Hot off the press....

The oven and microwave are now in place, M was keen for me to post a picture as he is at work but can't wait to see his lovely cooking station. He can't wait to bake me lots of cakes and buns when he wont have to crawl about on his hands and knees to see into the oven.

Oh almost forgot! I wanted to post up a picture of our lovely guest room...

We just have to hang the curtains (we now have a curtain pole, but no hooks!) and a few other little finishing touches and it will be perfect, but we really like it, it's so nice to have a finished room and nice to be able to offer guests some comfort after months of guests having to endure cold, cramped, dusty and exposed (lack of curtains has been a common theme for many rooms until recently) conditions.

Another bank holiday weekend, not so much done on this one, as it was my 30th birthday! But as a birthday treat I got my family who was visiting to help a little in the garden and so now my greenhouse has a lovely waterbutt, which is great as it filled up in just one day and means that I no longer have to walk from the house with a full watering can.

M then also got three more posts in of our pergola / fruit cage, and I was given lots of lovely plants for the garden for my birthday so it is really nice to see it coming on.

The kitchen is coming on, the walnut detail has gone in and is beautiful, templating for the worktops will take place tomorrow and more appliances have arrived.

Update from the garden...

as always there is alot of work to do out there, but I am pleased with how it is developing, it is amaizing to look at pictures of what it was when we arrived versus now...

I am pleased with how the beds are starting to develop, again still alot to do - adjust what is in there and add more plants, but...

the bits in there already are looking really pretty particularly the peonies and irises.

In the veg beds, the potatoes are romping away, the peas are starting to pod, garlic looks almost there and numerous seedlings are starting to come through. It also looks as though it will be a good year for gooseberries even though we haven't got our full fruit cage solution implemented, I am hoping they will be reasonably safe from the birds and give M a chance to make a lovely crumble!!

The kitchen is moving forward, we now have doors on our cabinets in the utility room...

And here is M demonstrating how to use our marvellous new pull out ironing board...

Wow what a day!!! We now have carpet upstairs, it's brilliant, it's so clean, we can walk around barefoot or roll around on the floor, as demonstrated by M

So now we have what we set as our minimum for the arrival of mini-challis, so it is great to look back over what we have acheived and realise that it is possible. If only I could drink, we would be popping the champagne corks at this milestone.

Few more pictures of installation and our lovely carpet...

Another busy weekend at the Challis Palace...lots of bits finished off and we are finally ready for carpet to go down, well we had better be as they are coming tomorrow to lay it!!

The kitchen chaps have also been cracking on, the carcases are in, so we can start to see how it will look. It will likely take until the end of May, because of when the appliances are being delivered, but hey ho, it is in sight.

It's finally happened!.... We have heating and hot water!!! I think it was sometime back in November when we disconnected the old boiler and started to plumb in the new system. I'm told it's been a mild winter, maybe so! I don't know what we would have done without the trusty wood burner and the electric shower. But hey, lets not dwell on the past, it is now working!!!

In all it was a very busy bank holiday weekend, M's parents came down, M'd dad was working with him on getting the heating and hot water finished and M's mum did a sterling job of painting anything that didn't move, while I spent more happy hours in the greenhouse with mini-C avoiding the nasty old VOCs.

The kitchen people arrive properly on site today and it looks like the carpet will be going down upstairs next week, so there is much to celebrate... perhaps with a long soak in the tub...finally...!