complete, and we've even got stairs.

OK, it's a ladder, but it's where the stairs will be. That's close enough then...

And the landscaping has started - look, less lumps!

The veg patch is going to have a fence so we arranged for the fencing chap to come and see it on Thursday. We were there for a whole hour considering what sort of fence. Admittedly, it would have been a better meeting if he'd turned up but, hey ho...

This weekend we decided to pressure hose the end wall. Well, it's the end wall at the moment, but it will become an internal wall in the music room, and we're keeping it as stone as a feature.

Before:

... and after:

The stone is amazing - really fantastic colours, great stripes, and the odd bit of sparkly stone stuff in it too. It was lovely to really get to know the wall. (No, I haven't been sniffing white spirit...)

We've been talking to 'bathroom designers' trying to wedge a shower into the en-suite. Ooh, it is tight! And it seems that when bathroom designers say 'bespoke' what they really mean is 'any combination of what we already do but no we can't make it shorter'. Good grief. We are now awaiting two options and prices... We have chosen a (short) loo and a (small) basin.

As if all that wasn't enough to contend with, the boiler at the (supposedly warm and dry) rental cottage has been dodgy for the past two weeks so we have been putting down towels in a rota and mopping floors. At the weekend the rate of flow (more than a pint an hour) got worse but, no matter, the boiler was being replaced on Tuesday. On Monday evening the plumber phoned to say that the boiler supplier had had 'an accident' with the boiler (what the hell does that mean?) on Saturday and it was no longer in a fit state to be supplied and was it ok to put it off till Wednesday. I pointed out that we had no boiler, no hot water and were eating things which involved the least washing up but that if there was no alternative, so be it. He asked if the immersion heater worked - it has a switch but it doesn't seem to be connected, so let's just say no to that one, eh?

On the plus side, we got back our sofa from Plumbs who had recovered it. They had the wrong address on the delivery note, so tried to deliver it to the building site, got lost on their way to the rental place and arrived with the driver in an utterly filthy mood. They trod dirt onto the pale carpet, dropped the sofa (literally) and then asked us to pay up which we refused to do as they had lost the three back cushions which are kind of crucial to making it comfortable, which is rather the point of a sofa. And we've decided we don't even particularly like the new covers...

Purchases of the week:

Oil and paint for the oak and windows. Oh, OK, yes the window paint is Ronseal Willow.
Paint for the external stone walls - it's Feldspar White, the company still had the recipe. Phew.
Shady grass seed (shady as in 'under trees' not 'dodgy') for up near the new barn. It's under trees.
Two bathroom lights. One arrived broken.
A log burner. HOORAY! By the time it gets put in it will be June and too warm to light it. We will light it anyway and keep all the doors and windows open...

So that's why I'm Frazzled of Felpersham, but it's OK, Prosecco is helping...

Confused of Catbrook

It's been a confusing week. We had absolutely, categorically, totally decided on bamboo flooring until a chance remark in a shop led us to do a little more homework and now we're going to use engineered oak floorboards instead. At least, we think we are. We're putting in underfloor heating because of the lack of wall space for radiators, so we've been doing our research on the thickness of floor, etc etc. Which is fine, except that it's thrown up a few curve balls. Like - don't use thick rugs and never turn the underfloor heating off. Never?? Really?? With the Aga at one end of the living space, the log burner at the other, and insulation in every wall to comply with building regs, we are going to COOK!!

And then there's the paint. Last summer we researched paint for old buildings, decided on a make and a colour (after buying a litre of each of three possible colours) and relaxed in the knowledge that we could order the paint (with the rather splendid name of Feldspar White) when we needed it. Sorted. Er, no it isn't. We now need the paint in a hurry and a visit to the same company's (new) website reveals that not only has the make of paint disappeared, but either they've totally changed every one of their colours, or they've renamed everything. Clearly on the new website a writer has been brought in to hammer home the eco credentials and 'close to nature'ness of the products - so much so that there is no longer any useful information nor vestige of the paint name previously on sale. Grrrr. Having only discovered this late on Friday (well, after 5pm), I've emailed them and am now desperately waiting for a response tomorrow. I live in hope that they've simply re-named everything they ever did and the paint is still available...

And the reason we need the paint in a hurry? Because the decision has been made to increase the scaffolding up and over the entire cottage to make it dry so that the roof can be finished. And while it's dry we may as well paint. It's rained nearly every day since the rafters went up and even when it hasn't rained the forecasters said that it would rain so it wasn't worth taking the risk. Grrrr again.

The new scaffolding has started...

And it should finish midweek, when work on the roof proper can begin.

The site has been quieter, but not idle - we have lots of internal walls, we almost have stairs...

...and we have a VERY small en-suite. When the walls went in we had lengthy conversations (us and the builders) about whether we could fit in a loo, basin and shower. We thought not.

Then Guy and I got busy with the graph paper and thought we could. We made newspaper cut-outs of the loo and basin and marked up the shower cubicle on the floor with tape.

It all fits! Then my genius Auntie Annie suggested a curved shower, which would be MUCH better. Only the ceiling is too low to buy one off the peg. It will have to be bespoke. That sounds like an expensive word ...

Purchases of the week:
Lots of wine and gin. That counts as house build purchases, right?
Not paint. I would have, but they've changed the names, or whatever.
Not floorboards, although we visited three suppliers locally.
We did buy samples of oil for the internal oak. We're thinking satin...

Busy, busy, busy...

Each week, as another bit of our cottage gets knocked out, we say 'this is the last of the knocking out'. It never is. BUT, we think this week it really might have been. And it's been a biggie...

There needs to be a big gap to walk through from the dining room to the new extension. It hasn't been knocked out yet as BOB wanted to wait until the roof went on to, well, hold the cottage together. Now the oak roof is on, away we go.

It starts with a relatively polite hole...

Which actually looks bigger from the inside...

Then it becomes a scarily large hole...

Which also looks bigger from the inside...

The wall above is supported by a LOT of acrow props. It doesn't fall down. Phew.

Then the sides, which have just been knocked out, are built back in again. I'd say I don't understand this building lark but, to be fair, they're now nice and straight, which looks like a good idea.

Two huge steels go in (two because the wall is so thick) and we have a secure wall again. Phew again.

The sun even comes out for the 'outside' photo - as 'gaps in walls' go, that's a beauty...

It's mostly too wet to work on the roof so what else to do? Internal walls of course! That'll be putting back in the walls we've already knocked out. And moving a few of them...

First to go up are cupboard walls upstairs. One was going to be an en-suite but we decided 3 loos with 2 bedrooms was overkill, so it's now going to be a useful big cupboard. Or non-suite, as we're calling it...

There's a floor for the en-suite (yes, really an en-suite).

Which leads to much discussion - it is tiny, and under the sloping roof. Is there really room to get a shower, basin and loo in there? And, if so, would it be possible to stand up and wee with the sloping roof? (Apologies if you're having your tea here...) We finally work out that the Velux window is dual purpose - it not only lets in air and light, but also gives, um, another 6 inches of headroom should one be standing up to pee... Or we can only ever have midgets to visit.

Downstairs is simpler - there's a utility room wall...

Which is going to give us a good sized utility room... 

And there's an amazing small curved wall on the bathroom to allow us to fit a bath in. It was either a straight step in the wall or a pretty curve. BOB says I chose the girly option. I would like to point out at this moment that it was his idea. Really it was...

It's so pretty you need to see it from the doorway...

The oak planks arrived for the fascias, barge boards and soffits. These are technical terms and would appear to indicate that I know what I'm talking about. I don't, except I do know they're something to do with the roof...

They were water stained, so every one had to be sanded and then bleached with oxalic acid. Young Max did this bit - it took him a lot of Thursday and all of Friday...

On Saturday they needed to be rinsed off, so Guy and I moved them all outside, sloshed water on them with the hosepipe, and stacked them back indoors to dry. What a palaver, eh?

UPVC suddenly looks very sensible...

Purchases of the week:  

Oxalic acid, and lots of it.

Three lights and the world's heaviest coffee table from Archie in Cirencester. The coffee table is amazing, has wheels, and we have no idea where it's going to go.

Three tarpaulins, one of which went over the tractor which has moved out of the barn again. Two for the rest of the oak, if it's ever dry enough to cover. We're trying to avoid the water marks/oxalic acid/washing off routine...

Two bee hives. We haven't got the energy to make them ourselves...