We get creative - and demolish things

We've moved out. Yep, properly gone! The new rental property is gorgeous - and DRY! We knew Atlasta was damp - but it was only when we moved the furniture we realised just how damp...

Even the carpets are wet. Bleugh. Still no matter - by this time next week there won't even be plaster on the walls any more... We are thoroughly enjoying being in a dry house and we've even had fun dismantling and rebuilding wardrobes, creating an extra worktop and getting creative with making it homely without spending even £1. [Actually that's not true, there was £1.43 for two jubilee clips for the washing machine...]

Remember the 'can you tell what it is yet' from a few weeks ago?

Well, we've now done creating!  From the plank and the forked branch we have this:

Can you tell what it is yet? No? Here's a clue then...

And from the shorter bits of wood we have this:

We are well chuffed - a hatstand and jewellery display (which doubles as artwork) for FREE. The board was from the greenhouse base shuttering, the branches were from the wood and the concrete was knocking around in the shed. Commissions (for a vast fee) will cheerfully be undertaken.

There'll be another creative display soon - a bit of kitchen worktop is going to make a dressing table. Although we may go mad and actually BUY the legs! I know - such extravagance!

The driveway is coming along nicely - it's almost passable now. The removal van (Abacus Removals, utterly brilliant) got stuck on the corner coming on his first trip - Guy and Mr Abacus got cracking with shovels and unstuck the van. The next time he drove up he simply wellied it and slid round the corner rather spectacularly, ending up just where he needed to be. The chap on the digger was looking on, open mouthed, so I said 'he used to be a stunt driver' and left it at that...

Yesterday was genuinely momentous. We removed the conservatory. That's 'we' as in the fabulous Mark with help from Rag, Archie and Pip. We genuinely couldn't have done it without them. AND they brought stollen bites...

From this:

To this:

WOW - look, there's a cute little cottage underneath! Again, a HUGE thank you to Mark and Rag - you're top of the list for the housewarming party!

Today we've had a quiet morning, we've shifted the contents of two flowerbeds, delivered dug up bulbs to a neighbour, wiped all the STILL wet paint off the inside of the outside loo and rammed in a post for a postbox (once the porch is bulldozed, the letterbox will be No More). We've hurtled down to Monmouth to find WiFi and the nice people in Caffe Nero aren't even looking at the state of us... Everyone else in here is clean...

Sarah's tip of the week:  Not really building related, but it's a good idea to label random bags of goo you put in the freezer. This avoids having pasta with stewed apple. We thought it was ratatouille...