8.30am long view towards the farm from behind our local hill, The Dumpling

Tiles 'R' Us

We've now sourced, and agreed on, tiles for all three bathrooms. My able assistant is showing the accent tile for the ensuite shower. For those of you who know the Hillington industrial estate in Glasgow you will appreciate the number of tile showrooms there are available and the angst of then getting the man of the house to approve selections. I bought the tiles for the ensuite and family bathroom this morning and just need to go back with accurate measurements for the downstairs bathroom as the dimensions of that have altered recently. The tiler is booked for next week so we'll see big changes inside. The white goods for the bathrooms are all in place now. I also swapped the shower tray for the downstairs room because of last minute adjustments there ensuring the door width complys with disabled access regs. The change made the shower tray larger than plan.

Back to the office for 11am so did the day job too.

We've found the camera so here's a few pics from the holiday lodge we're renting. For the past 10 days we've had cold, dry and mainly sunny conditions which has been marvellous. It has been very cold at night so we're glad to be out of the caravan for the time being. The lodge has 3 bedrooms so we've got plenty of space to play with and its generally very pleasant to be in a real house again. The lodge is set in woodland at the end of a long track and there is plenty of wildlife around, particularly deer and pheasant but we also have owls and woodpeckers both of which make plenty of noise at different times of day.

Friday

Our camera has gone awol so unfortunately there are no photos again today. Its looking good though on another sunny chilly day! It seems fairly quiet on site today (only 2 white vans!), the joiners have plasterboarded the kitchen and dining room today and the electrician is tidying up/routing the masses of wiring to the consumer unit in the utility room. It looks like mission control in there. The BT cable is being fed into the house before the external render is started which is due to happen from Monday.

We had a visit from Ordnance Survey the other day. Amazingly in this era of satellite and other mapping technologies there are still people driving round in cars checking on changes to the landscape, apparently its a whole lot cheaper too. In order to accurately update the OS the surveyor is going to return in April to plot the buildings etc.

A lady also called by as she has traced her family history to the area and in particular to a joiner who lived here in 1871. I've promised to send a photo of the house which stood here, parts of which date from that time.