The heart of the home....

... is the kitchen (if the house mags are to be believed anyway).

We left it about here on the last update:

The underfloor heating was just about in.

The screed went down and then Mark (tiler and floor man) hit us with 'yeah, well it will take 2 weeks per 1/2" of screed to get dried out". Hmm. That'd been 8 weeks then - which isn't in the project plan at all! So on went the underfloor heating in an attempt to dry it out. It was all going well until:

Which isn't that we let an incontinent giant sleep in the eaves room, it was that we'd taken a radiator off the wall in the eaves room, and it had (apparently) got cold enough that the thermostatic valve opened and let the heating water out. Cue more full blast underfloor heating. Can't wait for that bill!

Since then there's been some more progress:

It's limestone. This is the view from the back of the house, just inside the bifolding doors.

Here's the view the other way.

Here's an idea of what we've done in what was the utility room all that time ago (it's been about a year now). The ceiling is vaulted, and those veluxes face South.

Just need to get the kitchen itself in now.

Oh.

The colour isn't really true - hopefully I'll get some better shots at some other time and the colour will be better.

Here's the view towards the bifolds again.

And towards where the hob will be. You can make out the extractor in the alcove at the back of the unit. It's one of those that pops up out of the worktop. Should be cool. No, it really should - it was hugely expensive - much more than I'd ever want to pay. 

The son - he's where the warming drawer will go. He's a mischief. Little sod.

More Odds and ends

Bringing us up to date on the odds and ends in the last post.

We've had the tiler in (a bit) in the en-suite in the guest bedroom:

I suppose with it half done, it could almost look like we're taking apart, rather than building it up. However, it's definitely the latter. Mark, our tiler, is a great bloke, but he fits us in after work and on weekends, so it moves more slowly. Not that we're bothered - he's been moving on in the kitchen too as you will see.

The guest room has stalled slightly because of this:

It's a wet patch on the ceiling where a chimney goes. That got sorted this week, so there's plasterboard over that now. But we were hanging around a bit waiting for the roofer to sort that (and other bits and bobs) out.

The eaves room went from:

to:

with extra

You can see the dormer's extended and there's two windows in it now. It's a bit plastic fantastic in terms of the windows, facias etc,, but at least it's low maintenance. All new timber windows is out of our price range, :(.

Downstairs, the new woodburner is in, in the playroom:

It sits on a hearth of quarry tiles that were out in the garden disguised as a greenhouse path, We've not had a really hot fire in it yet, hence the blackened glass. The patches on the walls are our experiments with colours. The boxes you can see are full of LED lights from ecoled.co.uk. Since we started on the kitchen, the playroom has been a bit of a dumping ground. All got to change soon!

The unit is now revealed - it does look good, but it will look better once the trims are in to trim it to the walls and ceiling. And of course the rest of the room is done.

You can see the state of the room. And also you can see into what will be the utility room once the kitchen is done. That piece of furniture through the second door is a dresser that came from our old house which will live in our new kitchen. Winter's drawing in, hence the halogens.

The Dining room has been plastered out:

Those boxes in the foreground are the two ovens for the kitchen, an induction hob, and a warming drawer. That big mirror is not for the bedroom ceiling - it's for the bathroom. It's now on the wall up there - took some getting up there I can tell you! The thing in the corner is another mirror for the boot room.

The mirror thing reminded me - we're not passengers in this story - there's lots of work being done by me and my wife. Getting that mirror upstairs and into position took massive effort from both of us. Today she's been stripping wallpaper, I've been wiring in speakers - I'm pretty worn out this weekend!