The plasterer has been! He was here while we were away on our holidays and got quite a bit of plastering done.

This is an area in the new front room with a big wall covered with damp plaster.

It may well be that the long awaited arrival of The French Doors will be soon. Please imagine that this area that is filled with plywood is where the French doors will be. We have been told that they will arrive on or near the 12th of this month. After an 18 month wait, I hope they fit and work properly or I may be blogging from prison.

This is a photo of the window that is soon to become a doorway. Please not the plywood on the right of the photograph. That's where a door will be.

To the left in this photo you can plainly see a big orange gas tank. The plumbing and heating guy said he would be here last week to route this tank outside. I'm going to have to start my phone campaign again. Very busy tradesmen will ignore the quiet customers and only do those jobs when there is a lull in the action. The trick here is to not be the quiet customer when you need something done. Phone them on their mobile/cell phone first thing in the morning and then again at dinner time. My battle cry has been: The squeaky wheel gets the grease. I haven't squeaked enough and this tank hasn't been moved yet. I think it is time to start.

This is the view from our soon to be ex-window. Note the drying plaster.

Excited by the upcoming arrival of the doors, the builder will be knocking the hole for the door through and the electrician has been given a date to come in for a final fix. Final fix means the attachment of light switches, light fittings, power points or electrical sockets and hooking the whole business up to the mains. Between now and then, I have to start selecting bathroom lighting.

The Man of the Place has a new toy, an angle grinder. It throws some great sparks! He is cutting up some an old swing frame. We had a swing hooked to it once but it prooved to be very unstable and the swing was promptly unhooked again. The frame has been rusting away, unused in the garden since (+10 years). The frame was always too big to fit into any of our cars for hauling to the dump. Now that has been cut into easier chunks, it can go.

The big sheet of blue plastic is going to be tacked to the doorway to prevent plaster dust from invading any and all spaces once the business of knocking a whacking great hole in the wall starts.