Close, but no cigar!

THe question on many people's lips is 'So will you be in for Christmas?'.

The answer is 'yes, we could be, but we're not.' .

We've made great progress - working flat out but despite technically having met all the requirements of what must be in place to be habitable, we're going to hang fire until the house is 'more ready'- after all, we are in no rush and there is no pressure to move until we are ready.

By the end of the year we will have two shower rooms and two bedrooms to complete.

Carpets went in most of the rooms this week and look great - some pics before they get sheeted over. Dad helped us with all the skirting before the carpets went in, a huge help and saved us a lot of grief down the line. Steps down to the rooms were finished in the nick of time and look rather good despite the simple construction method and materials. Craigs' Mum came down and helped with painting the staircase and sweeping and chipping plaster from the floor.

The phone box has it's own special plinth

And we've started tiling...

The list gets smaller...

A few weeks ago we produced our 'critical path' list of activities to let us get into the house. Some weeks down the line and the list is getting smaller..

We have heat, electrical approval, terrace, lighting, steps to the house, internal steps, hot water, ventilation, stairs, handrail, doors, internal sills and more

We have a glass ballustrade

We have steps to the house. And external lighting!

We have heat

We have stairs

We have a terrace and IR heater

Internal lighting is complete

Garage roof complete!

So we booked the concrete pour and the weather was to be cold but dry. Then we started seeing the usual silly media stories on 'Storm Caroline' - oh joy! 60mph winds and heavy rain all day - although it was to be relatively warm!

Because of the proximity to the road we opted again for a line pump rather than a boom - also the boom pump would most likely have blocked the road. SO concrete all ordered, volumes calculated, cross calculated, calculated again and again and 19m3 was ordered.

Storm Caroline was getting worse with every news report but we went ahead -and as it turned out, Caroline was a bit of a wimp. Barely any rain, winds no more than 40mph! Pour went well - a couple of hairy moments when the shuttering was not braced well enough and had me running about like a blue arsed fly keeping ahead of the concrete. We used a C40 mix with 10mm aggregate, very similar to Agilia but at a lower cost. This poured beautifully and only needs dappled, no vibrating or power floating required.