Of Cheese

After a frankly hellish week, the contrast with a delightful weekend couldn't be starker. Although we've had a couple of hours each morning helping Jenny and Philip load their removal van—the culmination of their relocation to Shropshire—while Ann and David enjoyed a well-earned lie-in, the rest of both days has been entirely relaxing. We've made far too much food, played many games, and enjoyed a film or two. They've been excellent company, and we've all benefited from a revitalizing rest. Although we're back at work in the morning, they're still with us, and will make an early start too.

The work to get to this point's been pretty tough, and taken a lot of energy. However, we're glad that we had something to aim for, and a motivation to get to where we are, without which the work might have dragged on. The end, now, feels in sight. Still to come:

Finishing off both bathrooms: the en suite needs some worktop fiddling, a couple of bits of plasterboard, and tiling on walls and floor; the master en suite needs basin and worktop attaching, bath plumbing in, and tiling throughout.

The locks for both en suites need installing.

We need to dismantle the pink/house bathroom, including taking down the walls making the airing cupboards, and insulate the external walls. That, including some electrical work, is the best part of a weekend.

The cupboards in the front guest, and the new guest room replacing that bathroom, need to go up.

There's a few small patches of external walls to finish: behind the cellar door, in the kitchen, and a plasterboard that's mysteriously missing on the landing (the mystery is why we never put it on).

The back door from the utility needs replacing with a better one: that door's being recycled upstairs.

Skirting boards, and a lot of injectable foam insulation, need putting up.

Then, we need to plaster the whole house, ready to paint. The next deadline is a visit by Jenny and Philip just before Christmas (when we need two rooms, two bathrooms, which have working locks); and then late January, when we need everything to be functional ready for a Cambridge-crowd house party.

However, comparing the list above with what we've managed since July, I hope that things can slow down somewhat for the next two months, and we can have fewer 15-hour days, no more 18-hour days, and certainly no more 42-hour marathons.