The build accelerates!

The week started normally enough, with drainage carrying on outside, walls going up on the outside of the music room and doors and decorating inside.

And then Wednesday happened. O.M.G - suddenly it was like we'd shifted into another gear and everybody was on site at once.

The decorator, bless him, has been masking oak rafters FOREVER. He remains incredibly good humoured and amenable and just gets on with painting. He does a coat upstairs, lugs his ladders downstairs, does a coat in the sitting room, lugs the ladders back upstairs, and repeats. He works around whoever is in his way and listens to Radio 2. We're rather fond of him...

The carpenters are working upstairs too - we now have skirting boards in all the rooms, and on Thursday we gained a chest of drawers, built into the wall using a B&Q basic unit and bespoke oak drawer fronts, in the en-suite. We may well paint them cream, we're just leaving them as oak for now. We have fabulous drawer handles (given to us by a friend well over 10 years ago and saved for just such a set of drawers) although they would look better on cream fronts...

The electrician came back on Thursday and suddenly we were finding actual lights to go onto the wires. We have wired sockets, wired switches, and LIGHTS!!

No, of course they don't work - the electricity is still wired into the outside loo.  However, wait until next Wednesday and the power comes back into the house! Which means that we have a meter box on the outside wall and probably no power at all on Wednesday afternoon. This shouldn't be a problem as most of the electric tools used now run on batteries, so as long as everybody charges their bits of kit, we can keep going.

The plasterer is on now downstairs and has prepped all the walls, he worked both Saturday and Sunday to get the bathroom plastered as the plumber starts putting bathrooms in on Wednesday.  tomorrow he's continuing with the utility room as the units should be fitted before Wednesday when the carpenters go on holiday. Guy and I have spent the weekend making base units and drawers to help things along. It'll save a few hours and mean that the room can be (almost) finished.

Stonework on the outside wall has just about finished - we have walls and sills before the oak cladding goes on the music room. It looks GORGEOUS!

The drains were finished ...

...  before extra hardcore was put down outside - we're nearly at the right ground level. It's made a huge difference to how the house looks, and there is no longer a two foot step through the front door.

YES!!  We have a front door...  Still no door handles though. That's tomorrow's job!

It has a grey undercoat at the moment. It will, of course, be painted (all together now) Ronseal Willow.

In the hope that the oak can now be kept clean, Guy and I acid washed, scrubbed, rinsed and sanded the porch and sitting room oak before oiling it. It is now, at long last, protected. Phew.

We've planted up the veg beds, we have pots, plants, seedlings and bulbs to go in the flower beds and we're getting towards the landscaping.

BOB was also on site on Saturday morning building the end of the wonky wall at the front of the house. It is far too beautiful to match the rest of the wonky wall, but short of getting Guy and me to build it, that's the most wonky he can make it.

We had a long discussion about where walls, paths and steps should be. BOB gave me the blue aerosol can for ground marking. He really shouldn't have... not only did I draw paths and flowerbeds, but also put little blue flowers in the flower bed sections...

Purchases of the week: 

Frankly, I've no idea, the pace this week has been so fast. However, I needed to prove who I was to some organisation or other and proffered my bank statement. The last TEN entries were, respectively, Screwfix, Travis Perkins, Robert Price, City Electrical Factors, Western Power, Owen Fuels, M&G Plant and Tool Hire, Specsavers (I treated myself to new contact lenses) and Handyman House. I am a sad person. 

Tiling has started in the teensy weensy en-suite. We needed to get tile cement, grout and those little plastic cross shaped things - tile spacers. Mopsi is getting used to sharing the back of the car...

Although she doesn't look particularly cheerful about it...  The blue roll is 'self adhesive hard floor protector'. It's RUBBISH. The only thing is adheres to is, well, itself, so I guess 'self-adhesive' does kind of cover it. It is currently not protecting our hard work of upstairs floor sanding. We will probably have to do repairs, but they shouldn't be as bad as the first sanding. Should they?