New Floors!

After the pipes are laid, the guys screed them over on a Friday so it will dry over the weekend - I am visiting with some friends and we're told in no uncertain circumstances not to walk on the floors no matter how dry they seem, so I manage to take some photos hanging in the door, hence the odd angles....  but they look great and the house is now showing real progress.  My friends Jakki & Paddy saw it 6 months ago and can see significant differences which is a huge relief!

Pipes, pipes & more pipes

The team start laying the pipes for the underflow heating in the kitchen & the snug - around 500m of pipe in total!  My feet should be toastie warm under this lot.  I did wonder about telling them that some of the pipes weren't quite 100% straight.........but decided better not too!

More kitchen work

They raise the head height of the door coming into the kitchen from the hallway and remove the hideous old fire surround

A new woodstore

As part of the outside work, the wall, which is in a bad state and beginning to crumble is going to be re-built and we take the opportunity to also re-build the outside woodstore - they plan to increase the door height to make it more useable and I'll use it to store wood and outdoor furniture etc

Moving the under stairs door

In what will be the downstairs utility/shower room, there's an under stairs cupboard and we move the door which would, if left where it is, be in the new shower

Outside stonework

While we enjoy the last of the glorious Indian summer, the guys work outside.  All the pointing has to be dug out and replaced as it's of poor quality and not a good colour - it looks grey against the lovely honey coloured stone.  The two photos at the bottom show it once they've finished raking it out.  Of course, having done this, they now have to re-point it - suspect that'll take a whole lot longer than removing it.

Kitchen

They continue to work on the kitchen - it's going to be a good sized room - about 4.5m x 7.5m.  The room has two levels of ceiling as it goes up into the space on which the en-suite bathroom sits (due to the presence of a large, immoveable beam).  The photos below show the higher height and in the first one you can also see where the ceiling level goes up.

I go to see a kitchen made and installed by Mark the carpenter and really like it (phew), so we begin work to finalise the kitchen design which is really exciting.  I show it to a few people who all approve (perhaps they're just being nice) but I'm happy with the layout etc.  Now I need to decide on colour.  The units will be made of tulip wood and painted.  I'm painting lining paper with lots of different colours and this week's favourites are a light taupe and a pale french grey.  It's a dilemma, but thankfully I don't need to decide for a few more weeks.

I'm planning to have a tiled floor with tiles that look like wood flooring and also have to think about the wall tiles - so still lots to do.  I wonder if the Aga, which was ordered last Christmas, will go in before the end of the year - I do hope so