With this being our last weekend before we move, we were keen to try and get as much done as possible. However, though we’ve got plenty done, most of it was small and fiddly. It therefore doesn’t look like we’ve moved forward very much, yet the house is significantly messier. All the cleaning carried out to impress the valuer has been buried under a thick layer of dust and grit.

We took the opportunity to move several crates of our houseplants. There’s a risk that if they get stacked in the moving van they’ll end up crushed. For now, they’ll get the enjoy a bit of time in the wild, left in the garden till the house is less dusty.

My main focus for the weekend was finishing the ceilings. I started on the bedroom ceiling, which myself and my mum had already given one coat. With the second coat on it now just needs cork adding to fill in the remaing gaps, a final coat, and the edging adding.

Next I moved on to the study, where I managed to sand down the wood filler and add two coats.

The bathroom needed filling, then sanding, and finally I managed to get one coat on. This leaves just the second bedroom, where I’ve painted the screws with the oil-based paint, but still need to fill, sand and paint.

Chris got on with plastering in the bathroom, calling me in to follow him round smoothing out the plaster surface with a trowel, and rewetting it so it didn’t dry out before the second coat.

He then started sorting the adjoining wall with our neighbour. On the bathroom wall a simple piece of insulated board stuck on with some expandy foam has done the job. In the second bedroom there’s the added complication that the chimney seems to have pulled away from the wall, so Chris added a leftover steel strap to add a bit of stability.

He then used a bit of insulated board for the part of the wall close to the exterior wall. This will prevent heat loss, while the rest can simply be lime plastered.

There are very few missing plasterboards now, but those left haven’t been done because they are fiddly and annoying. I tackled a section in the shower room, while Chris worked on the bedroom cupboard.

In order to get to the shower room plasterboard I had to reattach the plastic torn down by the builders, which Chris had to help me with, as it takes at least two sets of hands.

We don’t yet have enough wood to do all the doorways, but Chris did another couple and hung the bathroom door.

Chris’s last job was then to prep more walls ready for plastering, painting PVA across the surface of the boards, and adding scrim tape to all the joints.

Having planned to stay the night again, we upgraded our accommodation by moving our spare bed over to the new house. An Ikea bed that reduces to a single when not out as a double, it’s been great for our spare room, where there isn’t a lot of space. We normally keep it as a single unless we have guests, and then open it out for them. While you can’t walk around it in our current spare room once it’s open, as it spans from wall to wall, it’s nearly lost in our new spare room.

Our fancy wooden bed is now trundling across Europe heading to its new home. Amazingly a lady in Poland contacted me over Marketplace and had it collected by a courier. Hope she’s happy with it when it arrives, it certainly was a fancy-looking bed.

Now, we have a week to finish packing before it’s moving day. Chris is planning to get back to finish some plastering, but I think I’ll be home filling boxes most evenings. It’ll be nice to moved, less nice to be constantly surrounded by dust. But at least there’s plenty of beautiful places nearby to escape the build site/our new home.