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The archway is finished so we can use the front door again. They do need to finish the front face. We can now finish the render off. Our fitted bookcases are in, we have to choose one of those three door finishes.

A non starter tbh. Just realised the panel above is SIka EBT'd to the panels lining the pocket. It's not as if we'll be slamming each other up against the shower walls in the throes of soapy passion, we'll leave that sort of thing to the newly weds!

Hoselock Kwikstage Dursiol (pushing it a bit that one: the blocks do have a male and female 'end') Click flooring Cladding SDS Nulok roofing HeP 2O 'Taint warit yoused ter b is it?

It's been a long journey, but our little cottage is finally up and running as a holiday house. First guests just checked out and left us with some very kind words having thoroughly enjoyed their stay. Of course it's not exactly 'finished' but it's certainly usable. I'd have liked to have had a few extra days to tidy things up, but all the essentials are in place. There's decking still be be built out the front, I'm hoping to get this done in a gap between changeovers soon. I must say it feels pretty good to get to this point.With over three years of very hard work behind us, and a lot of faith that it would all be worth it, we are finally seeing money coming in. And having had to down tools I am going to have this curious thing called 'free time' again... although I'm sure I'll manage to fill it all

I had physio for 5 months before the op. I'm sure it helped afterwards but the shooting pain in the actual knee doesn't help. That seems to be getting worse rather than better unfortunately and sadly the op didn't actually fix the main problem so my consultant says he's not surprised that the pain is there still. 3 months is D day apparently so still a bit to go to see if it will get better. Did Turmeric and high dose curcumin for about a year along with Omega 3 and about half a dozen other joint related things but I never noticed any difference sadly. Might start taking them again - can't make it any worse I guess.

Turmeric for joint pain. I've a bfo jar my Gurkha mate's mum grew in Nepal. Mind blowing compared to the crap we buy here. His missus made me some massala chai from all her spices brought back. Best tea I've ever had. Could actually feel it coursing through my veins! Colours were brighter and everything more vivid.

Old 18v drill/driver is 2.3kg, new 10.8v is 1.2kg. It is overall smaller but the bit you hold is actually about the same size so still needs reasonably sized hands.

Handcuffs?

Be a pity to render that brickwork over the bookcases!

Right, it's off on its way to BC...100% DIY including making the block plan from the assessors website and drawing a red box in Paint!

New knee and hip???

I think it is because Scandy houses tend to be designed to have bathrooms with wetfloors and have a drainage grill in the floor, without paying much attention to eg floor profile to direct the water. To me it makes sense to have a freestanding bath draining into the grill. A good buggeration-free way to alternate bath/shower should you need without needing to dig up the floor. Over here the practise is perhaps more to make bathrooms into bathing bedrooms, bathing-lounges or bathing-snugs. But you have to admit it makes the problem just go away completely . My other suggestion would be to make a feature of it, as one does with chrome hot and cold water pipes in a shower rather than destroying a tiled wall to hide them. In this case it could be something metal, or something off-the-wall like a reclaimed or newly made barrel or stainless steel item to provide a bath-tidy and hide the gubbins. F

There is another delightfully simple option which occurs in Scandinavia but would not impress Hyacinth B - have a grill in the floor and do not necessarily connect it at all. Here are a few variations on the theme, including a couple of horrors with drainage pipes. I love the simplicity and would have one in my own house, but it might not work for other people.

Thanks @lizzie. I'll have a look at that.

I used a double sided bitumen tape to stick our DPM to the DPC. Make was Novia. Worked a treat.

Or 4 Fords in various states of disrepair...

Schedule 1 of The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (Scotland) Order 1992 / Schedule 2 of The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995 both refer to paragraphs 2 - 10 of the First Schedule of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, which details the permitted use of land as a caravan site where a caravan site licence is not required (to obtain a caravan site licence, you require planning permission).  http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/8-9/62 Paragraph 9 states Building and engineering sites  Subject to the provisions of paragraph 13 of this Schedule, a site licence shall not be required for the use as a caravan site of land which forms part of, or adjoins, land on which building or engineering operations are being carried out (being operations for the carrying out of which permission under Part III of the Act of 1947 has, if required, been granted) if that use is for the accommodation of a person or persons employed in connection with the said operations. Many people believe that this paragraph means they can live on site with their families. For those individuals who are employed in connection with the relevant building operations that may be true, but the paragraph does not cover family members not employed in that process, children being a good example. Whilst it may be the case that individual Planning Authorities are more relaxed about their interpretation of this paragraph, and individual circumstances will differ, the only way to be sure that you can permanently reside on site is to obtain planning permission. The most straightforward way of doing so is to include provision of the static caravan in your main planning application.

Progress! Topsoil stripped off most of the site today, and much of it good to reuse. Full plans have gone in to BC so as son as TF guy confirms our baseworks drawings, we're good to dig footings. In the meantime there's land drain to do and crushed rubble to lay.

Guess what? My complaint seemed to work. I've no idea at all what they did; they didn't do any work to the cabling close to the house, that's for sure, but we're now getting a fairly solid 24 Mb/s, rather than the 4 to 5 Mb/s we used to get. I can now upload at around 10 Mb/s too, which is a heck of a difference when posting photos.

Sorry I forgot to update this. The BCO accepted that the Genvex Combi was a self contained unit with built in safety controls and didn't require G3 certification.

I have some training in information theory. I can assure you that xDSL is much closer to alchemy. However, the new gigabit (ish) G.fast is the purest witchcraft. Mind you, I always maintained V.90 56K modems were impossible, so what would I know?

Should have been £79.95 so I'd say so! A weird chain of events...I recommended the Aldi welder to the BiL. Under their referral reward system he gets £10 off of his first order over £45 if I email him. So he got his for £59.95. I then got an unexpected £10 voucher. I figured it'd be the same thing as in you'd have to spend £90 to use two vouchers. I posted the Aldi link on the car and welding forums and loads of people asked me to email them so they could buy the welder at £10 off. When I read the small print in the T&Cs it said referral rewards are accumulative. Anyway you can ONLY get up to £1500 in referral rewards! So...I used 5 referral rewards and got £50 off. Since then I've a few more so that'll but some air tools. Result I think is the word!