The messy tilers have finished

As delighted as we are with the finished roof, it seems tilers have the deserved reputation of being messy beggars! From tile dust all over the roof, to cement slurry carelessly thrown on the ground, and more bits of broken tiles in a 30 foot radius than I would have thought possible, they take the biscuit. Still, we were very fortunate with the weather, which with the exception of a shower on Friday, has been very kind to us, or perhaps I should say, to the tilers.

Never mind, the roof looks great and now that the rather vivid blue of the felt has been covered up, the house seems to have mellowed into the background and fits ideally into the surroundings. I can see now why the planners didn't want a house that was any higher - it would have spoilt the view. (That's the only concession to planners I'll ever give).

Another milestone next Tuesday - the (miserable) scaffolders come to take down the scaffolding - be glad to see the back of them and their poles and planks. I've managed to hit my head five times on the protruding scaffold poles - the reason being they are too long for where they are fitted because the scaffolders couldn't be bothered to use shorter ones. (We'll ignore the fact that I wasn't looking where I was going). With the scaffold down, we'll be able to see the house much better, so quite a day to look forward to.

Apart from the roof, more progress has been made inside the house. Bob (one of Roy's men) has been sealing the cavities where the windows and doors will be fitted, and Ian (another of Roy's men who has 72 Chelsea shirts and wears them in turn each day) has been putting fibreglass into the nooks and crannies prior to the fitting of the pukka insulation - Celotex -next week. This arrives as sheets of polystyrene-like material that is cut to fit between the roof timbers. We also had Lee from AJ Joinery come back to double check the window and door sizes. Hopefully, the oak windows will be ready within a couple of weeks - then we can make the house secure.

In order that insulation could start next week we put pressure on the sprinkler systems guys to fit their pipework in the upper part of the house on Friday. After ringing me to say they couldn't find Brookvale, this gaggle of lads scrambled all over the place like a rash, fitted their bright orange pipes, and were gone in no time.

During the week we've also paid very large sums of money for the electricity and gas to be supplied to site (gulp!) and Roy now has the bit between his teeth to start digging the service trench. While we've got the digger on site we'll also dig the very large hole for the rainwater harvesting tank (nearly 8 foot deep) and the trenches needed to run the rainwater from the 5 roof downpipes to the tank. Talking of downpipes, we've decided to fit aluminium guttering and downpipes. This is apparently made on site - a large drum of flat aluminium sheet feeds into a machine with the tool that makes the profile you want - simples! You can even have it in different colours, but ours will be black (Henry Ford would have approved).

Spent a very tiring day today clearing out the garage, demolishing the shed (well, it actually fell apart on its own really), and getting rid of about 50% of the accumulated rubbish that had amassed behind the toilet.

By four this afternoon we had one large builders skip, full to overflowing. Amazingly too, we had the obligatory mattress. Its amazing, your never seem to see a skip without a mattress, do you?

We seem to be going full pelt at the moment - wouldn't mind slowing down a bit, its all rather tiring!

Jan & Rog