A Work In Progress

It's chaos round here! Everything is on top of everything else, and covered in dust and rubble and plaster and tea cups.

The plaster from the new damp proofing is still two-tone, but seems to be nearly dry now. Well, visually, at least - we won't dare decorate for another couple of weeks, at least. My beautiful hall, stairs and landing have taken a battering, but will look fantastic when re-decorated, carpeted and damp-free! Here is a picture of the stairs as they looked this morning. If you look near the bottom, you can see the dark smudge of wet plaster.

The kitchen is also looking very, very scary. The units have been ripped out and are currently piled up in the garden (we'll be taking them to the tip today. Joy!), the damp-proof plastering is still slowly drying, the wall tiles have been knocked off and carpet ripped out (yes, I had a carpet in the kitchen. It was green. It was supposed to be green, but wasn't supposed to have brown stains from all the food spills that you would expect in a kitchen. It was lovely.)

Here is one end of the kitchen. That's the washing machine floating around the middle of the room. It isn't plumbed in. I hope it won't be long before it's plumbed back in, or I'm not sure what I'll do for clean knickers and work clothes. In front of the washing machine is my washing up bowl. It's in the kitchen because I was using used washing up water to clean the cooker before free-cycling it. I will take it back upstairs to the bathroom shortly. Our dishes are being washed in the bath for the time being.


All the various holes, bumps and lumps have been fillen in and levelled out, although there is still some wallpaper to be removed. The electrician has sorted out new plugs and sockets. The plumber has done his first bit, including re-routing a gas pipe that was taking a tour around the periphery of the kitchen. Did you know that if you plumb in a gas oven under upvc windows, that the heat from the cooker will melt the window sill? Whoever put in the old kitchen didn't. So the window surrounds have also been removed, and tidied up with patching plaster ready to be replaced. We've had new skirting, too. The plasterer's coming on Monday, so it will look less like a building site when I come home from work tomorrow.

This is a picture of the other end of the kitchen. Look at the lovely new skirting and door frame to the pantry. I'm not changing the boiler, though - too expensive! Again, see the wet plaster along the bottom of the wall.


It's all looking very scary. But not as scary as our temporary kitchen / study / living area / dining area / storage area (previously known as the living room).



And lovely, clever J built a side gate. It's very large and very robust, and is very, very brilliant. Here he is, being all proud (and rightfully so). We hope that the gate will be enough of a deterrent that local skallywags won't steal any more wheelbarrows etc. from the garden. It will also be a good plus-point for selling the house.


No crafty pics or updates, I'm afraid - maybe when everything's settled down a bit. I don't really want my cross stitching to get covered in plaster dust - I'm sure you understand :o)