There has been more building activity in the last couple of weeks despite the terrible weather. The kitchen and sun room floors are now tiled and looking good. The same tiles will be used through the hallway and into the utility room.

The bookshelves are being installed along the main corridor and most of the lighting is now installed. The heating is turned on and it is nice and cosy in the house now. The joiners are busy with finishing the trim around the doors and have started on the built-in wardrobes in one of the bedrooms.

The paving and gravel around the house has been completed. This is the small courtyard and path leading to the main house door. We will be planting up the soil bed with shade tolerant plants such as hosta and cyclamen as well as a selection of bulbs. We need something that will spread itself over the prominent drain cover!

The kitchen was delivered last week and should be installed next week. Here are some of the bits stored in the sun room. Outside the house, the huge piles of soil and rubble have been removed and the ‘garden’ has been levelled out. A concrete base has been poured for the patio but the stone slabs have not arrived yet.

The small pile of rocks at the right side of the house are ready for making repairs to the drystone walls. It looks like we’ll have to host a rock-picking party before we can seed the grass in the Spring.

We went for a stroll across the sands to Ardwall Island. The island is accessible on foot from the mainland for an hour or so at low tide.

We had a surge of activity in early November with lots of building people on site. The drains are all installed underground, with rain water draining to a soak-away at the front of the house and the house waste water drainage routed to a new septic tank.

Here’s Gabrielle inspecting the septic tank. There’s a lot more of it under the ground. It looks like a lot of rock had to be removed to get it installed. You can also see the heat exchanger unit of the air source heat pump over by the wall of the house. That should be up and running this week, getting the house up to a comfortable temperature.

This is the internal unit for the air source heat pump now installed in the utility room. The tank on the left is a buffer tank which is used to help the heating system work more efficiently by buffering up a supply of hot circulating fluid and avoid the heating system turning itself on and off too frequently. The hot water tank is inside the big white ‘ecodan’ unit.

The water supply is now fully connected up inside the house. This is the plumbing at the main stop cock which will be behind the utility room sink when the cupboard and sink unit has been installed.

The wood flooring is now installed in the bedrooms and living areas and is hopefully adequately protected from ongoing building work under the green plastic sheeting. This is the old cottage living room with the wood burning stove ready for re-installation back into the fireplace. The door on the left leads through to the master bedroom. The door on the right opens into the kitchen.