Rendered!

Oh yes, we have a whole house which is the colour of sponge cake mix. Victoria sponge that is. There are some darker places where the last bits haven't dried yet - takes about a week. It goes on a bit like cake mix too - they put it on like a small child would plaster the nursery wall - a lot drops off. We will be able to grow a lot of lime-loving plants round the house.

Plus this was the second day of the Warmcel brigade shovelling finely shredded newspapers (and apparently Yellow Pages) into the walls. Here's a picture of it as it comes out of the bags.

In the back of this van

there is a piece of kit that you shove the stuff into, one bag at a time.

The POK sort of rubs the compacted stuff between its hands, as it were, and fluffs it up, then it goes down a very long elephant-trunk-grey hose

into the walls through the holes which they cut earlier

There's a lot of standing around waiting for each panel to fill up. These are very big walls.

I am a little concerned to be certain that all the panels really are completely full and I want to be able to check that there has been no settling. I think the best thing, in a couple of days' time, is to put a small hole in the top of each panel and stick my finger in to make sure they are all still full right to the top.

I think they'll be here for a few days yet - they have been here two days and done most of the upstairs. Still got the ground floor walls and the ground floor itself to do.

The house was full of a faint greyness with little piles of fluffed-up Warmcel which had escaped from the elephant trunk

looking like an old lava flow. The chaps like using it because it is completely benign and non-toxix, unlike the mineral wool or glassfibre which they also install.

Anyway these guys were buzzing about inside and Lee and his mate were buzzing about outside - stereophonic, non-matching music from different boom boxes. And the second electrician came too - he spent an hour or so talking through what we want. Gosh and golly electricianing is complicated stuff - all the rules and relgulations, the special fitings for bathrooms, installing TV and satellite and telephone cables, cables to the shed underground, specified minimum and maximum distances, requirements for low-energy fittings, and so on and so on. Anyway we should have a quote for all that stuff soon. Oh yes, AND we want shielded cable to protect from electromagnetic stress if possible too!

R spent the little time he had when not running around after everyone else altering the head of the front door opening to be able to fit the door and a timber door sill it - this involved taking the frame apart and cutting bits off and putting it back together.

My hero!

Oh and it poured down most of the day.....

Me? I made the tea

One last view of the front wall being rendered