I’ve been plodding away on the boxing in the spare room. I filled and sanded the screw holes, used expandy foam, filler and caulke around the edges, and painted the whole thing with primer. The final step was a couple of coats of white wood paint. I located a pot and painted the wood. Then, looking up at the rest of the ceiling I realised that also needed some caulke and another coat, so I moved on to that. It’s an annoying job but I was pleased to get it done.

Until that is I looked back down at the paint I’d been using and realised it was gloss… Chris claims it’s not particularly obvious but there are definitely shiny patches. It’s low on the priority list but at some point I’ll go over it again with satin paint.

In the utility I covered the rough lime plaster with a coat of pure lime to create a better finish. Where I’d done lime coats last week I used filler to cover the cracks and the smooth over the edge of the doorway.

I got round to attaching the last bit of insulated board over the lintle in the study. It just needs filling and painting next.

But the big job was getting on with the shed. Chris had spent an evening attaching the boards to the roof, and another moving gravel to backfill around the base. This meant we could move straight onto cladding the outside. We cut the waney edge spruce to size and overlapped it from the base to the roof. On the roof we cut and attached bitumen roof sheets.

The shed is pretty weatherproof now, with only a few final bits of cladding needed, as well as the windows to install. Soon we should be able to move in some of our tools, and clear out the house a little. Chris is on the look out for old kitchen cabinets to start building a work bench.