No blog last night, sorry about that but we didn't finish tiling and painting until 10.00pm and we were too tired to do anything but fall asleep as soon as we were finished. The whole crew worked very hard as they knew that on Friday the carpets were being fitted and the bed and settee were arriving. As for us we knew that we had to tile up to and over the fan outlet which in itself didn't give us a problem but Tom had fitted an opening in one of the walls so that we have a shelf in the shower wall for soap and shampoo. Getting all the tiles lined up around the edges and up the sides meant a lot of head scratching and in the end we decided to use one of the plain tiles from our bathroom for the base of the opening. We still didn't have time to fit the top row of tiles and now they will have to wait for another day.

Today was clean up day for all the group except John who had to fit the lights in both the downstairs bathrooms, wire up the fans and fit the bedroom and study lights. He managed to do it all although he was the last one to leave tonight and even so we never managed to resolve the garage issue. We almost had a catastrophe there as he went to the attic to check how thick the wire was and unplugged the cable and I didn't find out about it until 9.00pm when we came back to the house from our bonfire. Luckily the freezer was only off for a few hours so no harm was done.

The bonfire is still burning at 10.45pm tonight - yes we were outside working until 9.00pm again - only this time it was an attempt to get rid of the mountains of cardboard and waste that we have accumulated over the past 3 months. Over tomorrow and Sunday we have to go to the tip several times to get rid of our old carpet, and the bags and bags of rubble that the builders have left behind. This will still leave a huge mound outside that is unlikely to be taken away until harvest season is over - apparently the guy who owns the digger and trailer is a farmer and needs the equipment.

And so to the final two pictures, the first of which shows that we once more have gravel around the house as two bags were delivered today. We could really do with another one but that will wait until after we have reorganised the garden. The very last picture is outside our grand new extension and shows all the group that are responsible for the work. On the far left is the leader Tony, next to him is Tom, an ace carpenter, then Marcus who was as good as gold today and even asked me to help him on a couple of occasions, sitting down is Milo the dog looking up at his master Simon and finally on the far right in the yellow shirt is John the electrician. We gave them a small bonus before they left and they all said that if we had any problems we should just give them a call and they would come over. Tonight they are off to the Barbican for a celebration night out and then they are going to a casino, on Monday they go their separate ways with Tom and Tony off to France to work on Tony's 16th century cottage that he is restoring. Simon is returning to Chub Tor only this time he will be working at Higher Chub Tor fixing a small problem that Rachel has. Marcus is returning to a project that he was worked on previously and John has work in Princetown.

And that's it just under 13 working weeks since that digger arrived down our driveway. It has been quite an experience and for us it is not yet over. We still have mountains of finishing off to do other than getting rid of the rubble, mostly it is painting, wallpapering and tiling but we still have to reconstruct our bedroom shelving and wardrobes and decide what we are going to do about the downstairs flooring. If we have time we will probably take up what use to be the bedroom carpet and just leave it as floorboards so that we can get an idea what living with a wooden floor would be like - just something else to go to Crowndale tip. I may add a few more photographs as we finish off the rooms but don't hold your breath. Thank you for reading this blog and goodnight!