This Saturday I had my monthly volunteer day, meaning Chris had to head to the house alone. Luckily, Jay had once again volunteered some free labour.

Having spent a busy evening getting plasterboard up on the study wall, Chris was in the mood for more partition wall building. The boys set to work creating the wall encasing the staircase.

Chris isn’t much of a photo taker, so this is the only picture he took of the wall building pre my arrival…

Previously the area above the stairs had been a huge set of shelves. A sensible use of space, but it also made the staircase feel small and cramped. We’re opting to have the full height above the staircase open.

Sadly almost all of our recycled wood has been used up, meaning Chris had to order new wood for this bit of building.

Jay’s photo offering. Chris receiving professional guidance.

Having built the frame and attached the plasterboard it was amazing how dark the staircase looks. We had wondered about adding a high thin window between the room and the staircase, to let light through, but we decided a sun-tunnel in the roof is probably a better option, though slightly more expensive.

With my volunteers disappearing at lunchtime to attend a football match, I was able to join Chris and Jay (and supervisor Rosie) at the house in the afternoon. Leaving them to their construction project, I started on the jigsaw puzzle of filling in the wooden boards above the windows. As we were getting low on wooden boards to reuse I tried to utilise the smaller pieces that would be no good elsewhere. As always, finding the rafters to screw them into, under layers of plastic and insulation, was fun and games.

On Sunday, with Jay returning to more sensible weekend activities, I carried on with the windows while Chris set to work on levelling the downstairs bathroom floor.

Our inspection by the house valuers had ended up as a flop. The valuer had told us he couldn’t value the house until it has a kitchen sink, a toilet and bathroom sink, and electricity. Apparently we don’t count as habitable just yet. Therefore getting the toilet and sink in in the downstairs bathroom is now a priority. Unfortunately, the kitchen needs to wait till we can polish the floor, which won’t be for a few weeks yet. The electric, Chris assures me, isn’t far off.

Self-leveller left to set, Chris got to work filling the final two gaps in our study floor.

And then busied himself on sprucing up the secondhand toilet and sink (yes I was still messing around with window boards).

On our way home we stopped to pick up some second-hand new floor tiles. Far too expensive for us to consider buying them new, someone had over ordered and was selling them on cheap. Unfortunately there isn’t quite enough for our downstairs bathroom (2.2m2 vs 2.8m2). However, something we did in our current house was placing the nice tiles in the visible areas, and plain tiles where machines and cupboards were going to sit, so the plan is to do similar again.

Another stop was to go and view a piano. Someone local had offered it up to a new home for free. When planning out the design for our new house I’d immediately earmarked a spot for a piano. I’ve had an electric piano for most of my adult life, but have always wanted a real one. This one is now on hold, the owner happy for us to collect once we’re ready. Another reason to hurry up and get the house ready to move into.