Yesterday I took down the kitchen tiles as John said that he needed to run some new wires to replace some old ones that I had wired in that were too small. Today after much sucking of teeth he decided to use my old wires and just run a new one between the two and that I only needed to remove about 4 tiles - too late, as I had taken them all down. After he changed the wires he came upstairs where Hilary and I were tiling and said, "OK I've changed the wiring, if you put the new tiles on now I can put the sockets up." Hilary laughed and explained that new kitchen tiles were not even on our radar and that the sockets will have to go up on the wall without the tiles and they might even stay like that until September.

Our priority today was to complete the tiling in the upstairs bathroom and we nearly completed that task as the first photo shows. After much measuring, and even with the use of Tom's laser level, we drew lots of horizontal lines and realised that it would be better to have the tiles lining up over the top of the window rather than over the top of the bath and this worked out pretty well. To cover up the area between the bottom of the window and the top of the bath we will buy some smaller mosaic type tiles and that way we can have a contrast without having to worry about the joins lining up.

There was plenty of progress on the other rooms today. Simon completed the plastering in our master bedroom and Tom and Marcus screeded the floor in the master bathroom, shown in the second photo, as well as filling in the gap in the floor between the kitchen and the living room. Tony actually made a start on getting the new boiler and hot water tank connected up and so we have a new 4" hole in the laundry room wall for the boiler flue. More importantly he connected up the water to the refrigerator so hopefully ice is being made as I type! John has put the basic wiring in for the cooker, the refrigerator, the hob and the igniter for the gas hob. This is the only bit of surface wiring in the house now but as it is mostly hidden behind the cooker and fridge it is hardly noticeable. John still has to wire in two more sockets in the kitchen, two sockets in the laundry room and run a separate wire for the immersion heater backup. Then hopefully he will be finished and we can start using some of the world's energy resources again.

Earlier today we realised that every room in the house now needs redecorating as Simon and Tom have managed to tear small pieces of wallpaper off every wall as they took things down. We also realised that there is no chance that we will be able to get our wooden floors laid before we go away on holiday, so that means that no skirting boards can be fitted in the downstairs rooms (apart from the master bedroom which will be carpeted). All in all we will have our holiday and then come back to an incomplete house. All because once upon a time we thought that it would be nice to change our old bath for a shower! "C'est la vie," as Tony would say when he is working on his villa in France. See you Monday.