Not where we wanted to be right now

We thought the house would all be rendered by now but  there was a hitch - the plasterers ran out of beads (that's the plastic edging strips) because they used the wrong ones, and then we were caught by the perennial problem of them disappearing to start another job. They were supposed to come back last Saturday to finish the rendering but it rained!

We, and the plasterers stuck polythene to the windows with mastic tape to protect them but were then faced with a sticky residue to remove. Luckily Stephen (Sue's brother) was back for a few days to help me with the underfloor heating so he did a great job cleaning it off with thinners

So the underfloor heating is all done now - Stephen and I finished the ground floor this week - just needs to be all dry before the floors are fitted but it is mostly dry and sandy anyway so we don't anticipate a problem.

I imagine this is the last time I will be able to use a cement mixer in the kitchen (above) - it was raining and we wanted to keep the sand & cement mix dry!

Floors are pretty dry upstairs now

Stuart has been fitting basins in the bathrooms. He's been doing inside work whilst the scaffolding is up, making progress on the patio difficult.

bathroom

En suite (got to decide between a tall tap or a standard size tap!)

Monocouche

Monocouche is the type of render we are using - it's a pre-coloured render which won't need painting in the future. The renderers have been working this week, putting a basecoat on the old brickwork, whilst the new blocks in the extension can have the Monocouche directly applied to it. It's a very different process to normal sand & cement render - it's put on thick, then when it has started to set it is 'scratched back' to 15mm

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The top of this will have timber cladding (Western Red Cedar)