Week Seven/Eight

The two polish plasterers have done a fantastic job. It's taken them eight days to plaster the three bedrooms, hall, stairs, landing and dining room. Very quiet and unassuming, both of them were absolutely lovely and professional. Unfortunately I failed to notice that had forgotten to plaster underneath the plug sockets in each of the rooms but, apart from that, I would definitely use them again. Hopefully they will enjoy the cans of Polish lager we gave them as a bonus - they were almost embarassed when I gave it to them. Or maybe it was cheap tasteless beer for all we know.

Mum and Dad spent two days working in the house with Matt and have done a fantastic job. Dad spent hours on his knees finishing the plastering beneath the sockets, not his favorite thing to do. He also attached all the sockets and light fittings to the walls and sorted out the kitched ceiling amongst other things. Mum cleaned, cleaned and cleaned a bit more as well as scrubbing down the skirting board in Chloe's room. Again, the plasterers didn't completely clean up the wet plaster when it fell on the coving and skirting throughout the house so it all needs scrubbing to get rid of it.

Meanwhile, Matt spent two days putting floorboards down in the loft so we can use it as storage space and start moving boxes over. As he's never boarded a loft before he's done a fantastic job. I'm a bit worried that he is spending way too much time working and not enough time resting but I suppose there is so much to do and he wants as much as possible to be done before we move in.

Original dark wood panels

We've uncovered stained panels on the stairs in the hallway and on the back of the front door. It's the original paint effect - most likely done in the 30s to make it look more expensive than it was. Although there is quite a bit of damage due to the panels used to cover it at a later stage, I think it could look fantastic if we give it a bit of TLC. It is very dark but if we keep the walls light it could look great.

Week Six - It's been a long time

The rewire is finished, the new plumbing system is almost complete and the plasterers finish on Wednesday. We've achieved a huge amount since we took possession of Abbotsdene on the 8 January and we managed to have a baby as well.

Friends and family have been a great help so far and will continue to be so. Guy, Sam, Elma and Neil have all helped out in various ways and made the job so much easier. Pete, Kate, Heath and the kids have been down twice now and even Ben and Libby helped out with wallpaper stripping and babysitting duties.

Jonathan (the sparky) and his team took just over a week to completely rewire the house and did a great job. No doubt we have made some bad decisions about the location of plug sockets and the like but it was so difficult to anticipate where we will need things to go. Jonathan is a lovely bloke and we made a good choice with him. He's recently renovated his own house and we've ended up using his plumber and plasterer as well, both of whom have been just as reliable and professional. I'm just waiting for something to go wrong.