Dear Diary...

I may have given a slightly false impression of the cleanliness of the site last week. This picture makes it all look rather lovely:

But down below it's rather more like this...

Because each week is now more bonkers than the last, this week I've been writing the blog each evening. Which makes it rather an epic blog - sorry! Next week I'll go back to just remembering... (Or 'forgetting' as it's sometimes known).

Monday

It rained. And rained. And rained. So what's the best thing to do? Yep - work outside on the landscaping. No kidding. Most of the builders (apart from three carpenters, the decorator and the plasterer) were outside, so Guy and I were too. We were looking at walls, steps, stones, drains - you name it, we looked at it. And we got WET. Soooooo wet. Apart from the time we spent driving to Black Mountain Quarries to pick up the slate for the hearth. And we sheltered indoors and made a cardboard template for the cutting. We got door handles and locks for the front and back doors, and the curved wall was plastered too. Painting galloped on upstairs and it looks gorgeous - the rooms look bigger again (hooray).

The fire pit flooded...

Tuesday

The utility room started to go in,

Rendering started on the wall that will be behind the Aga (that very festive silver stuff is the ducting for the extractor fan which we still don't want but which is required to get the cottage past the building inspector. We're thinking of keeping it for Christmas.)

The chimney was worked on from the outside (it's going to have tiled 'hips') and steps appeared outside.

The painter started on the en-suite - it's FABULOUS! We've been brave with the colour, and it's absolutely gorgeous.

Stone steps went on outside the front and back door, and outside the music room doors.

We also made four madeira cakes - one of the builders has a daughter who has her first birthday this weekend... he found out we made cakes and put in his request. It feels weird to be doing a cake whilst building a house. As long as we don't get the plaster and icing mixed up it will be fine... We're pretty tired - Guy fell asleep in front of the England cricket match and I went to bed in daylight.

Wednesday

We gain radiators in the bedrooms, more painting carries on upstairs, edges of doorways get plastered (this is Important - they're all being rounded to keep the cottage feeling as old as it really is), we get most of a utility room, the hips thing on the chimney and steps at the back. Except nobody has told the chap building the steps what they're meant to look like, so when we join him on Step 2, there is a bit of a discussion and then he unpicks Step 2, rebuilds Step 1 and doesn't even swear. The second version looks MUCH better, and we're all happy. Well, apart from the poor chap building the steps, although he remains remarkably good-humoured. Oh, and we get the power moved from the outside loo back towards the house. Or, at least, we get the power cable moved from inside the outside loo to inside the house. We have no electrician on site, so there is no power connected for the afternoon. It is weirdly quiet on site - lots of people, just no power tools.

We carry on with the cake but we're (a) out of practice and (b) knackered. It looks terrible... Hopefully we can cover it in flowers. Or something.

Thursday

It's an early start as IKEA have said they'll deliver the worktops between 7am and 11am... Before leaving the rental I notice that one of the tiers of the cake has developed Elephant Man Syndrome - a huge great lump full of air on one side of the cake. I stick a pin in it several times and then it goes wrinkly. Oh dear. I give up and drive to the cottage. Guy has a text saying IKEA will deliver between 9 and 10, but on the plus side, our electrician had also said 7am works for him, so I had to be there anyway. By 9am we have power into the house into another temporary socket board.

There's a shower cubicle, loo and teensy weensy basin in the teensy weensy en-suite - it looks alright! We still wish the shower cubicle had had a sloping panel, but that wasn't available with the height restriction. Bespoke doesn't mean bespoke when it's shower cubicles. We forgot to take a photo...

Steps carry on outside. No, not the pop group (that would have been hilarious!), but the steps at the back of the house, and also everything else gets flattened ready for patio slabs. Guttering goes up, and so do battens to take the oak cladding. Sadly the lad doing the oak cladding seems to be allergic to rain, so goes home at lunchtime. The rest of us get soaked. Again. Having been on site at 7, I leave at about 10 to go and fix the cake. I re-ice both tiers and it looks better. It will do.

An Aga engineer visits to check that we're ready for installation A WEEK ON MONDAY WOO HOO and apart from an issue with the flue (it's going to be hard to make it look pretty) it all seems to be ok. We ask the very patient plasterer to knock out yet another hole in the wall and pull the flue over to the left. He does so with good grace and further patience, bless him.

Worktops arrive for the utility room and Guy and I empty crap into the skip - we can't be much use on site, but tidying up is rapidly becoming our forte.

In the evening we make the cake presentable...

We also watch telly, with me picking lumps of icing out of my hair. It makes a change from cement...

Friday

Well, that was an odd day. We had the plasterer and the painter on site. There were meant to be a lot of other things happening, so here's a list of how it all went:

1. Carpenter on site to do oak cladding on external walls - didn't show up.
2. Builder arriving to collect his cake. Well, yes, but not till 8pm... 
3. Roofer on site to finish chimney roof bit - didn't show up.
4. Bloke from joinery company to put damp meter on concrete floor - didn't show up.
5. Fencing people to put new gate posts in at back of house - we thought they weren't going to show up then they phoned at 5, were with us by 5.30 and job done by 6pm...
6. Blacksmith to measure up for curtain poles and stair handrail. He turned up!
7. Beehives should have arrived by now. In fact three weeks ago. No beehives yet and they won't answer their phone.
8. Electricity to the barn re-connected to the house. Electrician didn't show up. Our normal electrician is on holiday this week - hopefully next week when he's back it will get sorted.
9. Nice new empty skip to be delivered. Didn't get delivered.

The blacksmith is wonderful - we have a gap in the wall at the bottom of the stairs and think ordinary bannisters will look odd, so we're planning stair to ceiling iron bars, removable so that we can still get furniture round the tight bend in the stairs. Trust us, they'll look great. The blacksmith suggests making it a hinged panel - sounds brilliant, and we say 'yes please'.

Purchases of the week:

Genuinely can't remember, except we did go to the garden centre on Friday and buy plants for the top of the new wall. We plant it up and it looks fabulous.

Until Saturday morning when the bloody rabbits have chewed three of them to stumps...

The plasterer works the weekend (again) and the Aga wall progresses. Which is just as well as in 7 days time it needs to be plastered AND painted.

The timescale is slipping - we were supposed to have moved in by now. We have no electrics, no water, not one finished room and debris everywhere.

We were going to give notice on the rental on Tuesday... Or will we?