30th November

What a lovely suprise when we popped over to the house last night to have a look at the progress. There was a roof taking shape on the extension!! Think I mentioned before the the builders are away from 16th Dec until early January. This means that they will do a certain amount of the work beore they leave ensuring that we are all sealed in with hot water, heating and no holes in walls or ceilings. So while they have built the new wall and roof for the extention they will not take down the exhisting (previously external) kitchen wall. This means that the old kitchen will reamain in tact for us to use over Christmas but we will have a window in there that will now look out on the new extension rather than the garden!

Two gaps for our velux
windows!

As well as the extention suddenly looking like a whole building someone had also been keenly plastering upstairs. Where the stairs had gone in and all of the hallway walls have been plastered, It is completely amazing that all of a sudden the house feels like it has leaped forward 20 steps. There are a few new light fittings - actually the first time we have had a light in the upstair hallway since we moved in! - and this has transformed the place. The plastered walls and lights have brought the house to life and we could suddenly really see the house in a finished state. Great suprise for us. I got a bit over excited on the weekend buying paint samples (think that it is right of passage to over do it on these when your decorating!) so I am looking forward to trying a few of these out once the sanding has been comepleted.

So we really are nearly there on the upstairs. The bathrom - like the kitchen - will be left as it is until the new year as they need to knock down part of this to extend it slightly. But once the glass doerway for the roof arrives on 2nd December and we have painted/carpeted - we hare going to be 95% there with the upstairs of the house...just in time for Christmas.