Disappointment

Well, after the wonderful weekend last week - where we accepted an offer on the house - we had a bit of a miserable one this weekend as our buyers pulled out because they were £11K short on what they could borrow. It seems to me that perhaps they should have worked out how much they could borrow before they went making offers on any houses...So, very disappointing to say the least. Now it looks like we'll definitely have to rent this place out until the market picks up again. We'll leave it up for sale for another couple of weeks just on the offchance that someone will buy it quickly but then we'll have to get it rented.

The good news though is that Ellie's christening has been arranged for August 3rd, at the very teeny tiny church just down the road from the new house. It's on the private Pitchford Estate but the church is open to the public and it just so happens that the once a month service there falls on the date that we wanted to get Ellie christened, so that was good.

Things are coming along at the new house - the outside is in the early stages of being rendered, we are almost finished tiling the kitchen floor - having already done the utility and downstairs cloakroom. The cloakroom suite has all been fitted, the boiler is in and working, we also now have the luxury of running water - hot and cold! The first coat of colour has been done in our room and we are thinking, as the paint goes on so thickly, that it might actually only need one coat, which will save us some time as our room is enormous!

Our main priority during the next week is to do the final tiles in the kitchen, and grout what we've done. After this is done, we will paint the visible parts of the kitchen walls and only then can we start to build the kitchen cabinets and get them fitted. I can't wait to see the kitchen in place, it'll really start to feel like a home then!

We've got all the skirting and architrave arriving on Monday and so we'll need to get that all stained and fitted. Until that's been done, we can't fit our doors or carpets!!

As far as young Ellie goes, she's having a bit of a strange time of it of late. She is now very able to turn herself over onto her tummy from her back and does so very frequently. The problem with this is that she doesn't like being on her tummy but doesn't seem to be able to help herself rolling onto it! Once she is able to roll herself back this won't be an issue but it's certainly a pain until she does!

Ellie's two bottom front incisors are now peeking through so she is doing lots of gnawing and dribbling. She has a new favourite trick too - if one of us taps our finger on her mouth, she starts making a noise so that she sounds like a little kid pretending to be a Red Indian!

Right, I think that's the longest post I've written so I'll stop for now. We don't have any photos handy at the moment to post so it's a text only post I'm afraid!!

Some house news

Well, today was a momentous day, Sam and I visited the house this evening to see that the final plastering had been completed in the living room. That's it, no more splatters up the walls, no more 'turds' of plaster lying around, no more damp sweaty rooms where the plaster hasn't dried, and no more bloody mess (inside at least). They have done a fantastic job and i'm very glad that they managed to do the whole job, after we were abandoned by our other plasterer.

Speaking of which, the reason we visited the house was because we were on our way to Ludlow to hand deliver the invoice to our other plasterer who now owes us back. When we got to Ludlow we bumped into a random stranger who asked if we were lost (we were doing a U-turn). I told him who I was after and he immediately asked me "does he owe you money?" How co-incidental, seems this isn't the first time the guy has pulled a trick like he did with us, oh well, four weeks and i can send a small claims court order to the nice man!

Mullins the plumbers have been doing an outstanding job. So far, in a week they have...

Plumbed the oil tank in
Installed the kitchen pipes
Installed an outside tap
Connected the blue water pipe from outside
Installed the upstairs bathroom bath, shower, basin and toilet
Installed the cloakroom toilet
Installed the boiler
Installed the utility room waste

And a whole host of other small little jobs. They are clean, conscientious, tidy, practical, polite and worth every penny so far! They also have some amazing tools!

I have been up there quite a bit recently to get work done to allow the trades to get their jobs done. I managed to paint a few walls with colour before the radiators were put on but a few bare plaster walls remain with nice shiny radiators affixed. The bathroom was completely painted before anything was fitted which is a bonus for us later and the cloakroom and utility were given their final coats of paint prior to anything being fitted. Unfortunately there are quite a few marks on the walls now, especially in the cramped cloakroom where a load pf plumbing was installed, but i'd rather touch a few small marks up than try and paint around a load of stuff.

Sam and I were up there the other night to get some tiles laid in order for the boiler to be installed on tiles. We we're pretty green when it came to floor tiles but with a bitumen paint layer followed by a latex screed layer we had a good base to go on. Sam applied a bond layer to the screed and we set about mixing the powdered quick set tile adhesive. It goes off quite quickly and we flapped around a bit just laying the first tile but we soon got back in to the swing of things and before long had a few down. We were also misled by a dodgy tile that seems to be a bit thinner than the others, or its neighbour is a bit thick, one or the other. This caused a minor panic but we soon realised that with a bit of grout they'll all be fine.

I went back the next night to get the rest of the cloakroom and utility done which was a tough job as i had to cut large notches out of two of the tiles where they went round a wall. All in all we are quite pleased with the tiles so far and we should make some good progress with the kitchen floor this weekend. We might even get to build some of the cabinets soon so that the plumbers can install the sinks and dishwasher, woo hoo!

On the outside more ground works have occurred. Our neighbours John and Jean who own the barn, and in fact who we bought then house from, have done quite a lot to their barn and the boundary with our house. They will be building a nice wall and fence along our driveway at a cost of £4,000 to them (phew). John also used his digger again to move a load of our hard standing material onto the track down to the fence so that number two has decent access for all the 16 tonne loads of stone that he is currently having delivered.

So, all in all a great deal has been done, at quite a pace. I even managed to dig two small trenches the other day and plant some Kimber bred french climbing and runner bean seeds. After all, we wouldn't want to be living there during bean season with none growing would we?

Onto some photos then...

Belated Ellie Update

It's been a little while but we've all been so busy!

Here are Ellie's main achievements lately:

• Two top molars have come through
• Lots of hooting and general shouting
• Lots of supported standing (looking very smug with herself)
• Loads of sleeping through the night without a single interruption (she went 6.30pm to 8.30am the other day, with a "dream feed" to see her through)
• Last lots of vaccinations until she's 1 (hurrah!)
• Turning through 90 degrees in her cot most mornings (and doing some sleeping on her side)
  

I took Ellie back to the doctors last week as she still had a chesty cough. Previous docs had said it was just a cold but this doctor confirmed that it wasn't - it was bronchiolitis which is viral but they are able to treat it with antibiotics. Ellie is now sounding a lot better without her chest rattle but she did have a bad week of it with her poor tummy. The antibiotics didn't do her tummy much good at all - gave her the runs, which then resulted in terrible nappy rash. She stayed quite chipper throughout though.

All better now and she's a very happy little baby indeed. It's so lovely going in to her room in the morning and knowing you'll be greeted by a huge gummy grin, it really makes your heart swell with love!

We've borrowed Nicola's baby gym as Ellie was getting a bit bored with her old one and she lies on this one quite happily, having a jolly good shout and giggle at the toys on there.

Now for some photos...






Here's one of me, Ellie and the Gro on Jono's birthday last weekend. Considering how scared he used to be of children and babies before, Figaro has taken Ellie in his (3-legged) stride.











Here's Daddy and Ellie having a cuddle









Here's Ellie with Mamgu just before we left her in charge babysitting - look at that hair (that's Ellie's hair, not my mum's crazy barnet!)








And finally...the contender for "cutest baby photo in the world"...

What a beautiful little girl we created!