We’d booked off two blocks of time, a Thursday/Friday on week 1, and Wedsday/Thursday/Friday in week 2. We’d hoped long weekend number 1 would get the kitchen floor finished off, but as week 2 rolled round there was still plenty to do.

First we moved the furniture off the final area in need of treatment. Though we’d stopped polishing at a 1,500 pad on this section, Chris had since decided to continue on to 3,000 in other areas, so this patch needed one more polish with the higher pads, several mops to clean it up, and then painting with sealant.

On top of that everything in the kitchen was covered by a thick layer of dust. Cupboards needed cleaning out, crockery, glasses and pans needed washing, every surface and piece of furniture needed wiping down.

It was after Chris helped to move the furniture he announced he was moving on to another job, as one person could finish this job. Sigh.

It was a long and exhausting day, getting the kitchen back into order, but most things are finally cleaned and back in place. Overall, I think the floor does look better, though it doesn’t feel as satisfying as it could for 5 days of two people’s work. But it’s done at least.

The job Chris moved on to was re-laying the steps up to the house. Our steps were a bit of a hazard, with wobbly, uneven slate, threatening to cause a lawsuit at any moment.

Chris has already replaced the top steps, but doing the bottom ones meant digging down a fair way, rather back breaking work.

Having dug out the steps, Chris used some of our piles of stones to create the step bases.

He then reused the tiles we salvaged from the side of the house prior to laying the patio. To give them a bit of stability he mortared in between.

Next we’ll need to rebuild the lower walls beside the path, which have been undermined, and put in a new handrail. Still, a lot safer and nicer looking already.

Having finished the kitchen floor I moved on to more windowsills. I decided to focus on the two windowsills in the study. I managed to reuse the template from the bedroom, with a small addition needed, for the large windowsill.

We are out of large pieces of elm so I cut down two pieces of the same spruce we used to clad the shed. I cut straight edges on both sides of one piece, and one straight edge on the second piece, leaving a wavy edge.

For the smaller windowsill, there was just enough elm to fit the space. Unfortunately, one corner wasn’t quite wide enough, so I had to splice in a third piece of elm. I cut the smaller piece first, clamping both pieces together and cutting the irregular shape in one go, to get a closer match. I then cut the biscuit slits and glued and clamped.

Both sets of boards then needed clamping and planing to get matching edges, before cutting more biscuit slits.

I didn’t have enough clamps to glue and clamp both windowsills so I did the smaller one, and can swap the clamps over once it’s dried. Then both will need to be cut to the template and sanded.

Phew! It’s been a tiring few weeks, but we got through our list of jobs, which is very satisfying. The next few weekends are busy, with few opportunities to progress, so it was nice to take some big steps forward in the last couple of weeks.