Finished!

The floating bench top is finally floating. The splash-back can now be splashed. The wrapper is off the stainless steel. We have bar stools.

It looked like this for about 5 minutes before the children tipped lego over everything.

The sitting room is also nearly there. Martin helped with picture arrangement and Rob hung them. Note my new faux-copper lamp shade in the corner by the window - I love IKEA!

The bathroom is also finished, complete with shower screen.

The children are enjoying their big bubble baths again.

I also have my gorgeous light fittings up in the hall and our bedroom.

A happy home :-)

Kitchen of sorts and warmer

We kind of have a kitchen, a week later than I was led to believe. Still no work surfaces...

This is where the fridge, cooker and hob will go:

This is the island bench with ply bookshelves on either end:

This is the ply desk where I fantasise about clean, well-behaved children doing their homework....

The other major development has been the installation of ducted gas heating - a life changing investment that has taken the edge off getting up in the night to resettle Freddie or return Florence to her own bed. There is a vent in each room with a big return vent in the kitchen - cosy!

Ian has also finished rendering the fireplace, which now looks pretty impressive...

I think we are now a week and counting until the kitchen is finished, and it really can't come too soon. The temporary arrangement is really starting to get me down.

And we've still got so much unpacking to do - it's hard living in half building site, half storage centre.

 Anyway, at least some people are happy...

I'm so nice and warm!

So am I! 

Waiting and freezing

The bad news: we still don't have a kitchen. The good news: cabinets are installed on Tuesday. The bad news: worktops will be another two weeks.

I have not enjoyed the last week very much. It has been bitterly cold, which is hard when your window insulation strips have not yet been fitted. There still seems so much to do on the house and I can't make any of that happen. In a fit of frustration, I tried to take some window bars off so I could paint the window in my tiny sewing room (actually it's a cupboard with a window) but even this seemingly small task involves industrial strength bolt cutters or hours with a hacksaw.

But enough moaning. There is sufficient progress to warrant a blog post and no kitchen means we can scoot indoors!

I'm sure this picture looks just the same as the previous one to you, but I know the ceiling has been replaced, the tiles grouted and the bathroom cleaned.

It will be nice to get back to bathing the children although Freddie is having super fun in the shower.

Rob's shed is finished, including roof.

The deck has a balustrade (which got horizontal bars today, but too dark to get a photo).

I opened up the fireplace in the sitting room to find this.

Hmmm. Nothing to get too excited about and in a godawful state to paint over. My lovely-but-expensive painter, Jonny Gloss (yes, really), will charge me an arm and a leg to strip all the bodged render off it, so I have decided to have it totally rendered. I'm not a big fan of painted brick and I think this will be a cheaper and smarter finish. Fortunately my neighbour, Ian, across the road is a renderer and a good Plymouth boy so he's doing it for a special price and the promise of a pasty once the kitchen is in.

I don't think I ever posted photos of the stirling work Jonny did on the front bedrooms. He returned the ceilings to their soaring glory.

And painted Flossie's bedroom wall a lovely shade of pink (Dulux Lily Legs).

He is back next weekend to paint the sitting room - apart from the worktops that should be the last thing to be done.

In the meantime, Rob has been busy in the garden. He has built the children the world's biggest sandpit. We can have the whole 4 year old population of Clovelly over for a play. It's gone down well with the Bean and the Bear.

Building site living

The camera is still AWOL, so apologies for crappy phone photos. There has been a bit of progress this week - the bathroom is now tiled...

The washing machine is plumbed in (yay!)...

The deck is finished, although not fenced and we have steps into the garden...

Our lemon tree is cranking lemons. Rob cut down the vine that was strangling it today and harvested a great big tub...

It is a pity we have no kitchen, so I can't do much with them. We have made a temporary sitting room/kitchen from what will be Freddie's room. I filled up the freezer with stuff before we moved and have been supplementing it with takeaway and pasta cooked at Libby's house.

This is the posh bathroom that was renovated by the previous owners. It has a double sink and double shower, which is handy as one is currently serving as our kitchen sink.

We are pretty much unpacked in the four rooms we can use and it is really quite comfortable. At least we all have our own bedrooms, although Freddie is currently sleeping in the building site in his tent. The kitchen people came to take measurements on Friday and I ordered my appliances, including my one splash out - a Neff double oven. This week should see the back of the plumber, electrician and gyprocker as well as finished deck fencing and shed roof. 

The building site

So, while we were away my builder, Gavin, and his team tore our new house apart. As you can see in these photos, he removed some internal walls, a shower room (see concrete floor area in bottom right of following photo) and some horrid aluminium windows.

All the external walls of the old 1960s extension were stripped as they were made from asbestos.

Then they knocked a larger doorway between the back room (which will be the kitchen/dining room) and the sitting room. You can just see this on the right of the next photo. The walls have been trued-up with plasterboard.

And the windows have been replaced with nice wooden ones:

The old kitchen has been ripped out and replaced with a bathroom (tiles still to be grouted):

New weatherboard replaces the sad old fibro:

Rob has a new shed (although no roof yet) and the frame for the decking is up:

 

This is our view now that we have chopped down some trees. It actually looks a bit more impressive than this in real life.

If we built up, it would look even better, but need some more money to fall off the tree first...

Taken by Rob standing on a ladder

I've got some good pictures of the bedrooms now they are painted but they are on the camera that has been mislaid in the move. When it reappears, I will do another post, including our make-do-and-mend kitchen. We are at least six weeks off eating any food that requires a saucepan to cook.