Chris is changing jobs, and wisely decided to take off a week between. This has given him some time to focus on some of the jobs that he’s been wanting to get done.

Unfortunately, as I’ve been working, I don’t have many photos of some of Chris’s work, as he doesn’t take any.

He spent a good deal of time on some mechanical mysteries, fixing a broken chainsaw and working on the campervan’s brakes, fan and windscreen wipers. His final bit of mechanics was clambering into the attic to connect up the ventilation, which is nearly ready to go.

His big priority for the week however was finishing off the shed, including adding a few final boards, attaching trim to the corners and installing guttering. He also used some old wood to create a lean-to wood store, which he filled with wood from the garden that he’s cut into logs using the chainsaw. Inside he installed the final window and my new swallow nest box.

Inside the house he properly installed our final kitchen cabinet, though he’s now given himself an added job of cutting down some spare worktop to make a top.

On my lunchbreak I managed to get enough enthusiasm to prime and paint the kitchen doorway.

I also spent a long time playing with wood stain. Having cut half the skirting for the utility, and then run out of wood, I’d stained it with some wood stain from our collection. Recently having gotten more wood and cut the final few pieces, I looked for the matching wood stain. But after much trial and error I had to conclude it had been thrown out.

So then I started to see what colours I could combine to make the old and new skirting match. I’ve settled on a reddish undercoat for the new skirting, and then going over everything with a brown stain, not ideal but hopefully it’ll be fairly close to matching.

My other indoor job was filling, sanding and staining the architrave at the back of the kitchen worktop, a fiddly and time-consuming job.

I also spent some time cutting out templates for the downstairs windowsills, which will make the job much easier given all our wonky walls.

Having slowly accumulated a lot of rubbish in the garden we decided to have a tidy, filling up the car with as much as we could and heading to the recycling center. With most of the rubbish gone, we moved to tackling the piles of wood. While some of the wood was being saved for fires, we had plenty of brash from hedge laying, trimming and tree clearing, so we decided to have a bonfire.

We managed to get through the huge piles, scattered around the garden. What remains is wood to be cut up for firewood, and another pile I saved to keep for a habitat pile, as it was full of fungi and other interesting things.

At the back of the shed I gathered together our various pots, which have been scattered around the garden since moving, and often go walkabout during high winds. Hopefully they’ be a little more protected here.

There’s a long way to go with the garden, but it’s nice to start seeing it looking a little more orderly and less chaotic. The real change will come when we build our patios, but we need some drier weather to start that job.