Nearly there, but not quite...

We still have 'the builders' in. Probably for most of this week. As one of them succinctly put it yesterday (yes, Saturday), "at the beginning you can't wait to see us arrive, by the end you can't wait to see us leave". Very true!!

The landscaping outside is now finished. Well, the earth moving is - we'll need to plant stuff for the rabbits to eat, obviously.

Look - posh driveway!!

Still with a skip though - let's not get too excited...

Outside the main job left to do is pointing the slabs - the weather was against us last week so it couldn't be done. Maybe this week?

Inside, Guy and I have been putting up shelves for the recycling baskets:

Painting the kitchen:

And (major job) sorting out the stairs. Since the day they went in (23rd May, funny we thought we'd had them longer than that) they've been covered in plywood cut to fit each stair, and then quite a lot of mud and plaster:

We've been sanding, acid washing and oiling - and they're DONE!! Yay!

We are beginning to relax nicely though - today we had a major list of about 24 things to do including 'decide where to paint' and then 'paint'. Logical... We've got through a lot of it, and also done quite a lot of things that weren't on the list but needed doing anyway.

And I've been cleaning windows. That's 'cleaning' as in 'chipping paint and oil off with a razor blade' rather than 'buffing with a soft cloth to a sparkling shine'. We're settling for 'not covered in crap' for now, rather than gleaming glass.

Wooster is also relaxing nicely - here's a 'spot the kitten' photo:

We had our first proper guests this week too - Sue and Richard from the village popped along today bang on lunchtime, so we offered them an impromptu lunch (contents of the fridge, basically). Apart from the total lack of matching crockery, wine in plastic tumblers, the dog farting spectacularly and the cats all climbing on the table, we think it went ok...

Purchases of the week:

We bought a perfectly hideous chest of drawers from our new favourite place (Warehouse 701 in Hereford) which I am going to paint and renovate (oh - go on then, I'm upcycling because I am just sooooo on-trend) - along with a table we bought a while ago, it should be delivered this week. I am ridiculously excited.

We also visited IKEA and bought two shelf brackets. They were necessary and matched the other two shelf brackets. To be fair, we also took back two panels and a mirror that should have looked nice but didn't, so it wasn't really a visit all the way to Bristol just for two £3 shelf brackets...

We're in!

It is possible that I have started speaking in Swahili. That can be the only explanation for several events this week...

On Monday we moved. Due to being flat out at the renovation cleaning crap off floorboards and baths, we hadn't actually packed. We asked for 'Monday afternoon' and at about 4pm on Sunday got the cheery message from the removals people 'We'll be with you at 8am!' So we got up at 5.30 and packed as much as we could, carefully ignoring the kitchen as there was nowhere to move the kitchen stuff to anyway. By 11 everything that wasn't nailed down had been moved and we were in total chaos at Atlasta. We built wardrobes, assembled beds, moved stuff around, got organised by about 7pm and were then fed by good pals Richard and Sue at their house. Goodness knows what kind of company we were... Drunk company, I seem to remember...

Please admire the FREE carpets. We like the wrinkles - they match our knackered faces...

On Tuesday the kitchen fitter arrived and fitted worktops. We spoke to BOB about the damage to the Aga and he said he had no idea how it had happened and it couldn't have been any of his guys. Sigh.

We had carpets and the oven cleaned at the rental, cleaned stuff and mowed the grass.

On Wednesday the slab layers, having finished the slabs, started on a path to the front door. We had a long discussion about how, although the land naturally slopes, sloping slabs are NOT a good idea for when it's icy, so could it therefore be made a flat path with a step down to the gravel where we'll park cars? Yes it could. I went off to the rental to start on the kitchen (you're ahead of me here, aren't you?) and when I got back at lunchtime found that we had a sloping path. See - Swahili. We then have to be the bad guys and say 'please do it again' even though we had had a clear conversation in the first place.

Give us strength.

Look - no fire pit!

The lights finally work and we have fun turning them all on - the cottage looks really cosy from outside.

BOB arrived on Thursday and looked at the Aga - he reckoned it was over-tightened on installation which has popped the enamel around the screw because, as he makes us realise, there is absolutely  no other damage at all. I speak to Aga, send photos and the upshot is they agree it was their fault and they'll replace the lid. In September. We decide to celebrate by actually turning the thing on. We have instructions. We open the oil valve and leave it for half an hour to, er, get oil into the wick. We then have to remove the tin cover on the mechanism at the side to reach the switches. Ah. The kitchen joiner has left a gap where the mechanism is, but it's not big enough so we can't get the tin cover off. We switch off the oil valve and don't turn the Aga on. A bigger hole can be cut when the joiner comes back on Monday. We like microwave food, really we do.

We have a sink and a tap in the kitchen, and the washing machine is plumbed in. No of course we haven't tried it yet. That would involve reading instructions and we still don't have a working brain cell between us...

Coping stones start to go on the curved wall and they look lovely. Apart from the really straight bits that aren't curved. Guy and I have a conversation about whether to point it out or not (it would have annoyed us on a daily basis) and decide that we have to 'man up' and point it out. It gets adjusted and is better. Phew.

On Thursday we handed the keys to the rental back. We had scrubbed, mowed and weeded nearly all week - it looked lovely, bless it.

The decorator never turned up at all this week.

On Friday the electrician came back to make more things work, and the stove guys come to put the log burner in. There was a fair bit of teeth-sucking and head scratching and it took them all day, but we do have a stove.

We have discovered 'a delightful quirk' in the bathroom. See these beautiful taps?

The one marked 'C' is the hot tap and the one marked 'H' is the cold tap.  We may keep it that way...

So we are now fully moved in, we no longer have a rental to escape to, and we're beginning to relax. Slowly. The beams in the bedroom are beautiful as dawn breaks (yes, still waking up at 5am...) and the house is cosy and dry, even with the torrential rain.

As Guy points out, BOB and his team have, like, built us a HOUSE.

It's pretty amazing.

Deadlines - what deadlines?

It's Sunday night, we're due to move in tomorrow, and we've had a bit of a week...

The kitchen carcasses were put in on Monday and they look lovely even though they have no shelves, no worktop and no doors.

We mention moving in 'a week today' to the carpenter who says 'I know!' in a kind of impressed manner, and says he'll be back next Monday to do the worktops. So that'll be THE DAY WE MOVE IN THEN. What about a working sink? Eh?  Sigh.

He also starts the storage units in the music room. They're enormous. If that's not enough room for all of Guy's instruments he'll seriously have to sell some. Or I will...

You'll have spotted that these also don't have any shelves yet. We are learning patience.

The vinyl floor is due to go down in the utility room, bathroom and under stairs cupboard on Tuesday and on Monday the floor is a mess. We get our trusty Miele vacuum out and sadly it blows more than it sucks. We borrow the builders' vacuum and it works, but it has no head so we (ok, Guy) has to hoover the entire floor using only a 2 inch nozzle.

The pipe is shorter by the time he finishes because it's on rough concrete and is like sanding the end of the hose. Tough.  I don't entirely waste my time while he's slaving away on the floors - I investigate hiring an industrial vacuum and find it's better value to just buy an industrial strength Henry. I order one online from Screwfix and pick it up at 7am on Tuesday. Sorted!

We love Henry. He is willing and picks up absolutely everything. And he smiles all the time.

But... on Thursday Henry sadly dies. Guy is Henrying the sitting room (you wouldn't believe the mess) and Henry simply stops. We try all sorts of cajoling but he's having none of it, so we put him back in his box and I take him to Screwfix, where they get him out of the box and he works perfectly. The general consensus from the staff is that Henry simply wanted a ride in the car... We pack him up and I take him home again where he is continuing to work beautifully.

The electrician arrives on Wednesday promising to have us 'up and running by the end of the day'. He stays till 8.45pm but we're still not 'up and running'. Some sockets and lights work, most don't.  He comes back on Thursday and we're still not 'up and running', so he's back on Friday. He leaves at about 6pm with a list of around 20 things to sort out when he comes back. Some time as yet unspecified. Most things are working.

The decorator is continuing to paint things in a totally random manner and we've given up asking when he's going to complete, like, an actual ROOM. We are due to move in next Monday and yet on Thursday we still don't have a single room ready.  There is paint and plaster everywhere, so we will need to re-sand all the floors upstairs and re-varnish them, but we don't know when we can start.

I notice that Guy has gone a lot more grey than when we started this...

On Tuesday BOB visits to see what still needs doing, despite us having updated him on a daily basis for the past week. He seems surprised that there are no electrics and tries every socket and switch in turn, with us behind him saying 'it's not connected yet' at every click. He remains surprised.  He is also surprised at the lack of a kitchen. Sigh.  I almost lose it when he says 'you're eager to move in' and I manage NOT to point out that we were supposed to be in at the end of May. This was meant to be an 8 month build and we are now 6 weeks overdue. That's 20%.  That's a LOT of overdue. He speaks to the kitchen guy who says yes he will be with us on Tuesday of next week. NOOOO - YOU SAID MONDAY! He now says Tuesday.

The vinyl guys arrive, have a lovely 'can do' attitude and crack on with the laying of the floor.

We get the roofer back to put tiles on the outside loo - that's hardly a priority from our point of view, but it seems to be getting done. We're getting slabs outside too - they do need doing. We order coping stones from a chap in Coleford who speaks very fast and who neither of us can understand. If we need to speak to him on the phone we toss a coin to see who has to do it.

We get lovely TV engineers in who mostly connect the Sky and two TVs. There are bits we can order online to get everything working properly, apparently. They tell us it's 'a doddle to connect'. Hmmm...

The newly laid vinyl floor is getting covered in crap and paint. Henry does his best.

Each tradesman seems to think he is the most important, the best, and should be the last on site. As I spend all of Friday afternoon trying to get paint off our previously sanded floorboards, I am NOT a fan of the decorator. He still doesn't communicate and resolutely refuses to remove door handles, window furniture, sockets, switches and even the cat flap to paint, so everything has specks of paint on it. I am fuming, so just stay upstairs and sand the bloody floors. Again. Guy deals with the bodies on site and goes off to a gig, I eventually finish sanding and get everything varnished by about 7pm... We are very, very tired...

On Saturday we try to make the place look a bit more like home by putting up a couple of pictures and doing some proper cleaning, and find that somebody has damaged the Aga. Proper damage that will need either repairing or replacing - a chunk of enamel has been knocked off it. It also has a lot of paint on it despite the FOUR curtains I had covered it with. The total lack of respect by some of the builders for everything we have is really getting to me...

It will be fine, it will be fine, it will be fine.

On the plus side, Guy and I spend an intimate half hour in our new bathroom. Before your imagination runs away, we were fitting the loo seat which was ridiculously complicated. The bonus is that when you sit on it you can reach the towel rail to pick the paint off it - win/win eh?

Windows and doors are being painted outside - we are willing the decorator to just get it done and leave.

Purchases of the week:

Apart from buying our lovely Henry, I genuinely can't remember much, except that I did go to Lidl after taking Henry back to Screwfix in the car. My shopping was as follows:

Biscuits
Biscuits
Biscuits
Biscuits
Biscuits
Biscuits (all for the builders, although we're beginning to wonder why we're so nice to them)
Milk (ditto)
Work socks (for Guy - I would have got some for me too but there weren't any - apparently women don't need work socks)
Prosecco. That one was for me...
Carpet. Not actually a purchase as it was entirely FREE! The concrete floor is nowhere near dry enough to put floorboards down so we have, um, concrete and dust. However, we found if you go to County Marquees in Chepstow they will give you lumps of previously once-used carpet for FREE. It's pretty thin, it only comes in beige or grey and it occasionally has rather alarming 'might have been curry or sick' type stains on it. If you get plenty of carpet and cut out the grotty bits, you still have enough to cover all of the concrete floors. It's nicer underfoot and it stops the dust - in our eyes that's a major result!

And that's it - tomorrow we move in. We won't be moving the kitchen stuff as there's nowhere to put it, nor the musical instruments.

It will be fine, it will be fine, it will be fine...

Cats and mucky baths...

So, what's been happening?

Well, the new cats are settling in just marvellously. They're happy in their chicken coop and we let them out for a bit of a run each day. Which was just fine until Molly the enthusiastic spaniel came visiting and realised there were CATS to play with. Ruby disappeared into the shed and hid so spectacularly well that we locked her in, while Wooster went 25 foot up an oak tree and refused utterly to come down until 10pm when it was getting dark and Guy had to make a noise like a packet of food for about, ooh, 20 minutes.  Wooster has now decided that Izzy, the ancient cat, will be his role model so he follows her around and is Brave when she's with him. Sooooo sweet...

The decorator has started oiling the oak. This would be the oak that both he and BOB thought didn't need oiling.

This is it before it is oiled:

And after:

As it gets done he admits it looks wonderful. And we have to diplomatically point out the bits he's missed...

It's just as frustrating as ever though - we get one electrician instead of 3 (but on the plus side it's our favourite chap who's been off for 5 weeks with a slipped disc. We hold the heavy lights up while he wires them - team effort, eh?).  The light in the 'after' picture above is seriously heavy - about 14kg. It's from a copper mine and it's explosion proof. Every home should have a bombproof light.

In the sitting room we have two lights which we bought online as '1950s Eastern European factory lights'. The electrician points out that the bit just above the shade is, in fact, a prop shaft. Which could mean that somebody is recycling bits of old engines and then passing them off as retro vintage industrial chic... Whatever, they look absolutely fantastic and we love them!

The decorators (now two - yay!) continue to paint things in a weird order. We've given up trying to guess why they're painting what they're painting and we're just letting them get on with it.

We have a bath, with tiled walls.

Which would have been fine if the tiler hadn't stood on lumps of broken plaster IN THE NEW BATH. Bloody hell - do NONE of these trades respect ANYTHING?? I spent a good hour chipping tile adhesive off with my fingernails and then putting soft cloths inside it ahead of the next day's grouting. And then he removed all the cloths and splatted the NEW BATH with grout - this time it took me and Guy 40 minutes of chipping with a thumbnail to get the damned stuff off. We have told BOB that the tiler is no longer welcome on site. But he's due tomorrow and if he doesn't come we'll be a man down. He's due to be working outside grouting the patio - how much damage can he do? We will be watching you, mate...

Our outside loo is truly going to be gorgeous - it's now a 'loo cum log store'.

We will paint it. Just take a wild guess at the colour... and it will have tiles on the roof. Posh loo!

We have underfloor heating. This is A Good Thing as the concrete slab hasn't yet dried out enough to lay the wood floor which was due to go in, ooh, tomorrow. Sigh. We are still moving in a week tomorrow but we will be moving in onto concrete with its accompanying dust.

We've acid washed, rinsed and oiled the oak cladding on the music room - and it has an outside light.

We've got the beginnings of a chimney at the other end of the house...

and water in all the taps - proper working taps!! This is something of a novelty so we stood and turned them on and off until the novelty wore off...

We're still waging war on the rabbits too - now surrounding the flower beds with wire netting and putting up another of Richard's signs.

We are hopeful that Ruby will start catching rabbits soon - she's had two mice so far and, given that she's only out of the chicken coop for a couple of hours a day, that's a promising start!

Are we there yet?

Good grief. These final stages are like pulling TEETH. On Monday Guy had to get 'irked' with BOB and point out that, whilst we are sure he doesn't mind when we move in, we jolly well do mind, and it's on 17th July. To that end, it would be good to have some BODIES on site to actually, like, you know, DO STUFF.

We got some bodies and things started happening... slowly. On Thursday we had another bit of a go and were promised two builders, two decorators and three electricians on Friday. What we actually got was one decorator, one electrician with a migraine, one electrician who arrived after another job and then disappeared 'to the wholesaler' never to return, and no builders at all. Give us strength. Please.

On Saturday they worked overtime (are we paying extra for this??) and we had a decorator and two builders. The builders are working, crucially, on the outside loo. As long as we have a nice outside loo it doesn't matter if we haven't got electrics or water inside, does it?

To be fair, the outside loo was on our 'to do at some stage' list and it seems 'at some stage' would appear to be now. We haven't got the energy to argue, so a revamped outside loo it is. One of the carpenters suggested that if we were going to put a cute apex roof on it, why not extend it to make a log store on the side. Genius! We said yes...

Here are the various stages so far:

We made a small dressing table for the dressing room. 

That's 'made' as in 'assembled' - it's from IKEA. We needed to do it to find out what else I can wedge in my walk-in wardrobe. The answer is 'not a wardrobe'. I can get two sets of IKEA Billy shelves. Yay?

The Aga flue has a big gap where it meets the wall. It needs filling.

Nice pink fire foam, eh?  Needs a bit of work...

I think the pressure is finally getting to me...

We have decided to have two walls tiled in the bathroom. I asked BOB if he had a tame tiler who could do it and, yes, he has - he said he would talk to him. Meanwhile, the decorator was looking at the height of the sitting room with some trepidation, not least because of the slightly wobbly trestles that had been provided by BOB. Would it help if we hired a proper scaffold? Yes, apparently it would, so we did - it arrives tomorrow. In the meantime we asked if he could possibly paint something else - maybe the bathroom, eh? Yes, but it would be better to do it after the tiling, so when's the tiler coming? I phoned BOB to ask - "Oh, you actually want him to do it, do you?"  YES THAT WOULD BE GOOD OH DEAR AM I SHOUTING I'M SO SORRY BUT I THOUGHT I'D MADE THAT PERFECTLY BLOODY CLEAR...

As for purchases, we bought two pew ends to make a shoe shelf for the utility room (trust us, it's going to be lovely) and went on a proper shopping expedition this morning, visiting SEVEN shops in record time:

Carpets Direct - vinyl flooring for bathroom and utility room, fitting on 11th July.

Pets At Home - Ruby (new cat) has to have a pill every day, we wanted a pill shooter thingy which they didn't have.

The Range - they did have a pill shooter and we got one pack of Dylon Machine Dye in Tulip Red. We've dyed a sofa cover (soooooooooooo much easier than getting Plumbs to make us a new one) and it missed a bit. We need five packs to do it again. They had one.

Homebase - two extra spotlights as we'd miscounted how many we needed and wood filler to fill the holes in the pew ends. This was the Cardiff branch as the lights are being discontinued and they were the only place within 40 miles to have any.

Wilko in Cardiff - looking for dye, we got two more packs.

Sainsburys - Lucozade, Diet Coke and dark chocolate. We were flagging.

B&Q - duvet covers to make curtains for the music room, a shower caddy to fit over the shower wall and a cheap white lampshade to paint for our fab Kerosene can lamp. Seriously - it's going to be lovely. We're going to paint the white shade (altogether now) RONSEAL WILLOW!!

Wilko in Chepstow - looking for dye, sadly drawing a blank. Still two packs short then....

And a footnote: This week Plumbs sent us a 'Customer Satisfaction Survey'. Yes, they really did. I filled it in, but I don't think they're going to like it...