More Colour....

The painting continues.....

Sitting room with side walls done in Rum Caramel.

Our bedroom in Ginger Glow. You'll need to bear with us with this room as this colour doesn't do it justice at the moment.

The study in Jade White.

We now only have the feature walls to do so that'll be a day next weekend and then the painting will be done.

Then it will be on to glossing the skirting and architrave.

In other news, we now have lights in the garage and utility and the sockets also work.

Sock-et To 'Em!

When the weather has been bad and we can't do any bricking, we have been doing the electrics. We have installed the mains socket ring to the bedroom 3, the study and hallway, the lounge and the main bedroom. This has taken less time than we imagined and Darran has learned a fairly broad range of contortionists skills from scrabbling about in the roof space! That is where he was a few weekends ago when it was really hot!

We're currently doing the lighting circuit, starting in the sitting room. It's going really well. I have the important job of watching the reel of wire as it unrolls to make sure it doesn't all slip off the end and become tangled. Every little helps.

So, all the little bits are coming together.

Still Soldering On

It's a month to the day since we last did an update. This hasn't been because we have been slacking off, it's just that what we've been doing has been pretty much the same for the last month - plumbing!

The hot and cold water loops are complete on the bedroom wing which is the most complex as it has the bathroom and ensuite. Now over to the living area and kitchen and cloakroom, and then across to the utility room. It has all gone really well and Darran has done a great job considering he hasn't ever done this kind of thing before.

The soldering of the joints has gone to plan. The real proof will be in the pressure test. No fires with the blow torch either, not even small ones (other than a slight charring of the flux brush)!

In other news, we now have electricity in the house which is a big tick. We have an isolator switch in the garage which is connected to the meter and have laid armoured cable (or ****** armoured cable as it was known pretty soon after we realised how difficult it is to do anything with) across the breezeway and into the lobby area to a consumer unit. We can now get on with the electrics when the plumbing has been completed.

Having A Rest

It's been quiet on the blog recently. The weather has put the shutters on the work for any length of time because it has been so cold. We have managed to do some more bricking and have finished sticking the bricks around the garage plinth ready for pointing.

Thanks to Gramps who noticed that in our first section of bricking the bond was wrong. The lines of mortar join up on the left hand side of the picture which they shouldn't do. If this was a 'real' brick wall it wouldn't be very structurally sound. So, Dad was the Bad Cop and broke the news last week. Darran took it quite well in the end, realising that he had been thinking about the brick system as a jigsaw puzzle rather than a brick layer building a brick wall. And from then on it has gone a lot better....we hope, unless you've spotted anything else Gramps?!!

We haven't worked on the house physically since Christmas, we decided we needed a break. Darran has been researching the electrics and plumbing and seems to have got on well there.

For now though, wishing everyone a Happy New Year and thanks for your interest this year. Much more to come next year.

Sparking!

Yesterday we spent all day sorting out what sockets, lights and light switches, phone points, and TV points we wanted in what room and where. This took a surprisingly long time as although all this was marked on a drawing from the architect, we still wanted to walk though what they had done and we added and changed a few things along the way.

We can now talk to an electrician and get a quote for the labour only work. We're still in two minds about whether to do the work ourselves or have an electrician in to do it. The problem with doing it ourselves, or so we thought, was certification of the installation work and final connection. Now the electrical regulations have changed an electrician won't sign off work he hasn't done himself. However, Building Control will, so this does still give us the option to do it if we want to.

It was really nice to talk about actually living in the house rather than the construction aspect. A bit disappointed that we couldn't finish staining but it was too damp.

Update on the cat repellant crystals - Wem Urban cats are obviously a hard ring to crack as they are not in the least bit repelled, hence cat mess on top of the cat crystals yesterday morning. Ever get the feeling you're being laughed at?