Congrats in order, and it's not really quite so bad as C makes out...

The congrats are to our renovating blogger colleague Tony and knitblogger Ruth on their delightful new production - Thomas, born on Wednesday. He looks lovely, and can only be an impetus to your endeavours (well, maybe he could be a little hindrance too - here's hoping for a night-sleeping future for him!)

Back to the mundanities of our meandering house - it is a bit depressing to think that we might not make it in by the end of August, but what the heck, progress really is being made! Upstairs the plumbing is in for our kitchen sink (do you remember? It's a purple/pink unit!) under those lovely big windows.
And most of upstairs is plasterboarded, to be skimmed this coming week.
(That's not a Jedi Knight with light-sabre, that's Darren, on-site builder boss).

Insulation and airtightness is progressing downstairs and should move much more quickly than upstairs - waterproof membrane taped onto wall, build with battens, insulated and whack up the OSB. Tape that then the Intelligent Membrane goes on. They're speeding along at this!

The floor for upstairs arrives on Tuesday (but no stairs up which to carry this - entertaining, I'm sure!) It's Chauncey's FSC Tectonic, which is an engineered board 240mm wide and quite long, in standard/rustic (ie cheaper) oak. Mmmmm. And the kitchen comes in a fortnight (when I do not believe stairs will be any more in evidence, given that we're yet to get a PRICE for our plans! Which are lovely....). Oh, and the kitchen doesn't arrive flatpacked...

Of course, the most important news of this week is that Clare has got her new bike! She was knocked off her beloved carbon fibre one (happily, Clare was not broken and literally landed on her feet) and the insurance is now through. The bike whisperer Mick at Langdale Lightweights has built her a new bike (they've been in cahoots about supersplendidness) and it is beautiful. Even if it's baby-snot green...


And I've got a lovely cabinet for (some of) my yarn in a Betel closing-down sale. The bike is just decoration. In a perfect world I'd have all my yarn in glass-fronted cabinets, as for me it's out-of-sight, out-of-mind. So this will save money!