This week has possibly killed us, just a little bit. Not only did we have the deadline of family coming in to help with the garden on the Saturday, we also had a last minute visit from some friends from Germany on the Friday night, meaning our deadline was a little more truncated.

With the lounge ceiling plastered, I got to work repainting. Having decided not to strip the beams it was an effort not to paint over their edges. Of course I failed, however I’m hoping a good scrub with a toothbrush at some point will resolve this clumsiness without too much hassle.

A glutton for punishment, Chris’s cousin Jude returned and thankfully tackled the second coat for me, leaving my evening free to paint the remaining wall and give the rest a second coat of red.

Jude then finished off the plastering on the lounge wall. In my lunchbreak I then went over the older plastering, using filler to smooth out some of the cracks, ready for painting.

Lounge now painted I rolled out a rug donated by my mum and dad, to add a little coziness until we finally carpet. Due to the general dirt and grime of DIY this will be the very last job in the house. Idris is certainly a fan, enjoying having something comfy to lay on.

We then moved various items of furniture in to make a makeshift living space, with most of the items destined for the dining room long-term.

It was particularly lovely to get the piano in under the stairs finally. However, while it fit perfectly lengthways, we realised that Chris couldn’t sit at it without hitting his head on the stairs. We’ll have to get a smaller radiator and move the piano out a little, which is a shame, but it’s at least a solution to the issue.

Having moved the boxes of books from the kitchen to the space under the stairs, we were finally able to reach the rest of the kitchen ceiling, so as to finish the plasterboarding.

And then the family descended! The aim of the day had been to clear out the larger section of the front garden, which consisted of trailing ivy, bramble, an overgrown box hedge, and various bits of scrub. Oppomistically I’d thought the ivy was just a relatively thin carpet, which could easily be pulled up, but I was wrong. It turn out the ivy was nearly a foot deep in places, with thick tangled stems that wove their way through the old stone walls. Trying to pull it up was impossible, and reaching the soil beneath seemed a mammoth undertaking. I’d clearly made the right decision bringing so many people together to tackle it! We filled 12 bulk bags in the end, and the ground is still a mess of ivy roots.

At the front of the garden, next to the road, we knew we had several huge slabs of slate, stood upright as a kind of wall. What we didn’t realise is in one corner of this wall there is a humongous tree stump, which must have been the reason for the walls current jaunty angle. There were also a number of tree stumps in the rest of the wall along the path, which may be a bit of an issue if we want to widen the drive. Still, good to see what’s there.

Although the house is still a building site, it was nice to have a semi-finished lounge for people to sit in. For the first time the house felt a little more welcoming to visitors.

With the crowds departed, we spent most of our Sunday lugging bulkbags of ivy to the recycling center, before moving on to interior jobs.

With the tiles all in place, Chris spent some time grouting them. The glass bricks were a bit of a nightmare in the end, but I think they make a big difference to the space, keeping it from feeling dark and unwelcoming.

On the bank holiday Monday we focused on the utility room, lugging everything out once more, and preparing the walls for plastering by cutting off the excess expanding foam, curving the corners and applying PVA. It’s amazing how quickly the house descended into chaos once more.

With the machines out of the way we added insulation to the ceiling and attached the plasterboard. We’d decided to sacrifice the beams in this room, so as to make it possible to hide the pipework in the ceiling. As we didn’t need to attach batons to screw the plasterboard to, the insulation kept falling out, meaning we had to resort to gaffer tape to keep it up.

I continued with my plastering on the stone wall, now able to reach the areas that had been hidden behind the machines.

Finally, the utility is ready to plaster, just in time as we’ve had our delivery of limestone for the floor, an end of line offer from a reclaimation yard. On delivery they agreed to take our unwanted ridge tiles, which had failed to sell online.

Once the plastering is finished we can lay the limestone and then finally install our washing machine, which will be the first of our white-goods luxuries to come into use. Exciting times.