Work on a Sunday...no, just having fun

A quiet weekend for us with not much progress to report in the house. We had some stone steps removed from the garden, which now allows us a much cleaner lawn area. We back-filled the holes left by stone removal with soil from the jacuzzi area. Yes the dream still lives.

Today, (dare I say Sunday) we decided to carry out a couple of tasks related to the fireplace. The fireplace was built some months ago, and since then the plasterer has been finishing around the fireplace. The problem that has arisen, is that the air vent covers do not fit correctly now, and we had to do some work to get them to fit. We also wanted to move the main cast iron feature door upwards about 10cm from its current position. This is one of the cast iron doors that we rescued from the old farmhouse oven. It is just lovely. Another task was to cut another hole to accept one of the smaller cast iron doors that also came from the old oven. A couple of weeks back, I was seduced into buying a lovely vibrating cutting machine. I tried it out in ernest today, and it was faultless. The new large door is now repositioned, and a new opening has been created for the smaller door...job done.

This coming week should see the completion of the plastering or very close, and more tiling happening. The second set of stairs should be in place on Tuesday, and I should be able to built the glass brick wall.

We are now making plans for a painting party.......watch this space.

Wall, tiles....

At last some tiles have been laid. The great event has taken place in Raphaels' bathroom, and they look pretty good. The tile layer has been preparing each bathroom for the past few days. This task involved building the walls for the toilet mechanisms and preparing the showers and draining slots.

Another piece of progress has been the construction of the main en-suite wall, and frame. This frame will house the glass block wall, which we will construct next week. Before we can build the glass into place, we need to take delivery of the new stairs. Once these stairs are in place we can bring the bath down from the floor above. The bath will then be lifted through the frame into the en-suite, as it is too large to go through the doors.

Following on from the cleaning out of the chicken shed, today we had a couple of tree stumps removed. I asked the trench digger to pop around and do the business. He also took out some garden steps. There are certainly some interesting carved stones in that pile to be explored, as some have numbers carved on them.

Dig it....

The trench and hole digging really got going today. This coincided with a powerful hail and rain storm. The deep hole that has been cut, is to house the new sewerage line, the new heating line and we think the electricity and telephone.

The tile layer arrived today, and has spent the day preparing the bathrooms for the tiles. We need to check our pattern designs tonight to ensure that we get it correct.

The long suffering plasterers are working to their conclusion. They have been completing most of the door recesses, and are about to close the last of the ceiling in the kitchen.

We have decided to leave some old cottage stones exposed, so we will need to go and mark the walls in the morning.

A whole lot of shaking goin on...

A bit of a weird day today. I visited the house at around 7:15am to have a quick chat with the plasterer, and the old full skip had been taken away, to be replaced by a digging machine. I presumed that this would be for the trench cutting which would begin on Tuesday.

On my return home in the evening, the trench work had already begun. The neighbors soon let me know that their house was being subjected to a terrible shaking. I feel a little sorry for them.

The plasterers continued to work today, and closed the window in the bathroom of Raphael.

Another piece of good news, is that we have received a good quote from a great painter.

Another day of progress.

It`s driving us up the wall

Today we spent some time in the garden of the house. The fruit trees are dropping their apples and pears, so we decided to harvest some of them. The apples will be taken to Gelterkinden, and squeezed for apple juice. I have promised my son Lewis that he can taste it when he visits Switzerland in January.

The afternoon was spent pointing the great wall. We managed to point over half of the brickwork, to a standard Les Harrison would be proud of. We really had to take control of this task, as the new stairs arrive on Tuesday, and the pointing would be more difficult with them in place.

Yesterday evening we drilled a hole through the wall of the guest room to run a cable for the satellite system. The drill bit was 90 cms long, and just made it through the wall.

The guest room is where Lewis, Thomas and Elliott will sleep when they visit, but it will also double up as our Tv room. The famous Harrison round sofa bed will be located in this room, and is mighty comfy.

The only way is up

Today has been interesting thus far. We completed the wall scraping from the great wall, and this was followed by the cutting of the floor in the workshop. The hole has to be created to accept the stairs that will be relocated from the first to second floor (these are being replace with much nicer open stairs).

Chainsaws always phase me a little. I think it is the length of the exposed spinning blade and the noise that does it, oh yes and the method of starting them. Anyway I plucked up the courage, but before cutting the hole I had to pop up into the roof of the workshop and remove quite a few roof tiles(we have stacks of these all over the house).

The job took a few minutes to complete, but it left me filthy dirty with dirt and old dust, as well as sawdust.

The tiling from yesterday is but a distant memory. I now need to turn my hand to tile cutting. The cellar, come laundry, does not have a 90 degree angle between any of the walls. This will necessitate lots of cutting.

The plasterers are still working their way around the house. The quality of their work is superb.

I must now get cleaned up before the architect arrives to discuss the budget. This should be a fun meeting.

The Great Wall of....Reggie

What a day. Reggie has been cleaning the old mortar from the wall in the stairway, and the great news is...the task is complete. The job has been quite difficult, with differing hardnesses of mortar. We tried the technological approach but this failed, so it was with old hand tools that the job was completed.

Downstairs the task of sanding the beams in the hallway and kitchen is now complete. (It is nice to tick these as completed on our huge to do list).

The plasterers are going strong, and some rooms should be ready for painting next week.

Tomorrow is tile laying day in the laundry. This should be fun, as no wall is related to a 90 degree angle in any way.

It is great to work in the kitchen where the light streams in through the French doors.