Progress next door is swift currently - they’re working on the bathroom and now some of the downstairs rooms. Amazingly most of the first floor is plastered, fully wired and just waiting for the central heating! We have the start of a really nice new brick fireplace in the dining room - re-using some of the bricks taken from the two chimney stacks. It’s a great idea to fill the void where the range was and will make a real feature of that room. Elsewhere the downstairs loo is taking shape as definitely the smallest room in the house. Comedy moment was three Polish builders in there measuring exactly the distance needed for a man to stand back from the toilet in order to successfully deliver wee into a toilet. Hilarious!

I went round the house after work. The builders had gone home for the day. And the house was dark and cold. There’s nothing to beat the excitement of wandering the floorboards with a torch, getting to know the shadows, corners and characteristics of the house which I’ll one day live in and seeing what progress has been made. Quite a lot has been done today - the downstairs is now starting to come on. The living room has been plastered and the configuration of the dining and utility rooms is now finalised. Old doorways are sealed up, never to be used again and new ones are opened. Currently there’s a hold into the outside which will eventually be a window into the side-return, still to come. The bathroom upstairs is taking shape with the structure for the shower pipework and shelf below the window now in place. The bath should go in tomorrow. All in all, pretty exciting. We’re now pretty much half way through the refurbishment (loft and side-return still to come). The big jobs left are the central heating (and boiler), the bathroom and utility room fitouts and the flooring, plus the windows.

Some pictures, 4 full weeks into the refurbishment project: Cement mixer in the utility room: Bath arrives: Mind the gap: (two rooms make one) Spotlights: Fireplace ideas: Two doorways to go: Loftrooms: Upstairs taking plastered shape:

Bathroom floor going down:

Progress has been good this week - with the major rooms now all taking shape. The bathroom upstairs is now completely designed and the walls are being constructed as I write. Most of the fixtures and fittings are ordered and on their way too. Most of the piping for the radiators is also completed throughout the house. Now our focus turns to the utility room which will house the boiler and washing machine - because that’s a pre-requisite to getting the central heating in and commissioned. So we’ve done a design and are planning to stock it from Ikea sometime this week.

Now we’re off down the house to install some speaker wire in the living room and make some fireplace decisions.

The bathroom went through one final iteration and now we’re happy.

Got to get the bathroom purchased… o Miller bathroom cupboard - bathroomsuppliesonline.com £700 o qssupplies.co.uk - Kaldewei 1800mm x 800mm steel bath, no grips, no tap holes £335 with VAT and delivery o Bathstore fittings: + Cutie tap for downstairs sink £129 + 2 x Metro basin mono block mixer £139 (for two bathroom sinks) + Oki drencher head and shower arm £149 + 3 way shower thermostatic etc + Bath filler with deflector for concealed hose + Concealed hose on bath * – heated floor for bathrooms - research * – AEG fridges..