We had to get up very early!

Yes, we had to be up before 7am today . . . and because I knew that I woke up every two hours through the night thinking it was time to get up and, of course, fell into a real deep sleep at about 6.15am!  It was a very exciting reason to have to get up early though.

Look . . .

Yeah, we have a cooker.  We ordered it yesterday lunchtime from Appliances Online and they offer a very efficient service, and it was one of the cheapest, I can highly recommend them!  Free next day delivery - they place the order and then during the evening you get an automated phone call telling you which 4 hour slot your delivery will be in.  So at 9.45pm last night the phone rang with a message saying the cooker would be with us between 7 and 11 am and at 8.30 this morning two very friendly and efficient delivery men arrived, unloaded and were off again within 10 minutes.  Poor things had left Bury, Lancashire at 5am so I shouldn't really complain about having to be up early should I?  I'm dying to unpack the cooker, but while we're still doing building things in the kitchen it makes sense to leave it safely wrapped and padded - we did sneak a look at the top though.  It is a modern cooker that gives a nod to cottage style by being cream and having curved bits here and there.  It has a double electric oven and gas top which we will have to convert to bottled gas, but the kit for that should be included so it shouldn't be a problem.

Today, as the day has been somewhat longer than usual, we have got on with loads of bits and pieces.  Mostly the sort of things that only we will notice like boxing in pipes here and there and painting in the alcove above the bread oven.  I also coated the bare bricks, which looked very dry and dusty, with a mixture of linseed oil and turps in an effort to liven them up a bit.  It has certainly brought the colour out, but they now look a bit dark - we'll have to wait and see what they're like once the oil has soaked right in although I'm not sure what we could do if we don't like them!.

This afternoon we did some skimming . . . . we nearly had to come and read this blog to remind ourselves what to do!  I skimmed all the bits of pipe boxing (quite fiddly) and Bob did the fire surround in the kitchen (we cement rendered it yeasterday) and it looks completely different.  We now need to find some new tiles for down the sides and then we can decide what colour to paint the plaster - in the meantime, a coat of magnolia like everywhere else I think.  I really don't like the highly decorated Victorian tiles that are supposed to go round fireplaces, so it'll have to be something different.  We did see some really lovely tiles in Fired Earth a while ago, but at £25 a pop for the picture tiles (line drawings of chickens) and over £5 each for the plain ones we had to leave them!