Lots of bits and pieces - but nothing very glamorous

Today we have hit another major deadline - plasterers are due in the lounge.  There has been an enormous amount of preparation work for their visit as the lounge is quite a complicated room, wiring wise.  It isn't always easy to keep up morale as none of the jobs show anything pretty or finished but all are vital - anyhow, we will move onto more glamorous jobs soon.

This house has minimal height ceilings as we had to follow the building line from the top of Woodview down to the top of the bungalow.  The roof is very complicated and in two halves - the lounge and bedroom 1 above it, are lower than the rest of the house so there is a step down into both of these rooms.  Here David has built up the step (which covers over the underfloor heating very nicely) and filled it in with concrete.

We had originally planned to have a chimney and a log burner but this added a significant amount to the cost of the build and as this is such a warm house, we decided we definitely didn't need the log burner for its heating qualities.  However, the lounge is quite long so we decided to keep the idea of a 'chimney' breast to break up the wall, but have turned this into a TV breast, so the television will sit in there and will be flush with the surface of the wall.  A much anticipated trip to Richer Sounds in Bristol (just up from David's old BBC stomping ground in Whiteladies Road) resulted in the purchase of a TV and speaker system.  

Three of the speakers are also being built into this recess (and will eventually be spray painted the same colour as the wall); you can just about see from this photo where David has built plywood frames for the speakers - the TV is going where it says 'DONT).

Here is a close up of the speaker recess, lined with sound insulation, before the plywood frame was added.

And here is the frame in the ceiling, just beside the doors to the dining area, for the one of the remaining two speakers - making it truly surround sound.

Because we can, we decided to have the curtain track hidden in the ceiling.  Whilst Vicki is quite happy to have a go at the study and bedroom curtains, the lounge curtains proved to be a bit too much for her limited sewing skills so these are being made by Dodge Interiors in Sherborne.  David made this mock-up panel for Daphne, to ensure that the curtains will fit inside the ceiling recess when they are bunched up.

Almost there - David has even put a little piece of wood to keep all of his cables in the socket holes, nicely out of the way for the plasterers.

And here we are ready.  Whilst we managed to do the ceiling in the kitchen, having seen the four strapping lads who are the plasterers, we decided that some things are just not worth it - so we have left the ceiling for them to plasterboard.  Note in the bottom right hand corner, the plasterboard doesn't go all the way down to the floor; this is so there is a cable run behind the skirting board to the chimney breast, keeping everything very neat and tidy.

And finally for now, progress is being made in the downstairs cloakroom.  We have some large (1 metre square) but very thin (3 mm) Grespania tiles which have proved to be a challenge (ie we broke one, so had to put this job on hold whilst another one was ordered as we didn't have any spares).  But, the wait was worth it and they do look very smart - we now just need to touch up the paint and the cloakroom will be finished this week - watch this space!