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Tuesday they finished the rendering on the outside of the house, just needs a coat or two of paint now.

They also removed the back door and put in the opening for the new kitchen window.

As you can see, the kitchen is pretty much unusable, although that’s mostly because it’s covered in a thick layer of dust every day. We’re resorting to microwave meals and pot-noodles, which are not as nice as they used to be 10 years ago when they were a staple of my diet.

The guys have now built the new lounge wall so it’s not one huge open space downstairs any more (well, unless you count the lack of door). The steels have gone into the ceiling cavity and are being bricked in tomorrow, then welded together before the inspector comes to check them. There’s one more to get into the lounge, at the back for the French Windows, which is causing some pain as the outside has been rendered over the old pebble dash, which is proving difficult to remove.

I was chatting to the lads trying to figure out where the water main ran under the house, so we can figure out where to put the water softener. We went outside to find the stop cock. Quick prod around revealed it’s probably full of cement from when the steps were build beside it, but it also had a frog down there. They weren’t happy about leaving it there (big softies) so then spent 20 mins in the rain trying to get it out.

Quote from two of them during the escapade:
“It’s stuck to the floor.”
“Course it is, gravity will do that”.

Finally they got it out with a couple of bits of wood, and it’s now lurking at the bottom of the rosemary bush.

I think this is about the point at which we stop living in a house, and start living in a building site. They started downstairs today; we spent the weekend packing up and moving everything from the lounge that we could, and as much as we could from the hall/kitchen area.

This was what greeted us this-evening when we returned – a couple of pit props holding up the lounge roof and a gaping hole where there was a wall (and radiator) this-morning.

And inside what was once a separate room, there’s more pit props, a few bits of now redundant central heating pipe and a socket that clearly won’t meet building regs, given that it’s just hanging around on the wires from the floors.

Thankfully I moved the telephone socket over the weekend so that didn’t get trashed, and it means we also have the internet – so we still feel part of society, even if we’re living in a sty.

We’re starting to wonder when our last meal cooked in the current kitchen is going to be – the only warm room to eat in now is the bedroom, and the cooker is about the only useful heating system we have downstairs.

It’s been a while, but I was in Tokyo for a week and then didn’t get to see the house in daylight when I had the camera to hand for a bit.

So, the roof frame was built, eventually covered in weatherproof tyvek and the hole where the window will go was boarded up – it’s not a very good insulator on it’s own is that tyvek and board – house is now very cold.

They started to take the inner wall down now that they’ve done the brick work. Window still in place though (this was just after I’d returned from Tokyo). All the rubble is plied up inside the bedroom as we don’t have a skip outside yet.

The old kitchen roof is still there, with the new one above it. Lots of natural light in the room during the daytime, bit dark and cold at night.

You can just about make out the top of the new roof poking over the top of the scaffold (a taller photographer would have got more in). Not yet tiled yet as we haven’t seen the samples at this point.

From the front you can see that it already looks better, with the flat roof gone and a nicely tied in roof replacing it. The tiler has started to re-use some of the tiles, but the ones from the kitchen roof are a different shape and colour so they can’t be used easily on the front – going to have to choose some different ones.

Friday morning the scaffolder arrived and put in the ’second lift’ which allows the builders to finish off the block work on the bedroom. They arrived in the afternoon and got on with that, meaning they don’t have to turn up on Saturday now.

The snow has now cleared in the back yard so you can see all the tiles lined up ready for putting on the front of the house when the new roof is complete. The water butt is now upright, thanks to the builders, and will drain out once all the water inside defrosts.

Also had a look at how we would lay out the bedrooms once it’s all complete and have come to the conclusion that we may need to move an internal wall in order to get the en-suite into the main bedroom without that bedroom becoming too small.