It's a greenhouse

Dan* the builder did come back and remove the shuttering, which then left a large bank about to fall into the future greenhouse if it rained.

So we built a retaining wall. It only took us a couple of days work to dig out the bank, find enough bricks, get enough ready-mixed mortar, line it all up and slap them in, all because of Dan*s rather odd base. It's soooo much easier when you get a man in, isn't it?

Mopsi helped, obviously.

In the midst of fixing the wall we had a proper builder round to quote for the work on the cottage - he was lovely, had lots of sensible ideas and he is now our Best Option Builder (so, BOB then). He also, like builder no. 2, told us that it would be virtually impossible to live in the house while it's done. We need to find somewhere to rent...

Then it was back to work on the greenhouse. It was delivered in 13 boxes. Sadly we didn't know which box the instructions were in. We rang the company and they said the box would have a yellow sticker on it. None of the boxes had a yellow sticker on them, so we had to go back to opening all of them in turn and peering into the contents. We found it in - yes, you guessed it - the last box.

Finding the instructions and then similarly hunting for the five bits of metal which made up the base took around an hour. At this rate the build will be finished before the greenhouse...

Today we got cracking properly - up at 8 and straight on with the assembly. We finished it by 1.30 - we have no idea if it's meant to take that long. Oh, and there isn't any glass in it yet...

And of course we want to paint it. Ronseal Willow, since you asked. How long does it take to put a first coat of paint on a greenhouse? Couple of hours?  Nah - FOUR AND A HALF hours.

We've now been on the go for over 11 hours. We wish we had a bathtub...

* The name has again been changed to protect the stupid.