Newly boarded-out walls and the first fix on the electrics and gas pipes have been completed. The Annexe has been totally transformed from a vast empty space to the new room we’ve only ever seen in sketches and gradually, we’re relearning how we might use the space. By now, of course, we’re old friends, the number of times Will goes over there to ponder on the next decision. The placement of switches, and plug points and starting to nail down the new window layouts.

September has been a mix of blistering sunshine and torrential rain, which threatened the gaffa tape strips holding on the old perspex roof on the inside/outside. By the time we’d drafted in backup in the form of ‘Black Nasty’, the indestructible tape used by the British military, the skies had completely cleared.

Not so much the courtyard.

But taking the advice of when it’s sunny, go to the beach, we did! Mostly to pretend what’s happening back at home isn’t happening.

We are having the new boiler fitted and I think Matt deeply regrets taking the job. Apparently, we’ve got a restriction on our pipework and it could be anywhere in the whole property behind a wall or under a floor. The water pressure is 10 and should be 22 or over.

Earlier in the year, I’d painted over the red and blue stripes that boldly adorned the front of the pebbledash, we joked saying it must have been a 1980s deco thing. It turns out they may have been a clue to the hot and cold water pipes feed and how they work their way around the building. Art coding at its best!

So paddling in the sea on a Tuesday lunchtime felt like one of the best luxuries in the world topped off with a hot tea and cornflake cake from the slipway cafe, life for that moment couldn’t get better.

Different visitors have come and gone over the summer and the lack of somewhere to put guest clothes was a continuing problem. So when Wills’s late Grandma’s chest of drawers turned up on a palette from Kent, luckily it coincided with our 3 teenage nephews’ visit. Extra manpower to bring them upstairs in exchange for a fish and chip supper on the beach

Primed and ready to be painted for the guest room, I needed more varnish.

As Will entered the handyman’s shop, Colin exited, saying to him ‘You’re in charge. I’m going to the Post Office.‘

In the time he took to go and come back, Will had sold a rubber mallet. He definitely spends too much time in that shop.

A morning on the beach with a Cornflake cake from the Slipway Cafe

New raising ceiling height, insulating & soundproofing

Rockwall insulation

The red & blue clues

Grandma’s well recieved chest of drawers and after a facelift

You can read the next update here – October 2021 – Building the Garden of Compromise