We've been framed!

It's all coming along!  - the window frames started to arrive yesterday, and the tackers are due to start boarding the rest of the walls today.  It seems that the staircase - actually, it's a sufficiently serious erection that I think I need to call it The Staircase - has been passed for going up and down as we've lost the ladder route to upstairs.  So we've sneaked up The Staircase ourselves - how exciting, rather like royalty sweeping down the grand staircase arriving at the ball, only in reverse...

You can see here how the gable undersides are boarded with tongue-and-groove.

 

Services are coming on - the gas connection man actually arrived a day early and so he had to be sent away again as there wasn't a whole hole for him to lay his conduit into!

Here's the gas supply going into the house - the tank is just out of view to the left.  The water board have inspected the pipe route and pronounced it acceptable and are due to come and change over to this supply today - will report back as to whether it actually happens...

The electricity needs a trench across the front of the house from the pole (SW corner of the plot) to the garage (SE corner of the house), so that has sensibly to wait upon the removal of the scaffolding but all is ready to go once that's done.


And here's how it looks from the rear at present - you can see they're zinc cladding the long rear gable and that's about all that is left needing doing out there.

Yesterday we went looking at stone.  The terrace to the west has a retaining wall which is going to be gabions - I am planning a deconstructed stone and flint wall in echo of the local vernacular and I'm sure Peter the Architect will approve of this - and we're hunting stone that matches the patio slabs.  Or vice versa.  We spent a happy 20 minutes wading through mud in a Somerset quarry so this morning's job is shoe-cleaning and emptying the boot of the odd bits of stone and rock we picked up during the day.