WE'RE IN!!!!!!




The aftermath of the party

Last night in the caravan...

Saturday night, happily knackered, reacquainted with all my furniture I haven't seen since July 2006. Em and her BF came today and were absolutely brilliant with the heavy lifting from the sheds.

Kitchen/dining/sitting room now about done - R finished off lovely granite windowsills and I cleaned a lot of stuff. He also finished the bathroom and I bought bath bubbles (a girl has to get her priorities right and I haven't lived with a bath for 18 months). Hall cleared out. Our bedroom will be done by tomorrow night! Internal doors will be next week plus we have a wonderful generous windfall which will get us an oak floor in the hall. Next week we shall go shopping.

No photos cos I forgot but watch out for tomorrow's blog - it's going to be BIG.

FOURTEEN DAYS TO GO!!
Yesterday, 7pm, the view from the big window seat in the kitchen.
The help putting up the shelves.

The view through the north door to the washing line - this may be the last week we have the washing machine in the shed - yay!

My efforts - now for the grouting which is fun - instantly covers up all the mistakes.

More of the same for me. Yesterday was so hot I did an evening shift - actually a night shift, but I had rested during the day so five hours flew by in the coolth. Now 800 tiles on the floor. R finished the balustrading apart from some odds and ends and is now working in the kitchen.
What I mean is on the kitchen.

NINETEEN DAYS TO GO!!!

It's getting close - we are moving in on August 10th - muhurta approximately 12 noon. R is doing wonderful work on the banisters: up the stairs, across the balcony and around the brahmastan. Apart from the handrail, he has made and shaped everything from scratch and he looks to be having a very good time. The house smells beautifully of pine.

Shades of Frank Lloyd Wright, I reckon.

R floating.

Muggins here gets to do the unskilled work (on account of not being able to do the other) - laying floor tiles in the kitchen/dining/sitting room - about 1000 of them - this is yesterday's total:

Today I got faster and now about half the room done - 420 tiles. I am shuffling around on knee pads needing only half a shoe on each knee to to a passable imitation of one of the seven dwarves. Will the tiles be still parallel with the walls by the time I get to the other end? Will they stay stuck down? Will the knees ever recover? Anyway it looks okay at the moment.

The view through the brahmastan towards the front door.

I am travelling a lot at the moment, so this is a quick update.

Decorating update:
Two bedrooms finished
Two bedrooms half finished
One bathroom finished
One kitchen finished
A young bloke coming to do the hall and landing (BIG job) tomorrow and Friday
Not started: Meditation room, living room, utility room

Kitchen update:
Base cupboards all in
Worktop started
All tiles and worktop chosen and ready to go

Bathroom update:
All plumbed in, 'cept the electric shower to finish. Floor tiled, wall tiles almost finished.

Utility room update:
Cistern in and plumbed. It's a solar one so when we get solar (hot water) panels on the roof they can just be plumbed straight in.
Shower installed and plumbed, some tiling to finish. Shower is revolting Bollywood gold on account of getting a good shower cheap and so a tin of car paint or similar will be needed soon.

Muhurta applied for, for end of July, beginning of August!

Next jobs: banisters and kitchen floor (quarry tiles)

Walls again!

We are getting close - I am buying tiles for the kitchen windowsills! And little sample pots of paint to help the ongoing dispute over the colour of the hall and the living room. There is a new sense of urgency to get it finished soon.

Anyway we have a very nice bloke building the wall round the bottom of the house - the plinth, and it makes a huge difference to the look of the outside. House was looking like it was floating in the air - now it will be anchored to the ground AND we 'll get rid of the piles of bricks I keep tripping over.

A few pics below:

Can't see a blasted thing in this photo


That's better

One BIG event I forgot about - on Friday, Paul Jennings (the Man With A Fan) came to check our airtightness - this is a requirement. Measured in air changes per hour - super eco is less than 1, average house about 10 (draughty) and modern houses about 7.

We came out to about 1.5 and we expect to be able to get lower when we bung up a few draughty spots. So we are deeply chuffed.

He does the test by taking off the front door and putting a fan in instead which sucks the air out and then he checks where the leaks are coming in. Good photos.

Sunday evening after a day's painting - we are gently arguing about colours, which is a great treat. Tomorrow our plinth will start to be built and the house will look a lot better and it will a lot more sthapatya vedic.

Yesterday was a big IKEA shop - kitchen units and a hob, tiles and lights.

I am trying to get one room (the big kitchen/diner/sitting room) finished so we can start moving furniture in! R is still doing complicated things with showers and the utility room.

All go - time to book the muhurta for moving in. Yes!

Loos and lighting - definitely one up on concrete and diggers which is exactly where we were this time last year. Onwards to curtains and carpets.... Today we have electricians and a plumber and next week we have help to build the brickwork plinth which is an important feature of Sthapatya Veda. So a load of bricks arrived at 8am.


Lights!


Looking up the hall.


Levelling the bath

There follows a tour of the toilets:

Downstairs loo

Bathroom loo with tiles

Sunday evening, 1st June, paint going on, kitchen going in, beautiful plastering of the big hall ceiling. Elder d. getting better, electricians coming this week, plumber (probably!) next week.

Owing to elder daughter falling off her perch in London, I have been somewhat distracted of late. She really was run over by a van - her right elbow anyway - last Friday whilst riding her bike through Camden. Thus a long operation to sort and and clean up the mashed arm and a stay on the NHS in University College Hospital discovering the joys of morphine. Anyway she's home now and being looked after by family and friends. On Monday the proper cast goes on once the swelling reduces. It'll probably be a while before she's flying on her laptop or on her bike.

Anyway, the painting schedule has been put back a bit. But R is doing wonderful woodwork-y things with newel posts and staircases and kitchen units. We now have an oven! - another IKEA Bargain Corner find, along with two sinks, two sets of taps and a whole load of kitchen doors. So we do move along.

If you are getting bored with this blog, you have my deepest sympathies. I am getting bored with the blog too. "Here's a room with plasterboard.... here it is with skim on top of the plasterboard..... and, ooh look, here it is with cream paint on top of the skim." Multiply by the number of rooms and the reader will be falling off his perch with boredom.

So you're not going to get more pictures of the inside till I have something more interesting to photograph. The short version of the news is that the plasterboarding is more or less done, and we have ordered 60 sheets too many so if anyone wants a bargain.. Lee the plasterer has sloped off to do someone else's house but is due back next week which will coincide with me having a few days off work to cover house and self in paint.

I ordered a plumbed-in sink so that I could wash brushes and rollers in a larger-than-caravan-size sink and this meant hiring a digger, and digging not only the trenches but also a manky great big soakaway (2.5 x 2.5 x 1m) into which we have slung all the half-bricks and lumps of concrete which have been lurking about in the corner of the garden since a year ago when we demolished the garage. So one or two interesting photos:

Plasterboard and skim......R with the electric drill and Lee with the trowel.

checking dimensions is a full-time job

Not a lot to say really, except that every time I go in there's another room ready to paint. Now is the time for all friends to come to the aid of the party - we have plenty of brushes and rollers and we'll soon have the paint!

Anyway, here are the bedrooms, finished:

Louise's room

Emily's room

Kate's room

Our room complete with two toilets

Kitchen, complete with reclining plasterer and his apprentice.

Every day a new room...

or so it seems.

Here's a picture of Kate's room

looking very pristine.

Himself is doing all the hard work while I confine myself to taping building paper (very artistically) and painting windowsills - these are just two pieces of softwood in keeping with our policy of Keeping It Simple (i.e. cheap!)

Here's a better picture of the woodburner

People keep mentioning things like floors and curtains and what are we going to do about them, but, as I was saying to R today, just being in a big lovely house-we-built-ourselves will be fine by me!

Anyway tomorrow is the big day when Lee arrives to cover the place in a thin layer of gypsum.

Real snow this time.


Here's the new wall (and the gas bottles) looking very picturesque



Kate came to the rescue this weekend, like the cavalry but on a bike. Here she is doing high-level window sealing



and here doing the highly-skilled job of leaning-on-a-wall



while R fixes plasterboard in her room.



Here is the woodburner and its flue, newly installed