Nearly....

It's been a while since I posted any progress on the blog; I've been too busy stressing out about the fitting of the bathrooms and finishing the small bits of the job before the carpets arrived.

Terry the driveway has almost finished - a few days late since some terrible weather consisting of hailstones, thunder, rain and rainbows and not much else in between, and yet despite this he's soldiered on with his hood up and his flask of tea. The results are one wonderful patio and gorgeous driveway. A man who walks his dog stopped me on the pavement today and told me our house is 'the best renovation we've ever seen on the estate.' Another man touched me on the arm last week and complimented me on a 'beautiful job.' I'm so proud of what we've managed to achieve with this ugly old wreck that nobody wanted to buy.

I'm happy to report that the tiler finally 'finished the job', though as I remarked previously, he was spinning too many plates and made some mistakes around the shower area in our ensuite, which led to our beautiful Matki shower valve being fixed to the wall with white silicone when it ought not to be - the plumber was trying to cover for the tiler's mistake but my eyes don't miss much and unfortunately for him I spotted the mistake immediately (as well as several of his other mistakes like radiators that didn't actually warm up). Fortunately he returned to fix the radiators two hours before the carpet fitters arrived because his 'fixing' involved messing up our paint by spraying yellow and brown liquid over the walls and skirting boards and creating little puddles on the floor. It was purely by co-incidence that he came and that the carpet fitters were 3 hours late. Anyway, the mosaic tiles look lovely (see the picture) and I'm just waiting for somebody to fix the shower door he's botched and we've got yet more bathroom tiles on order from Spain.

By the time the plumber left I was ready to chuck everyone out of the house. Never mind that Matt the spark hadn't told us how the underfloor heating works (he'll be back...) or that the washing machine isn't plumbed in. By Saturday evening I'd reclaimed the keys and by Sunday I'd lifted all that cardboard and chipboard that was protecting the floors and seen how great the Amtico looked. We've a few more jobs to do. We're exhausted. The house is truly fantastic.