OK all together now and scream "I WANT MY LIFE BACK!!!!!!" There isn't that better? Well actually not for us but then it must help a little bit.

It was a miserable day for weather as it poured down all day, even when we were walking around Tavistock where we had to go to the bank to collect the latest round of wages for Tony and the lads. We also visited Morrisons to get some groceries for Rachel and some tea bags for us. We finally shamed Tony into buying some teabags for the workers after he realised that Sam had been taking ours without asking. "I thought that ours were lasting a long time," he said before adding, "of course when we were working at Denise's she gave us doughnuts every day." I thought to myself that there was no chance of that happening at Middle Chub Tor.

Sam was away at a wedding today so Simon had to mix his own plaster as well as put it on the walls. As always Simon was very busy and completed the outer wall of the study (the inner of the kitchen), then set about preparing the archway for final plastering - he has actually straightened it up already with OneCoat plaster and it looks pretty good to us. Getting these walls ready meant that we did an awful lot of moving things around and both the cooker and the fridge plus the dryer were shunted to several different parts of the kitchen during the day.

The really good news is that we have a working loo upstairs and a working vanity unit - although of course cold water only and that is part of the frustration I had at the beginning of this blog. The lack of on tap hot water and electricity means that we can't use the dishwasher and everything has to be done in a small bowl or in the kitchen sink. It is also dark all the time because of the weather, and cold and the constant rain showed up the leaks that we have in both our old upstairs windows. One we have always had and know about, a small margarine tub in the roof space now catches much of that, the other leak is new and is from the window in the new upstairs bathroom. We didn't know about this one until just before the workers were clearing up to go home, I ran some water into the vanity unit sink to test it and Hilary noticed a damp patch on the new study ceiling downstairs. Cue panic all round only to discover it was nothing to do with Tony's plumbing but was a really bad leak down the side of the window that was causing quite a puddle in the roof space. In the end Simon stuffed it up with old blankets just to keep it safe over the weekend and Tony, Simon and Tom all said to call them if it became a problem over the weekend.

John made great strides with the electrics today and now we have six large holes in the ceiling where the new spotlights will go and he has also agreed that we can have one of our old coach lanterns near the back door. I am impressed with John, he can be a bit picky at times but he only has our best interests at heart and he is very thorough in his job.

The one person we are not sure about is Marcus who hasn't been with us since the episode with his migraine on Wednesday. We have heard that he has been offered some alternative work involving driving machinery, which is something that he really likes doing, so he may not be coming back to our job. I am also warming to Tom, who is a really laid back character, not so obviously hard working as Simon but he gets through the tasks very skilfully and he does have a great knowledge of the woodworking side of the building trade. Where Simon likes to chat about generalities while he is working, Tom is less forthcoming unless you ask him a specific question and then he will consider it and give a very considered reply. I think that we have a good building team and Tony is an excellent plumber as well as a good organiser of his team. However roll on the day when we have hot water and light! This weekend we have to clear some space in the old upstairs bedroom and move our bed etc into the new one temporarily so that John can get at the wires for the living room and conservatory lighting. I might also get a chance to try out my new power toy, an electric tile cutter, if we feel that the new upstairs bathroom walls are dry enough for tiling.

Well that's it, at least the midnight walk will be much shorter tonight even if we don't yet have a door on the bathroom.