There've been three days of tidying up. The front door has been sanded down and re-varnished. The outside of the extension has been cleaned. Even the driveway has received a bit of pressure washing. The only serious work remaining on the main extension is ours. I've yet to complete the windowsills, and we've got paintings to hang and the furniture ( Read more... )

The stove fitter returned to deal with the blistered paint. We'll need to repeat the four hour baking in process. As that needed good ventilation, we'll do thatt when we can have all the windows open. Hopefully, this time, the paint won't blister.

Last Monday the front steps were completed. As expected they look a little patchy, but the local climate will probably see to that fairly soon.

On Wednesday the stove fitter returned to commission the stove. He lit it, and we kept it alight for the four hours supposedly necessary for the paint to bake on. On Thursday morning we spotted a poroblem ( Read more... )

There's been a lot of tidying up outside. The top of the window frame was completed yesterday, and that's made a huge difference to the appearance of the house. Right at he beginning the short wall along one side of the front steps was partly removed to make space for the foundations, and then the rest of it was removed so that the rainwater ( Read more... )

Day eighty-eight was just over a week ago, on Tuesday March 9th. A lot happened. The remaining soffits and fascias were fitted, and one rather ugly join was tidied up significantly. The huge hole in the front garden was mostly filled with gravel, covered, and then back-filled with soil. The wood-burner was installed. That which involved the ( Read more... )

The floor itself is now done, and looks great. The skirting and thresholds still need doing, but we are making progress.

I'm keeping an eye on the boiler pressure, just in case there was some damage done this morning, as the first hint of trouble would likely be a drop in pressure. Fingers crossed...

That was way too close! There's been some back and forth about the setting of the hearth stone. A concrete pad supposedly big enough for it had been laid before the under-floor heating pipes were laid. Today they discovered that the pad wasn't quite big enough, so they started enlarging the hole. If they'd asked me I could have told them just how ( Read more... )

Yesterday a little tidying up of the lower edge of the plaster was done. Unfortunately that means there'll be some more painting needed, but it's progress.

Today the carpenter set to work on the floor, and by this evening about half of it was laid. It's looking very promising. The half that remains to be done may well be slightly more complicated,

Yesterday morning a digger arrived, and the day was spent digging a large hole in the front garden for a rainwater soakaway. A strict reading of the rules would say it needs to be 2 metres on each side and 2 metres deep, but the garden's on a bit of a slope, and the sub-soil is quite porus, so something slightly less deep has been deemed sufficient ( Read more... )

...was Tuesday. There's been work on some of the smaller details, like the gap between the wall and the windowsill outside. There are now fewer places where weather can get into the structure, and given the weather's turned wet recently, that's a good thing. There are still issues, but fewer of them.

Inside, most of the painting has been done. There ( Read more... )