Going up.....

It's rained. It got soggy. And then it got muddy and dirty. Like you wouldn't believe.

We have a concrete base for the large oak frame extension - it even has the beginnings of a fireplace in it. We can practically imagine sitting in front of the log fire...

It's beautiful, clean concrete. This is Thursday.

By Friday it looked like this...

However, there is a VERY good reason for this - and here he is:

HOORAY! Phil the Paint has been working hard with his sandblaster (hence all the muck on the ground) and the orange paint has been flying off. Literally flying off - it goes everywhere!

We now have a two-tone house.  We don't think it will catch on...

Guy bought me an early Valentine's present...

A septic tank. Gee thanks.  A large hole was dug and it was happily concreted in...

We had a visit from Welsh Oak Frame (WOF) on Thursday who came to measure up and make sure everything was in order for the roof to be delivered on 20th February. Just TWO WEEKS AWAY WOO HOO. To say we're excited is somewhat of an understatement... Anyway, WOF was very happy with BOB's walls and they happily chatted technical scaffolding terms together. We stood between the two of them like spectators at a tennis match looking at WOF then BOB then WOF then BOB. And we understood none of it... By a stroke of luck the scaffolder took this precise moment to turn up for a chat with BOB and was roped in to discuss the finer details. Which meant that we got scaffolding earlier than we thought:

Today we spent a happy (?) day putting together shelving in the new barn. We bought the 'simply clicks together' sort. PAH! Yes, it does 'simply click together'. With the aid of a lump hammer, spanner, pliers, two pairs of hands and a fair bit of cursing.

We celebrated by having a cold lunch in the cold barn. We froze.

Purchases of the week:

Bricks. We bought 360 facing bricks, 165 plinth stretchers and 14 plinth corners. We know more about brick plinths than we ever thought we would.
A septic tank. Not romantic, but we'll be pleased when the drainage works.
More concrete, firstly to make the lovely extension base which promptly got covered in black gunk, then to cosy said septic tank in.
Our joint body weight in chocolate from Vienna. Seriously.
Three spotlights. We need 7, we're buying in stages from Homebase because each time they give us £10 back...