Cold fingers

Does anyone else think it’s crazy that we are already halfway through February, whereas January felt like years!

Anyway, another week and another weekend spent at my favourite place…Number 13.

During the evenings last week, Jon got most of the downstairs floor down, which made it feel more like a house and is a lot easier to work in as you’re not constantly falling down holes. Until the steels are finally delivered (hopefully next week) and the big structural jobs begin, we are plodding on getting other bits up together and this weekend that meant getting the damp proof membrane done in the kitchen and starting to put up plasterboard.

If we get any damp I’m going to be mad, because this damp proof membrane has been expensive and a real faff. It involves measuring up the plastic backing, drilling numerous holes through it into the wall behind (our neighbours must LOVE us!) and hammering in these special plastic plug seals to keep the plastic in place. The plug seals are shit and often break immediately upon impact, and the brick wall is so old it often disintegrates with the drilling so the plugs just fall out.

Once the damp proofing was finally in place, Jon mixed up plasterboard adhesive to start getting some boards in place. This process of attaching the plasterboard using dot and dab would ordinarily be straightforward, but because our walls are so squiff apparently it takes more time as you have to make sure they are as aligned/straight as possible, otherwise our kitchen units and shelves won’t fit tight against it. Jon had to take the boards back down a couple of times to add more adhesive to pack them out (and one time because he forgot to pull the electric cables through), which infuriated him somewhat. It's slow process.

And to add insult to injury, as we had to go outside to mix (and for me to clean all the tools), the unrelenting rain meant we ended up getting soaked and then it’s impossible to warm up again.