I was starting to feel like the house had reached a hiatus last week. I felt like I was doing nothing much to advance it towards being a home. I spent about 2 hours a night working on it. In fact, it was probably less, given that there was time at each end taken up with slacking and changing in and out of work clothes. I was preparing for skirting board action. Friday was rock bottom as far as DIY went. I hit a wall and, being metaphoric, I couldn't even skirting board it.

Although Saturday ended with me collapsed in bed, feeling very very ill, and Sunday started with a morning of slacking, including messing around with instruments, this week already feels like it's a huge leap forward from last week. I have 100% skirting board coverage (well 98.7% if you include gaps between boards). I have an electrician in the house today, hopefully not noticing any electrical cock-ups I've made, or at least fixing them without substantial financial penalty to me.

More importantly, after an initial false-hope that it was to be today, I have confirmed with my bathroom installation dude that he'll be coming tomorrow to start work (he's not really a dude). The electrician will be around tomorrow too, so they'll be able to collaborate on anything electrical relating to the bathroom. Excellent. Before I can truly live in the house self-sufficiently, I need the means to:

• Be warm: sorted
• Wash myself: coming
• Use a toilet: currently only in liquid form, but soon to be sorted
• Wash clothes: technically I have a washing machine, but it's still simpler to, erm, delegate
• Cook: that's still weeks away, though I have enough of a kitchen to wash-up in, so I could microwave stuff... however, I'm going to destroy the kitchen next, so best not get used to having one

This is indeed encouraging. I will, hopefully, get a chance to chat about amended plans for the kitchen/bathroom with the bathroom fitter and see what he makes of the new scheme - hopefully it will seem more realistic and, thus, more schedulable.

I think I shall do a lot of sanding and general decoration preparation this week. This might lead me to being able to get some lining paper on the walls. Bizarrely, it now feels like, after a week of feeling I was getting nowhere, that things are happening a bit quickly. I really want the heating people back to put radiators back on the walls and to install the bathroom radiator. However, I want the walls to be papered before the radiators go on them. I think some industrial-strength sanding may really help me get on top of things. And filling.

I'm going up north this weekend, which should also involve a lot of labouring. If I eat sensibly this week (and that's a long shot) then all this labouring could well see me turn into a fitter dude (I'm not a dude).