So much to report about the house. Well, actually, very little. I did some painting, the plasterer did some plastering and I did some sanding. However, I'll string this out to a longer description for the hell of it.

The DIY situation is feeling positive. If I wake up at a reasonable hour tomorrow, I should be able to get on with some more room preparation. Heck, if something mental happens, I might be doing more painting, or even hanging wallpaper this weekend. We'll see.

Last night I wanted to continue the work I'd started on Tuesday and failed to complete on Wednesday. I had re-primed the skirting boards and windowsills, leaving the more detailed window-frame for later. Last night I tackled the window frames. I also reprimed the top of the window sill as some of the colour of the varnish that I'm covering in paint, had seeped through. The primer is there for two reasons. It's a base coat to avoid seepage of the paint into the wood or of the varnish up into the paint. Secondly, it's an undercoat to make the top two coats of gloss look better. So, skimping on the painting of the primer won't do nobody no good.

The primed/undercoated wood work looks pretty good. I'm happy with it.

The living room had some sections of wall which I'd plastered and, given that I was using bodge plaster and given that I'm not a plasterer, I needed to sand it smooth enough that it will seem very smooth once my lining paper goes over it. I think I managed to achieve such sanding last night too.

The plastering job has been very satisfactory indeed so far. The smell has been deeply unpleasant - it smells like they've been using poo on the walls, or a garlic dip of some sort. I'm sure they haven't. It's still very unpleasant. However, as of the last viewing, the bathroom had a skimmed ceiling and the walls were base-coated. The plasterer should have skimmed everything by now. He'd definitely skimmed the ceiling in my downstairs hall, which is nice. In fact, once that's dry I can set about painting it. I could actually get my hall totally repainting. There's not a great benefit in doing that in its entirety, as a catalogue of building works may well destroy a lot of that.

Actually, having written that, I'm not so certain. There are works to do in the top two bedroom, but that's just plastering. I feel like the decorating in the rooms that are thoroughfares should probably wait until a bit later, but maybe I can bring them near to the final coat and then just whack that one in a jiffy once everything else is pretty much done. As always, I'm not yet sure and I'll play it by ear.

The bathroom man/joiner/builder (I don't know how to categorise him) returns on Monday and, I hope, will really get going with the whole putting it together. The room feels smaller than I'd hope it would, but once I get it decorated all white, I think it will be a nice place to wash and poo.

And that's probably a good way to define a house, really. It'll be a nice place to wash, sleep, eat and poo. Maybe watch TV. Maybe avoid the housemates/tenants. We'll see. I'm not yet excited. Just trepidation at this stage.

Oh, and there's the small matter of month or two of having only one tenant in Newcastle, and having to foot the bill for that... and the few days next month I'll be spending up there doing shed loads of DIY jobs to get it a bit more presentable.

Mind you, I might get to buy a scaffolding tower/platform or some such.

P.S. Looks like I might even get a roofer on Monday... watch this space.