Having thought the plasterer wasn’t returning for two weeks he was able to continue this week, getting the rest of the ceiling and most of the back wall finished.

I spent too much time with a few fiddly jobs around the glass bricks, grouting and cleaning them, then sanding the wooden support below them, before painting everything else the same colour as the wall. In the bathroom I also cut and painted some beading for the edge. Just a little filling to do and the glass bricks are finished.

My other fiddly and annoying job was cutting out some bits of wood to fill in the thin strips between the sloping and flat ceilings in the bedroom and bathroom. It took an age and I made a rather messy job of it, but with some more filling and painting hopefully it will just fade into the rest of the wood.

Chris continued with his mammoth insulation job, having to lay down plastic, tape it to the plastic in the roof below, and then laying down the insulation. He’s about a third of the way through. It’s nice to see the big rolls of insulation disappearing upstairs after they’ve been cluttering up our spare room for so long.

Chris also started to figure out the coving in our bedroom, which isn’t a simple task with wonky walls and a sloping ceiling. It looks nice though, even with only half the room finished.

After storm Babet our neighbour is having her drive repaired, much of it having ended up on the road. With the digger drivers already on site Chris asked them for a quote to dig out the tree stumps next to our drive, and install the new drain. When we got a quote off them for £1k he was initially horrified, but having worked out the cost for us to get the materials and hire the machines, he decided it wasn’t too heavy a price to pay for an extra pair of hands, plus it takes a job off our list.

Today they started by digging back from the road. They found the old clay pipe, which appears to be clogged with roots, explaining why it hasn’t been working. Hopefully they’ll be back later in the week to finish the job. It feels a little like cheating whenever we pay someone to do something for us, but I guess no one but ourselves is keeping score.