14th - 20th June 2010

Another week started with the builder and his mate back on board and a bit of sun at last, although it was still a bit chilly. They made good progress and installed the last two windows that had just arrived.


And Dave started on his mammoth task of painting the battens. Ten down ...

gazillions to go!

Tuesday was the coldest, wettest day ever but on Wednesday the sun returned, which eased the job of putting the cladding on the gables.



And inside a bath had arrived along with various plumbing fittings.


And at last they replaced the top of the septic tank that had been driven over and smashed.

BUT, I sensed the start of the fourth Great Painting Disaster, although its not strictly painting but most likely a disaster. The concrete men came to try out etch the concrete floor in a test area to confirm what colour we wanted. The first areas they did turned out bright orange so they came back with three new colours, coffee, caramel and ebony. They applied these one day and they looked promising (and sounded yummy) ...

... but when they came back to wash off the excess and polish it, nothing was left of the caramel or coffee and rather too much was left of the ebony.

Round and about, we noticed that the sandhill that is currently being worked had shrunk to a fraction of its former size and we should soon have a much better view of the river.

Thursday and the glaziers came and added the glass to our two new windows - at last I can see out of the soon-to-be-kitchen.

Now doesnt that look nice (apart from the mottly colours on the cladding)!

And preparations were made for the garage door.

Friday and Richard the mate was away and Neil spent most of his time planning the finer details of the rest of the job. Numerous decisions were made about the architraves, the doors, the cupboards, the TV aerial and we had visits from the door woman, the TV man and the concrete men(again), who were rather bemused about the lack of resulting colour last time and did yet more test areas. We're running out of areas for them to use.

Saturday and the real attempt on the battens hotted up. Dave had been doing a batch of up to 40 2.7m battens each day but with a bit of thought, another pair of hands, and full access to the garage, the process was streamlined and we managed to prime 3 faces of a further 58 5m battens in about 3 hours.