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.

I've bought some curtain material

After all this time joking about making the curtains, I actually bought some material for the kitchen windows today.  Now, how exciting is that do you think?  I will make a sort of Roman blind for the window by the sink and curtains for the dining end.  The material is apple-green gingham with little white daisies on it - quite cute really and very fresh-looking.

The electrician has been here today . . . . and the plumber . . . . . and the water tank delivery van . . . . . and a neighbour.  A bit chaotic this morning!  As I mentioned before, the sparky was coming as he had a free day and a half.  So he has now done all the lights and extractor fans and just has the underfloor heating to sort out tomorrow.  The plumber called round unexpectedly yesterday and after much complimenting us on the house, the woodburner, the tiling and so on, looked very sheepish and told us he couldn't come on Monday . . . . . or for a fortnight after that!  He has to go into hospital, so there's not a lot we could say really.  So, the plan was that he'd get the hot water tank (or heat store to be more precise - I'll explain in a minute) delivered this morning and he'd come and position it and the solar tubes controller and pump so the sparky could do the wiring if he had time.  He turned up, a bit later the delivery van turned up and they unloaded the tank . . . . . wrong one!  So that had to go back.  So then the plumber said he'd connect the electric shower so the sparky could wire that up if he had time.  He unpacked the shower only to find that it had been used - it was covered in water marks, there was a nut on the back that isn't usually included and you could see by the fixing holes that it had obviously been attached to a wall.  So that had to go back and the plumber went home.  How frustrating and we'll not see him now until the end of the month!

So, a heat store - because we have solar panels and a back boiler producing hot water we can't have an ordinary hot water cylinder.  We have to have a heat store.  It works in the opposite way to a normal tank.  The fluid from the solar tubes will run through a copper coil in the bottom half of the tank and will warm the water in the tank.  In winter, the hot water from the back boiler goes straight into the tank - that is the same water that the solar coil will warm, but is not the actual water that comes out of the hot tap.  The mains cold water runs through a long coil inside the tank and as it goes through it is heated by the already hot water in the tank.  So the water that actually comes out of the tap is at mains pressure (good for showers) and is freshly heated as you use it.  There will also be a traditional immersion heater for topping-up or for in summer when we don't have the woodburner going and the sun isn't in evidence.  Now, that's all very clever isn't it.  I hope I've got that all right . . . . well, it sounds convincing doesn't it?

Remember I told you about the rabbit hole in the middle of the leek patch that we emptied of baby rabbits and filled back in?  Well, next morning the hole was back again!  So we filled it back in again and next morning there it was again, so we filled it back in again and next morning . . . you've guessed it.  Persisitent little blighters aren't they.  This morning though, no sign of a hole, so maybe they've got the message.  We have lots of feathered babies around - Bob can barely keep up with filling the feeders!  There have been two baby nuthatches around most of the day, the young woodpeckers (at least two) and parents have been in the trees across the lane for the last few days as well as on the peanuts and there have been about 64 baby great tits on the peanuts almost constantly.  I know most people have stopped filling the feeders by now, but for purely selfish reasons we carry on - I just love seeing all these babies!