I didn't expect to have much to say in tonight's blog and in fact there will be little in the way of description but there will be a lot of photos. We had a late start, Marcus arrived at 8.45am (with a black eye that I must ask him about), but no Sam - he does oversleep a lot and often Simon arrives without him - usually if Sam is late his mum brings him in but today he set off on his motorbike only to run out of petrol! Marcus came to his rescue and work commenced somewhere around 9.30am and what a noise they made, the task set by Tony was for them to remove the old asbestos walls and the ceilings in both bedrooms and with masks firmly secured they soon made short work of the smaller bedroom. These first two photos show the devastation that two blokes with wrecking bars can make in a very short space of time.

While Marcus and Sam were doing their thing Hilary and I were doing something very similar in the kitchen with the wall that backs onto the existing bathroom and that will one day be our new study. We also had asbestos to pull off as we plan to have this wall sheetrocked and then skimmed, but as always we had another great idea once the timber was exposed. If you look carefully at the top left of the picture you will see that there is a timber framed rectangle above what used to be a doorway. Our latest plan is to continue these rectangles across the next three sets of studding and turn them into stained glass windows that will let light into the new study. And what will we have in these windows you may well ask? Our first thought is that it will be a copy of the bath side panel depicting hippos at an African watering hole that our niece Beccy painted for me as a birthday present some years ago. We spoke to Paul the stained glass man today and he thinks that it is very doable so we may well go ahead. We also saw Paul's first idea for the round window and it looks terrific, the centre of attraction is a turtle with fish swimming around him and above him are yellow sands and gentle hills. We made a couple of suggestions that he has agreed to incorporate, instead of the original coloured fish near the turtle we have asked him to change it to a humuhumunukunukuapuaa and we have also asked him to include a white ribbon waterfall on one of the hills. Apparently the glass has been ordered, the plastic is being made now it is up to us and Paul to finalise the design and get it made.

While Marcus and Sam were at lunch Hilary and I went upstairs and took some photos of the new bedroom and tried to mark out where the new upstairs bathroom will be. It's hard to photograph and describe but I am standing in the corner of the new bathroom and the long piece of wood is where a new wall will be with a door in it leading to the extended bedroom. The metal broomhandle with the yellow tip is the doorway that leads into this new bathroom and the rectangle that this makes towards the left will be a small landing with a linen cupboard against the wall. See what I mean? You need a good imagination.......

The day ended with a start to the clear up inside and outside and when the trailer arrived Marcus soon realised that it was too high to just wheelbarrow stuff into it so he called up one of his friends and borrowed (hired?) a digger. Sam then barrowed all the old rubble into the digger bucket and then Marcus operated the digger to tip it into the trailer. These next two photos should show the boys toys. Tony had expected that the trailer would take all the rubble, both inside and out but this has proved not to be the case and we are expecting that the trailer will be emptied at 9.00am tomorrow morning and then returned for another filling.

The last photo was taken in the now cleared out bedroom after the workmen had gone. Hilary and I were admiring our new window when Rachel our next door neighbour turned up with her shopping list for tomorrow. We had a nice chat through the open window - a bit draughty - and then wended our way back through the maze of rooms, through the mud and then through the rain - yes we had sunshine and heavy, heavy showers today together with high winds - back into the main part of the house. You can't really see the garden from most of these photos but if you could you would see that the gazebo is not there anymore, it blew down in the wind last night and I am in the process of straightening out the metal tubes and super glueing the plastic parts so that it will be ready when Simon and the others start work next week. Incidentally Glastonbury is a sea of mud according to the radio, I hope that Tony and Tom took their wellies!