Our plasterer appeared this Saturday. He’s a landscaper who is looking to move into plastering and so is taking jobs on the weekend to improve his skills before making the jump. As he’s not a trained plasterer he’s charging a little less, on the understanding we might not get perfection. Given that we’re doing the rest of the plastering ourselves, and that isn’t perfection, we really weren’t worried about this. Turns out his ‘not perfect’ is much better than our ‘best we can manage’.

In his first day he got half the ceiling done and one of the three walls. It’s exciting to see it come together, but sadly he’s only working Saturdays and he’s away next weekend, so he won’t be back for a while.

Unfortunately, in order to get the room ready for the plasterer we’ve had to move most of the stuff out, filling up our other rooms in the meantime. However, once the walls are finished we’ll be on to polishing the concrete floor, which requires the room to be empty, so there’s not much point moving things back in.

We finally got rid of our corner cabinet, a spare from the secondhand kitchen we couldn’t fine a spot for. We listed it for free as we weren’t sure anyone wouldn’t want one cupboard from a set, but a nice Greek couple came to collect, and as a thank you gave us a bag of mini ice creams!

Upstairs in our bedroom the corner behind the chimney has needed doing for a while. As part of it was plastered qith board plaster and part done with lime plaster Chris thought it would be better to smooth it out with filler rather than add more plaster on top. I applied the filler, trying to even out the surface, then sanded it back and painted. It’s definitely not as neat a finish as plastering, but it’s a corner that is always likely to be behind furniture, so it doesn’t hugely matter. Idris supervised me from the comfort of the bed.

Another job that’s needed doing for a long-time is cleaning the chimney and sealing the bricks. It took quite a while scrubbing the bricks with a wire brush, before wiping them down and painting on two coats of sealant, but it’s a good job to get done. As the chimney is right next to our bed I could often smell the dust coming off it, which can’t be good for my lungs.

Another small job I managed to tick off the list was filling and painting the plasterboard over the doorway, where we’d once had glass.

While I was ticking off little jobs Chris was busy with one big job, up the in attic. In order to reduce condensation and recirculate heat Chris had decided we needed mechanical ventilation heat recovery system. So before insulation can be put down in the attic, first plastic sheeting has to be put down and attached to the plastic sheeting we put up in the ceilings, and then the ventilation installed, and finally insulation put down. Though the house isn’t particularly chilly we can feel a cold draft from the attic, so insulation really needs to go down to reduce our heating bills and avoid waste.

Chris spent his time laying down the plastic in one half of the attic and starting the cut though the holes for the ventilation. I joined him briefly to help pass the ventilation pipes across from the other half of the attic. There’s still plenty to do before the attic is finally insulated, but it’s a good step in the right direction so far.

In some ways it’s felt a little like a step backwards this week with the bedroom, lounge and kitchen going from relative order to a chaotic mess once again, but it’s all forward movement all the same. Though I’m looking forward to a dust-free future.