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

SNOWED IN



I have been to work the last two days and each evening I come back to find the house transformed!! The Warmcel guys are now Officially Finished and the house is warm and cosy. Putting all this insulation in the internal walls has made a difference to the whole feeling of the house - it was never very echoey but now it feels more solid and soft.

The stuff being grey, it also looks like grey snow going in and a whole load of concrete blocks once installed. This is the other way of installing Warmcel - instead of being pumped inside the wall, we sheath one side of the stud wall and then the insulation is sprayed against it from the open side.



The first stage: the recycled newspaper is pumped in, and at the same a fine mist of water helps to set the Warmcel into the wall.


This is the second stage - the Warmcel is rolled flat



From the landing across the top of the stairs.



Kate's sunny room


The living room ceiling with added timber beam detail. The timber beam here is becasue we didn't want a steel beam, even though that would have been hidden in the ceiling. To get the strength using timber we had a deeper beam which shows - but we think it's a design feature! You can also see the underneath of the top of the stairs, which will be covered.



This is a video of the Warmcel bloke spraying sideways (just turn your head!)

Rooms taking shape........

The piano room, aka Louise's room



Emily's room - wardrobe corner back right



Looking out of the bathroom



R, imitating those guys who sit on high girders in New York, fixing the board around the stairwell




Emily's brilliant idea - to have a big space to light the staircase naturally. This is the wall between the staircase and the hall.

The inside is taking shape....

.... with every bit of plasterboard. We have hired a nifty piece of kit to help R - cheaper and less likely to hammer nails in the wrong place than a labourer.


Here it is - you put the board onto it and wind it up to the ceiling, then start on the lower part and screw it it - voila. Himself is aiming for 16 boards a day and did 10 yesterday - not bad for the first day. Plus he has to put some bits at a slant on the sloping ceiling.

What else? we now have first fix electrics and plumbing done and most of the ventilation system, seen here
- lots of shiny pipes, very lightweight and easy to fix. I have a bit of a tic about ventilation and so I'll be monitoring indoor air quality.

Wednesday
The ceiling for one side of the first floor is now complete, together with a hole in the ceiling for loft access from Emily's room.

HAPPY MOTHERING SUNDAY TO THE BEST MUM IN THE WORLD



These are photos of the view from all sides of the house, for my mum


First floor, south window looking left




First floor, north window




First floor, north window looking left




First floor, north window looking right




Ground floor, front door (east) looking right




Ground floor, front door (east) looking left




Ground floor, north window looking left




Ground floor, west window looking left




Ground floor, south window




Ground floor, south window looking left




Ground floor, south window looking right

The plasterboard came last week - tons and tons of it - about 370 sheets in total. We shifted more than half of it into the house and then gave up cos my shoulders started to grumble as did the floor joists.


I went away on a course for a week and when I came back all sorts of exciting things were happening. The place was hung about with electric wires like lianas in the jungle - the illusion heightened by the fact that the house is getting quite warm these days, with the insulation and all. The other morning I went in there at 8.30am - it was freezing outside - ice on the cars - and 14 degrees C inside. Result!!






R is having fun - he has lots of creative things to do which are making a big difference: hanging the building paper on all the external walls, putting in the ventilation system, organising the electricians and plumber and starting to put up the plasterboard. So the house is full of subbies, ventilation pipes, electric whatnots, piles of gypsum, the flue waiting to be installed and random bits of wood. What a difference a week makes.