It was a nice day today and Simon arrived wearing shorts and decided that he would start work on the outside rendering. Tom and Marcus concentrated most of their time adding plastic boards underneath the eaves and under the jiggle where the new roof supporting post is. I had a brainwave about this jiggle yesterday when I realised that it would be a good thing to have a light in there so that we could see to get around the corner in the dark nights. Many years ago when we lived at Catsbridge we bought two brass coach lanterns with PIR automatic lights and never used them. One of them has replaced the old light outside the side entrance and now the other one will be in this jiggle and will come on automatically whenever someone comes around the corner. If you enlarge the picture you can see the wavy lines that Marcus has put on the render so that the second coat will stick to it. What you won't be able to see are the two pictures that Marcus drew in the wet cement with comments in speech bubbles. These were originally on the far side but when I went to show them to Hilary I discovered that Simon had already scratched over them. You might also notice that the "doorway" through the bathroom window has been blocked up and is ready for Orchard windows to come and fit it tomorrow - we are hoping that they will fit the round window at the same time. Simon has plastered around it and that means that there is only one more wall in the master bathroom to plaster and we expect that he will do that tomorrow if it rains.

Tony made good progress with the plumbing today and the monster in the corner of the laundry room has been connected up and filled with water. We can't make it hot yet as the boiler still needs an oil and an electrical supply to make it work. I am a little concerned about the proximity of the system to the dryer, although Tony has made a pencil mark on the wall and assures me that it will just fit - of course we may have to take the washer out first, then fit the dryer and then put the washer back in - hey ho, that's life. Upstairs Tony connected up the shower head and control but when he tried to get the tub spout to send water up to the shower head he discovered that it leaked quite badly from the back. Apparently this was due to the fact that we have a metric copper pipe and an O ring that is imperial, Tony says that he has a couple of ideas to fix it and will give it another go. However you can see the extended shower head and the paintwork, the radiator and the general style of the new upstairs bathroom.

We gave Tony quite a shock today when we told him that we had arranged for the new carpets to be fitted on the Friday before we go on holiday - that gives them roughly 10 days to have the rooms ready and the skirting boards down. This shouldn't be a problem in the new upstairs bedroom but in our master bedroom Tony thinks that it will be too soon. If they concentrate on the inside over the next few days we think that it will still be OK although we recognise that we have quite a lot to do in that room ourselves. We made a start on it yesterday and today by scraping off some of the old woodchip wallpaper from the asbestos walls. Hilary did some last night and I continued with it today - it is a pig of a job as the steam doesn't penetrate the paint very well and so it takes two goes to get the paper off, the first effort loosens the top layer which can then be pulled off by hand and then the second effort takes the paper from the wall. No fun at all and we still have 3 more walls to go.

The last picture shows the study which has now had two coats of white on the ceiling and two coats of magnolia on the walls. It is pretty much ready to have the desks and shelves fitted and we will do that as soon as John has finished fitting the 13A sockets around the walls. The sockets and all the rest of the electrical fittings should arrive from Screwfix tomorrow as John and I spent some time yesterday and today walking through the rooms counting up how many switches, boxes and sockets that we need. It was quite a list but we found that it was much cheaper for us to buy them from Screwfix than it was for John to get them from his wholesaler.