At last, we have some help on site . . . .

Here's our new helper - Peggy was quite interested in the pointing I was doing around the kitchen door.  Actually, she was more interested in eating the mortar I think!  She had previously been up nearly to the top of the scaffold tower to see what was going on up there.

The plumber didn't come on Thursday or Friday.  He's a nice bloke, but he's awful at organising his time, answering phone calls, etc.  I guess it's hard to know exactly how long a job will take and plumbers often have emergencies to attend to which must play havoc with schedules, but I don't think he quite realises what it's like at the other end of things trying to plan around him.  Anyway, he's promised he'll be here Tuesday morning.  So, we have been getting on with all sorts of little jobs that need doing before we can plasterboard.  Bob has put in two plywood window sills - we were going to have oak or something, but money's getting short!  Not really, it's not quite that bad yet - these sills are in the kitchen behind the sink and in the utility room, so they will be tiled.  It's surprising the difference a neat flat surface (even if it is only plywood) makes - just looks much more finished and tidy.  Bob cut right through the saw-horse doing one of those!  He did think it was taking a while to saw through the ply, but just didn't click!  So, we now have a slightly shorter saw-horse.  He has also done three pretend oak lintels.  As we have had to insulate the outside wall in the kitchen the wall is much further into the room than the original wall and so the original oak lintels will get lost in the wall, so we have put another (non-structural) piece of oak in front to keep the look.  The one above the door to the hall is to cover the metal joist-hangers and new concrete lintels.  That one was a bit tricky as it had to have cut-outs for the ends of the joists and he had almost finished shaping it when the end piece split off - aaarrghhh!  Again, this is just decorative and not structural so we just glued it back together.  The building inspector is coming on Monday to check the oak beams, etc - it'd be really funny if he thought that was a structural lintel that we'd glued together!  I helped Bob put it into place, but as we were trying to get it into place it felldown (think I'll have quite a bruise on my arm where I tried to catch it).  You've guessed it - the end piece flew off again as it crashed on the floor!  So now we've put it in place separately, glued and clamped it in place and will see tomorrow if it looks OK.  I have been doing a bit more studwork - all sorts of fiddly bits like the triangular pieces to the roof upstairs and round the window, pipes and cables in the utility room.  As you've seen, Peggy and I have also pointed around the kitchen and extension doorframes - they look much more part of the building once the join is covered up.  I mortarred in the ends of the latest oak beams in the kitchen and covered over the top of the bread oven (above it, not inside it).  The inside of the bread oven is a lovely brick dome, but on top of it is just filled in with rubble and dust.  So the layer of mortar tidies that up and we will be able to use the space between that and the ceiling as some sort of really awkward cupboard.  It is a good arms-length deep, but only about a foot high, so I think we'll have to come up with some cunning sliding thing for storing baking trays or similar.

We did give ourselves some time off this afternoon to watch England beat the pants of the Italians in the Six Nations - yeah!!  Last year we went to the pub in the village to watch the England/Wales match - although we are about three miles inside England, there was only us and one other chap shouting for England!  After watching this afternoon, we went for a walk around our 'estate'.  Spring is definitely in the air and all sorts of things are shooting up in the garden - I just wish I could remember what/where everything is.  At least then I'd have a chance of knowing whether the little green things are supposed to be there or are going to turn into some monster weed!  I made a ginger cake this afternoon (started at half time and finished after the rugby) so when we got back to the caravan, there was a lovely warm, gingery, cakey fug - that has to be one of the most homely smells I know, yum!

Boulders (Part II)

Yes, we were supposed to carry on with the stair hole on Thursday, but the weather turned quite cold, too cold for mortar and so we had to leave it until today.  It was also too cold to paint door frames, oil the inside of the door, plaster, etc, etc.  So instead we hung the front door (just have to be careful with wheelbarrows!) and put the kitchen door together.  It does seem strange to have a door to close at the end of the day.  Some friends came round this afternoon and knocked on it (at least the first people weren't Jehovah's Witnesses!).

Anyway, today we got on with the other side of the hole.  Bob went off to the shops for milk and a paper and then went to

borrow something from a neighbour, so I thought I'd make a start.  Half way through bashing away at the wall and pulling out big rocks I suddenly thought 'blimey, I would never, never have dared to do this sort of thing on my own before'.  By the time Bob got back, I'd broken though and could wave from the other side of the wall and we then got on with it together.   There were some quite big stones above our hole which we really wanted to stay in place and most of them did.  One was a bit loose though and would have been a pain if it fell out.  Luckily the wall strap (a metal strap we'd put in ages ago to hold the plate the rafters sit on in place) was in just the right place to screw into it.  So while I held the rock up and stopped it moving, Bob drilled a hole in it, put in a wall plug and then screwed the strap on, bent the strap underneath and, hey presto, the stone stayed where it was.  This also has the advantage of building the strap into the wall for extra strength.

Bob then built up under his side with bricks and we put the two lintels in, mortarred (?? think I've queried this spelling before and it still doesn't look right) them in and temporarily propped the stones above up with other stones.  Phew, no mishaps and we will now leave that all to set before we start bashing away at the stones below.

I need to ring Mum now and tell her she can come back from Swaffam.  Aparently, while they were building their bungalow, if anything scarey or dangerous was being done she would have to go into town because she couldn't look and she told me these lintels were one of those sort of jobs and she would've had to take herself off to Swaffam until it was safe!

The snowdrops are out!