No Pain No Gain

A new bedroom at last! (April - May 2008)

Soon after we got back from holiday we got a plasterer in to do the whole bedroom. This is one task that requires a professional; there is no way that we would attempt to do any plastering ourselves! We then spent several weekends painting and installing skirting boards. After that it was just a matter of choosing the carpet and buying new bedroom furniture.
The finished article! We still have to complete the furnishing of the room, and we are still using a ladder to get upstairs until the new stairs are installed. But it is a comfortable, quiet, warm and sunny room, and it is absolutely wonderful to be able to sleep upstairs - after over a year of sleeping in the kitchen/living room!
We made our own built-in wardrobe because we couldn't find a ready-made half size one. It still needs curtains, but I hate sewing!
As soon as we'd moved into the bedroom we started work on the downstairs again. We cleared out the hallway to enable us to enter the bathroom through the correct door at last, and built a wall to create the bathroom cupboard at the back of the stairwell.
Finished stairwell walls ready for plastering.

Two weeks in paradise (March 2008)

After more than 18 months without a proper holiday together we decided to splash out and take ourselves off to the Maldives for a tropical island getaway. It really was picture postcard perfect - white sand, clear turquoise sea, swaying palm trees, etc.
Our resort, the imaginatively titled ''Sun Island", is the largest in the Maldives. Our bungalow was on the same side of the island as the water bungalows, visible on the right side of this photo.

Like all the bungalows on the island, ours faced the beach and was surrounded by trees to keep our room shaded and cool.

This is the view from our front porch.

We bought an underwater housing for our camera, and boy was it fun to use!

There were lots of clumps of coral just off-shore from our bungalow. Each clump had a resident population of small colourful fish. These little stripey guys must have thought I was a piece of coral because they kept swimming up to nibble me! Luckily it was more ticklish than painful.

The fish in the deeper water on the other side of the island were bigger and some, like these, swam around in large schools.

There were plenty of interesting creatures out of the water as well, such as lizards like this one. We also saw lots of fruit bats flying around and hanging upside down in the trees, but they were very difficult to photograph.

Relaxing in the shallow waters of the Indian Ocean. The storm on the horizon was unfortunately a common sight and it rained almost every day. Everyone said it was very unusual weather for this time of year - just our luck! But at least it never got cold.

Sting rays were another common sight, although we only saw rays this big at the nightly feeding time by the jetty. We had two resident juvenile rays who would patrol up and down our bit of the beach every day. We quickly got used to their presence, and even though they liked being in the shallowest water close to the beach, they were very shy. They would swim away if they saw you looking at them from the beach.

We also saw lot of reef sharks. Even though these sharks are quite small and are harmless to humans, they still move in that unmistakable shark-like way. They never ceased to be thrilling to watch.

If you looked down when walking along the beach at low tide, you would see lots of tiny crabs scuttling around. Once a week there was a crab race in the bar, involving little hermit crabs collected from the beach, each with a numbered sticky label attached to their shell. A bit cruel, but very amusing for us silly humans (the crabs were returned to the beach afterwards).

A sunset fishing trip was included in our package. As soon as the sun had gone down, the fish started biting, and we each caught a lovely red snapper.

The food was excellent- fresh fish every day, wonderful spicy Sri Lankan curries, stir-fries cooked to order, and loads of fresh fruit at every meal time which the chefs would cut up for you.

We transferred to and from the main Maldives airport in a seaplane, which was a wonderful experience in itself. Landing and take-off was so smooth on the water! The plane trips provided great views of other atolls and deserted islands.

Sadly the holiday was over all too soon. We went from 30 degrees to -2 degrees in one day! The snow started falling while we were on the train from Gatwick Airport. Very unusual for the end of March!

The plateau, part 2 - walls and ceilings (Oct 2007 - Feb 2008)

A large part of our 'plateau' period has been occupied with building and filling in walls and ceilings. It's time-consuming because there are so many tasks involved. After the wooden frame is constructed you have to fit the insulation, attach the correct size of plasterboard over the top, fill in all the joins and holes, then sand it down in preparation for plastering/skimming and finally painting. Every single wall in our flat is either completely new or being reconstructed.

Our living room / kitchen began to feel a lot warmer once the ceiling insulation had gone in.

More insulation, on the stair cavity wall (different type of insulation).

Much of the living room / kitchen ceiling is now filled in with plasterboard, and we have proper lights at last. But there's still a lot of work to be done here.

Stair cavity and hall with lights and partially completed walls.

Building the small side walls in the upstairs room. This is Jess, on a recent stay with her brother George. Jess was very clever and quickly taught herself how to go up and down the ladder (shown in above photo) on her own!
The side walls begin to take shape. The north gable end wall has also been covered with insulation.
We're getting there!

We've also had a roofer in, to fix the leaking roof which we discovered soon after moving in.

A short break to Venice (Feb 2008)

We have developed a habit of taking each other away on city breaks for our birthdays. So it was Stockholm in October, and Venice in February!

We took the boat from the airport directly to our hotel in Cannaregio, the northernmost part of Venice - about as far away from the Piazza San Marco as you can get within Venice and all the better for it. In this area we ate and shopped with the locals - few tourists come this way, especially in February.

Hanging washing strung between buildings is such a common sight in Venice, and quite charming.

Incredible ice cream 'towers'!

Building ornamentation spotted on the Grand Canal

A fully laden traghetto ferrying people from one side of the Grand Canal to the other

The Basilica di San Marco

Good food and wine with a pleasant lagoon view

Dusk on the Grand Canal

The plateau, part 1 - bathroom (Oct 2007 - Feb 2008)

Once again, this blog has been quiet for a long time! We really have been working hard on the house; it's just that there doesn't seem to be much to show for it! Hence the term 'plateau'. It's been a frustrating period because it hasn't always felt like we were making progress, and the list of tasks continues to feel like it is endless. But finally the flat is starting to feel a bit more liveable again. We've spent the last 5 months putting some more work into the bathroom, building/finishing walls and ceilings, and George has re-wired the whole house, installing new lights and plug sockets in every room (all certified by a professional electrician just in case you were worried!).