Absence Makes the Heart Grow...

Returned from a week in Newcastle with some trepidation, not least because the nursery photographer has been in my absence and I'm still not sure whether Dr B put Alex's clothes on the right way round. He sent me a text on Thursday saying that the plaster in the old part of the house was knackered and needing to be completely removed, which made me feel slightly sick and provided quite a distraction from the neuroscience lecture I was supposed to be listening to.

I suppose it's a good thing that we've rumbled the dodgy plaster now - better than finding out when you try to hang a picture and the whole wall comes off at once. The house had thick plaster with no lining and had central heating for 50 years so it's no real surprise to find it had all dried out. At least we'll have nice smooth walls to play with.

Since learning about the plaster I've been dreaming about the house going 'back to brick' and imagining the dust and dirt entailed so that instead of taking notes in lectures I found myself plotting out schedules of work to enable us to get home for Christmas. I was expecting the house to look even worse than when I left but Dr B said I ought to go and have a look because Dr B knew that Carl the Builder had been on site at 6am yesterday morning with a brush in his hand (and that was a Saturday). In fact it didn't look too bad.

In the week I've been away, the gallows for the porch have been hung and primed and the stud walls upstairs in the extension have been plasterboarded. All of the plumbing is now in the right place after a brief moment when I spotted a rogue set of water pipes and couldn't figure out what they were supposed to supply (turned out the plumber was following the architect's plans rather than those drawn by the kitchen designer - the architect hadn't a clue how the inside of the house would look and drew a kitchen for illustrative purposes, which is very nearly what we'd have ended up with if I hadn't had my glasses on).

Yesterday they screeded the kitchen floor to bring it to the same level as the original house, so we can't walk on it for the rest of the weekend. I have the distinct impression it's all going to come together after all.