Happy New Year! Marking a target missed...

Yes it's true, I've put he big reveal out in the title but unlike shutter island or the others, hopefully the post will be able to hold your interest nevertheless, especially with all the shiny things it contains. Once again it has been a while but that just means lots more photos of progress. At the end of the last post we were getting very close to finishing that kitchen/living room floor. With that job done the place was finally becoming less of a building site and was time to unbox the the first Dyson product that I had a hand in designing, the DC59!

The next shiny thing to happen was the first use of the newly installed dishwasher, the place had never seen such shiny wine glasses...

A little after that the next shiny thing was to go in, the granite Worktop in the kitchen and the marble top in the bathroom. There was a lot of umm-ing and arr-ing over whether it was worth going for the granite but I was really happy with the result. I used a company in Bristol called Avon marble and was really happy with the service. It was also really nice to have someone else doing the work for a change. That said in the first worktop photo you may also notice the mattress just peaking into the shot, this is because I was back sleeping in the living room while readying the other two rooms for carpet and skirting board.

Laying down the hardboard flooring over the floorboards was a tedious job but actually did not take too long and marked a real step in terms of progress as I was finally able to walk around my house without getting my feet pasted in plaster dust.

With that down the next step was skirting board. To do this I used a piece of free 1D Cutting optimisation software, that I downloaded. Meaning all I had to do was measure all of the 28 required lengths of wood, input the stock lengths that I could get from Travis Perkins and it would tell me how many I would need to buy and how to cut each up.

The problem I had was getting around to doing the measurements and I found myself in the position I have been in many times on this build frantically rushing to Travis Perkins late on a saturday morning just before it closes guessing at how much wood I was going to need. Later that weekend I got around to doing all of the number work and fortunately found that with 6 2m pieces and 5 3m pieces (a complete guess) I had absolutely nailed it.

It was also around this time that Charlie took another trip up and was conveniently in to receive the next shiny thing. A nice big 50" TV.

We did not get a huge amount of work done that weekend (funnily enough) but we did fit a bunch of the skirting boards, some more painting and get a radiator cover in place.

The next big job was the Carpet and I headed down to Carpet right on the Sunday to find that I was going to have to wait until the next weekend to collect a carpet that was in stock because the underlay was stored in a warehouse across the road that was not open on a sunday. A little frustrating, and that along with a mess around finding a person to do fitting who was available soon, meant that I ended up agreeing to collect the following weekend and fit it myself.

So the weekend of the carpet collection, turned out to also be the weekend of the Dyson Christmas party. Quite an occasion/the only real occasion in the work calendar and it being an engineering company and a fancy dress party, everyone puts in quite an effort. So the week prior to the party, my evenings were taken up making a set of flying pig outfits for the Topsy Turvy theme, after which I would go home to paint my skirting board ready for the carpet that weekend. Either the long hours, sleeping in a very fumey house with no windows open, or just because it was going around, I ended up ill on the thursday before the friday party, and left with skirting boards behind schedule. I recovered enough to drag myself into work on the friday and to the party afterwards, a good thing too as we won a prize for our costume and subsequently ended up in the Telegraph online.

Anyhow, after a very nice relaxed Saturday morning, and a couple of trips to the dump I headed over to collect the carpet. The guys at carpet right had decided that it would be best to fold it to fit it in my car, and as they had explicitly said to get it flat again as soon as possible.

Given how large it was in my living room and given that I was meant to be sleeping there still, this little piece of "helpful" advice meant that I was left having to fit the carpet by the end of the day.

There were three steps to this really - Fit the spiky strips around the perimeter which I forget the name of, lay the underlay and then lay the carpet. I hate the spiky strips. Even with the most carful handling I could manage, these strips were bastards, spiking me more times than I could count. Its lucky I did not get blood on the carpet..

Anyhow despite this pain the first room went down ok, and was such a nice difference. Next room was to be a little more difficult due to the amount of building rubbish that I had managed to accumulate in there. So first up was a clear out.

And with that done, I got on with the laying.

This second photo is a bit of a cheat as I did not actually get around to trimming and stretching it all out on that saturday night. It was getting late. Instead I got the point that I could lay the carpet out and did the rest the next day.

The next step was a bit of a furniture reshuffle, but the great thing was that with the floor down I was able to buy a wardrobe etc and start furnishing out for the last time (I hope). And this leaves the most up to date photos.

So as I said, I did not get finished for Christmas or the New Year, but there is so much new stuff that has gone in and I am really happy with progress. Yes I still have to put the shelves in the bathroom, paint some of the skirting, box in the boiler, tile the kitchen splash back and put some more artwork on the walls, amongst other things, but at least the place is liveable now. This does mean that now is the time that I am at the highest risk of not finishing... I suppose I will just have to get right back to work next weekend.

Thanks to the people who have helped in this period. I think it was only Charlie's fairly lazy trip up but all help I am very grateful for as always and a Happy 2014 to everyone reading!