building progress - 3rd full week
Well, despite the wet and windy weather - they now have half the walls up, the floor joists, and our big chimney is about 6 foot high now. Still a lot of brickwork to do. Expect they'll start on the roof sometime late next week.

Back to the Future
Got my back fixed the other night... and my shoulder. My chiropractor had reckoned my shoulder muscles were in a badly-knotted state. Anyway - 'Remedial Massage' was the order. De-knotting involved a lot of slowly-painful-traction and compression. It seems to have done the trick so far. Quite an experience gettting your arm slowly pulled out of its socket. Great stuff! :-)

Bad Weather
And I thought *we* got bad weather. My poor cousin Heather's house was slap bang in the middle of the path of Hurricane Katrina (which devastated New Orleans). She luckily got out and moved temporarily to Texas.. Two weeks later - where does "Hurricane Rita" hit ?? ... yes you guessed...

Hope things get sorted out for Heather and family sometime soon. I can't begin to imagine what they're going through.

building progress - 2nd full week
Well, that's the foundations done now. Loads of concrete and blocks where the big muddy holes were. Beginning to see it take shape. Our driveway and most of the garden is now taken over by building material etc. It's probably better not to look - until it's done. Now have our fancy new Morso wood-burning stove and chimney bits ordered and will arrive next week. I've now read practically everything there is on twin-wall chimney flue systems... how sad is that?? The stove instructions say that you should 'season' the wood for TWO YEARS! Oh dear, perhaps I should have built an even bigger wood-store!

Building blog#1
The builders arrived yesterday! We're getting bits added onto our house. A wee digger has appeared - ready for the buidling onslaught.