Have you moved in yet?

When people passing by see our newly finished front garden they often ask 'Have you moved in yet?' Well we are a long way off that! Maybe we should take them round to see the back garden. At the beginning of the week it looked like this:

Since then Stuart has shifted a load of stuff from one place to another - some of it will go in a skip, but most of it is just in the wrong place at the moment. Anyway, the plan here is to have raised beds; it will differ from the front garden in that the beds won't house window boxes - just soil.The walls will be blockwork, rendered, and white. The paving will be grey granite. Stuart is on holiday now for a week but he left have dug trenches and filled them with concrete ready for the walls.

Meanwhile inside I have been dividing my time between working on the rewire, on fixing plywood to the beams in the loft (actually to the purlins to be exact) - not finished yet, and painting ceilings & walls. Sue has been here painting too.

Keep the home fires burning

Another milestone. Stuart and I (mostly Stuart) connected up the log burning stove today. It's been so cold for such a long time in the house so now I can start warming it up by burning all the scrap wood.

Sometimes what I used to do was pour myself a mug of hot water from the kettle just to hold it and warm up my cold hands! No more!

So long, it's been good to know you!

Well that's it for Tony and Darren (on this house). On Sunday they finished the plastering - lot's of fiddly patching up around windows etc. Probably the next time I see them will be when we invite them back to see it when its all finished. So that should be an end to the internal 'messy stuff'!

We have started painting the kitchen & studio now in there final colour (studio is white, and the kitchen is a greyish white - a Farrow & Ball colour called 'Strong White'

We must be doing something right

...because so many people stop and say how much they like the front patio. Not quite finished yet - a little grouting for Stuart still to do.

The plants in the wall are all planted in plastic window boxes so we can swap them around throughout the year

Tamed the snake

The pipework for the ventilation system is almost finished now - all connected apart from one little drain pipe on the unit, but I still have to lag the pipes that are up in the loft to prevent condensation.

I have also started painting the studio and the kitchen - just a cheap white paint as a base coat.

...and Stuart has made good progress on the front patio. He reckons he just has half a day's work left to finish it.

Wrestling with a big blue snake

I ordered the stuff for the Heat recovery ventilation system last week and made a start on it. What will happen is that it will extract air from the kitchen and bathrooms and extract the heat from it to warm up the fresh air coming in from outside before the stale air is expelled outside. Well that's the theory of it! It's the first time for me and my initiation ceremony was that I have had to wrestle with a long blue coil of pipe and get it up into the loft space!

At last the brickwork for the garden wall is finished and Stuart has now started cutting the stone for the patio. It's a stone called Fossil Mint, from India I think, and here and there the slabs have black fossilised ferns in them. We will be using the same stone to cut up for a coping stone to go on the top of the brick walls.

Garden Walls Continued,

Stuart commented today that he has to keep stopping to talk to people inquiring about what he is doing! Today more than most days as it was market day. Ours is no longer the house that no-one notices!

Meanwhile I have finished plasterboarding the kitchen (apart from a piece on the inside of the door reveal) Just have to cut out the holes for the sockets now. The room looks a lot bigger now all the blocks are covered, and it's great not to see any of the old house walls anymore. I have made a 'pocket' - a space where a big door between the kitchen and lounge can slide out of sight.

We had cavity wall insulation put in to the exterior walls today. As the interior walls have all been insulated and dry-lined too this should be the warmest house we have ever lived in. I haven't insulated the loft yet - need to wait until all the pipes and cables are in place.