So, three days later than anticipated and more white-van-man visits than we can count, we finally have gas AND the road has been reopened. The road closure was supposed to be for a few hours but extended to three days, principally it would seem, because the team were too disorganised to collect the huge collection of barriers, signs and cones that had amassed in front of the house. All rather embarrassing really, but the neighbours have been really quite understanding, publicly, at least.

Look at the state of this!
;

Today we’ve been on the lookout for kitchen floor tiles, I’m not impressed with the selection I’ve seen, all a bit ordinary. We have decided on a couple of things though, firstly we want ‘rough edge’ tiles, like these, but nicer:

And secondly we want to use some tumbled pebbles, like these, but cheaper!

We’ve had chippies in to quote on a few jobs we need doing in the kitchen to move things along, like fitting the cubby hole window, extractor hood and finishing off a little paneling here and there. Once he’s done, we can then have the hob and extractor wired. Finally for this week, we had the guy from the fireplace company come to do a survey… He seemed a little…shall we say ‘overwhelmed’, it’s strange how normal living ‘on site’ becomes and it’s only when visitors arrive with their little shocked faces that we remember the scale of it all! Anyway, in a nutshell the chimney breast in the library is likely to collapse, and behind the board blocking the fireplace in the lounge there is…dead pidgeon, ta da! We were told this on Thursday and he’s still there, Ronnie won’t touch it and I’m sure as hell not going to, it’s probably been there for 50 years, a few more weeks won’t hurt, right?.