The very dull world of installing skirting kept me busy for a good week. Even once it was attached there was the filling, sanding, second filling, second sanding, caulking and of course first coat and second. It’s done anyway, aside for the doorway, which is complicated as it currently catches on the door.

With the shed watertight enough to move our tools into I’ve lost all interest, as I’d like to finish off more of the inside of the house. Chris carried on however adding some of the corner pieces and a missing panel or two. He also moved in the majority of the tools, though I was left to sort through the mess and dregs that always seem to be left behind once you’ve move the more straight forward bits. Managed to locate a few missing bits, and throw out lots of rubbish we’d just chucked back into the tool room when busy.

Having boxed in the pipes on the floor with wood, we couldn’t figure out how to attach the boxing for the soil pipe. So in the end I filled the gap with expandy foam and cut it back and filled. We can then paint it the same colour as the wall.

Early on in my filling odyssey I didn’t realise some fillers could only be used on stone and some on wood. I filled a load of holes in the study ceiling, only to have the filler crack and new gaps open up – very annoying. So I spent some time scrapping off ruined caulke and filler, to then refilled and recaulked. With all that finally done I did a second coat of white paint on the study and bedroom ceiling. A very unsatisfying job, but it needed doing before we get a carpet.

While the paint was out, I redid the wood in the landing. A proper job would have been to strip the old paint first but that seemed like a lot of work so I just gave it a light sand and repainted.

Outside Chris also had an unsatisfying job. I’d mortared around all the new windows I could reach, but some were too high for me even on a ladder. Chris finally got round to the remaining four windows. A slow job and one we’d forgotten we hadn’t finished so it feels like lost time to go back to it. But still, nice to be watertight.

In the utility I finished filling and sanding the walls and door, just need to finish the skirting so I can paint.

The big job, however, was replacing the old stairs. The new stairs arrived in one piece, from a bespoke online dealer. The delivery man, though at first very pleased that he didn’t have to carry them into the house, couldn’t believe I was the person carrying them with Chris instead of him. I often get this attitude from delivery drivers and I have to explain that I’ll be the one shifting them around in the house, however far they carry it to the front door.

The old stairs came out very easy and someone took them away to use for a two story shed. The new stairs were a little more tricky. We were keen to widen them to full width of the gap, but while Chris checked carefully, the stair manufacturers added an extra 3mm, making them incredibly tight.

We started off with Chris lifting at one end while I moved the other end towards him, but the tightness of the gap made it impossible. Rethinking, we remembered the pulley system we used to get the steel in place. Using the wooden beam above the stairs, Chris used the pulley to winch the end of the stairs up while I moved the base forward from below. It was still tight, but eventually we got it into place. Annoyingly, I had some great photos of the process, but I broke my phone and lost them.

Chris filled the edge with expandy foam, and added some screws into the wall. I used the leftover mortar from Chris’s repointing of the windows, and replastered the walls beside the stairs.

Next we need to add wooden slats along the gap, and a banister.

With Christmas here we have a few days off, but looking forward to getting back to it in the new year. For now Nadolig Llawen from Wales!