Building work and life in general!

Well, we've made real progress this week. The wall between the kitchen and new utility room has been knocked through and the lovely oak beams and post to hold up the corner of the house look really lovely. The plasterer has been in and finished the walls and ceilings; I am so glad about that because the dust caused by this trade is just too awful. He has to come back to screed the utility and garage floors but that won't be so bad ......... I hope!

Al has been here the last two evenings doing the second fix electrics. He's just left us at 9.45 pm to drive all the way home to Bognor. Then he has to be up at 5.00 am to get ready for work. I don't know how he does it. He is such a hard worker. I really don't know what we'd do without him. He is a very good friend.

I will take some pictures of the new extension and garage tomorrow and post them - it's a bit too dark right now!

I have been enjoying reading the Obay blog today with all the details of the FCI World Champs. All our teams did us proud. Bernadette is writing a really good account of the whole experience and I can't wait for the next instalment.

We were booked into the Norfolk show this coming weekend but have decided not to go. Abbey hasn't been brilliant just lately and now poor old Tina is not very well. Andy and Mac took her to see Jim this evening and we're hoping we can get her over her bad tummy problems. She is almost blind, completely deaf and her back end isn't too sound any more so we are getting to the stage where we have to start looking at quality of life. It's so hard as she seems to have been around forever. She is just over 15.5 but these things are still so hard to deal with. Hopefully she will get over this problem and have a bit more time. Dan and Mac have been so good taking her in after Mum was taken ill. She is Andy's dog but has lived with Mum for the past four years. When Mum became ill and Ed could no longer cope with the dogs the plan was really for us to take Tina back and Dan and Mac to have Ellie. However, Tina pined for Ellie and we collectively decided that they needed to be together. As we already had six dogs they offered to take them in, we just help out by having them when Dan and Mac want to go away. We are very grateful to them for looking after Tina and of course Ellie.

We're megga busy at the moment. Andy's work has gone absolutely mad. It was a little bit quiet through the summer I think as interest rates took hold and people got used to the squeeze. Now things seem to have levelled out and people are wanting to do extensions and build new houses etc. This of course means tonnes of work for Andy on the design front. It's good news as we seem to be pouring money into the extension at our own house but not good from the free time perspective!

All in all, we're quite looking forward to a chilled weekend. We're going to shut the office door, take the dogs to the Ashdown Forest and go for a pub lunch!