A busy Easter week

We are less than a week home from our last trip back to Aberdeen and another busy work week on the house. Things are definitely feeling like we are heading into the finishing stretches now and Heidi has been spending a lot of time looking for tiles for various rooms but I think we are finally there now.

We had a very varied work scope during our week back with painting, ground works, plumbing and carpentry on the list of things to do. I started off by getting the shower areas in the shower room and master en suite ready for laying concrete bases and ultimately the shower trays. Things didn't get off to a good start as I put the grinder blade through a water pipe!. Having recovered from this things progressed well with this work and the concrete bases are now laid and are drying out before the shower trays are laid. While I was doing this Heidi and the boys started to give the master bedroom its first of 3 coats of paint. The first 2 coats prime and seal the plaster and the last coat gives the final finish.

Master ensuite shower tray area

Shower room shower tray area

Master bedroom with one coat of paint

On the Sunday Heidi entertained the boys after they complained mightily the day before about being on site. This left me alone on site so I spent the day securing pipe work in the storage room area and re instating the step area there. Something I had pulled up a long time ago so good to see it back down again finally.

We progressed onto our civil works on Monday, digging trenches with a mini digger and laying electrical cables to the driveway gate pillars and water pipe to a couple of external tap locations. The weather thankfully cooperated and we got this work done without any really issues. While I had the digger I also took the opportunity to locate our lost telecoms duct.

Tor with "helpers" on digger

Tuesday was short day with a meeting with the landscaping people to finalise the paving and driveway works that were about to commence. that afternoon we headed down the road to mum & dad's house to drop the boys off and use it as a spring board for driving to Middlesborough the following day to select the granite for our kitchen island and counter tops

The trip to the granite supplier was a long one but well worth the effort. They had some amazing pieces of rock at there factory and we found what is certainly a very different piece of rock. Heidi & I both gravitated to this rock as we wander amongst the multitude of slabs available. Its been great how aligned we are with most of these types of decisions. On our way back up the road we stopped at a tile show room in Glasgow to have a look at some different options. A bit like the granite we had some initial ideas going into the meeting but by the time we left there had been some adjustments in our thinking.

The kitchen island granite

Being child free for a few days we divided and conquered with Heidi heading up the tile hunt in Aberdeen and myself continuing with work on site. First on the list was pouring the concrete for the shower trays, then it was onto fitting up the last of the central vacuum pipe work in the house and making various electrical connection for that and the MVHR system.

Getting the main family bathroom ready for tiling was a priority and this we successfully accomplished with a bit more plumbing and joinery work along the way. The shower tray was also successfully laid, unlike the guest en suite where I had issues due to the space that was left being rather too tight - after a few days of reflecting on it I now have a plan forward for this as well. The other priority was painting the ceiling over the stair area before the stair went in. The access being much easier without the stairs being there. Another successful result here was achieved.

Painting the main hall ceiling

Family bathroom shower tray

On Good Friday our landscapers were back to start their works. The first thing they got going with was the foundations for the gate pillars. This included setting the steel columns I will use to hang the gates off being set into the concrete as well.

Steel column for hanging gates

 They also managed to make a start to the back patio with the granite step being installed outside the kitchen door and the first granite pavers being laid in the same area. Our drive was starting to look like a granite dealers yard by this point with granite lintels, setts and pavers all being on site.

Half the granite in the drive