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...