Right, this is going to be a quick update and a few photos.  It's getting late and I've been at work, but I realise it's ages since I updated this.  So, what have we been doing since Elvis departed?

Well, we had a good day in the garden - as well as burying a chicken alongside the other four and a squirrel (which Bob dug up by accident when he was preparing Elvis's final resting place!) - we spread the last of our horse manure round the fruit trees, put some two year old leaf mould on the very clayey border outside the end bedroom and weeded and dug over the little veg plot.  We also dismantled the compost bin and took all the lovely stuff from the bottom (neither of us have ever made such lovley looking compost before!), re-mantled (is that the opposite of dismantled?) the bin and put the latest stuff back in for next time.  All jobs we've been meaning to do for a while.

Bob has done most of the panelling to hide the tanking in the
end bedroom.  Within hours of getting this far he was using it
as a shelf!

He has also started on the panelling the other side of the wall
to hide the homemade tanking.  The frame is up for it and he's just
started putting the tongue and groove on.  The first bit takes ages
because that goes against the stone wall so has to be shaped to fit.

This is our media centre!  This is where the TV will go in the
lounge, so lots of sockets needed as well as ariel, IT and phone.
We were going to set all the boxes into the stone, but it's impossible
to get them all level/parallel, so we decided this was easier and neater.
We'll hide it later with a cabinet or something.  We were quite impressed
with ourselves for remembering to hide some speaker cables in the walls,
we're not usually that good at this forward thinking business!  The electrician is coming to 2nd fix in here on Monday so this need to be done by then as
there are sockets and switches in the panelling.

Bob has also built the step from the end bedroom into the
lounge and this is him NOT using it as it wasn't quite set at this
point.  The top step will have a brick facing and they will have
wooden tops . . . eventually.  We have a few steps like this and
this is the first one where we've thought to sink some bits of wood
into the concrete to give us something to attach the wooden top to
. . . . it's also the last step we need to do.  See, I said we weren't good at
this forward thinking! 

While Bob has been doing all this and in between M&S work, I've been hiding cables in the stone walls by pointing them in.  I've also had two days in the batloft sorting out one of the walls.  It will be painted, but needed tidying up (raking out and re-pointing/plastering)  considerably in readiness for that - no pictures of that because I was busy doing it!  It's quite cramped up there and at one point I couldn't stand properly because my knee just wouldn't work for a while!

We have also filled in a form from the council about energy efficiency - it's a requirement of Building Control that we get this energy rating form done (by paying the council £180!).  Now, I can understand that it's a good idea to get developers building lots of new houses to fill in these forms and pass energy efficiency 'tests', but somehow it seems a bit of a waste of time in our sort of situation.  For example, one question asks about the percentage of draft proofing?!  The house has two chimneys and Building Regs insist on 4" holes drilled into bathroom, utility and kitchen walls for extractor fans, so it's not going to be that draft-proofed.  What do you expect your pressure test reading to be???!!!  We don't expect it to be anything because we don't expect to get one done.  Who wants to live in a hermetically sealed house anyway?  I've seen pressure tests done on TV where they pump air into the house and measure how much leaks out - OK for the new passive houses (which probably are hermetically sealed), but pretty ridiculous in an old house!  Now then, calm down Janet.  Anyway, we've sent that off and just said we didn't understand the above questions - we'll see what they say.

I still haven't heard if I have a job after next weekend - my Manager said they'd try to let me know next week? !  Guess that'd be useful!

Enjoy your weekend and the lighter evenings from Sunday.