Well Jake is safely in bed in his new room at last – have spent all day building flat pack furniture with him and finished putting up the curtains at 9pm. Still got to have some furniture delivered on Fri and put up posters and move all important gaming chair, Nintendo and Wii back in but is done. Big hugs to the kids for this as they have been fantastic – Ellie painted loads last week and Jake is a dab hand with a screwdriver. And I got to use my new power drill – liberation!

I didn’t think it would get done ever but it has – now only the rest of the trashed house to fix! However it will get done and we will get there. Ellie has gone to Kosovo on her youth education project and she has texted to say she is enjoying it. She is a star and deserves extra big doses of future happiness for the support she has given me and Jake. Jake thanked me tonight for getting his room done – he is such a sweetie.

Am having trouble uploading pics of the new room due to technical problems at the blog end but here is one bit. It is a hard room to photo anyway being an L shape attic and in this pic the carpet looks a bit strange – looks better in real life and Jake really likes it – colour scheme is his choice.

Anyway will not be posting for a little bit as have a busy week ahead sorting out stuff ready to be away lots – have three events in next few weeks and a holiday in Spain – mother has just e-mailed me a pic of her in the jacuzzi – can’t wait.

Life is good. Sad things happen but they are outweighed by the kindness of everyone else.

But it looks like the loft conversion will be finished on schedule about the end of next week (hurrah!). Not that the builders haven’t been very lovely but it will be nice to not have to listen to all the banging and not come home to 2 hours worth of cleaning and mopping every night after an evening’s teaching.

Thank God for Henry ! The Henry in question is my wonderful vac who has done sterling work this week with all the black dust, wood shavings and bits of plasterboard.

I am posting extensive pics of the build for my Mum to see the progress not because I am a sad woman with nothing else to do.

I am now getting on to the fun bit which is the interior decorating – I love the design bit (hence my addiction to the Sims) and would happily move house and interior decorate constantly if it wasn’t for all the hassle that goes with it. My ideal would be to have enough money to do a bit of property development (preferably in Spain as it is nice and warm!) on houses I did not have to live in.

However it has not been too bad at all (she says after vast quantities of wine have been consumed this week to keep nerves steady in coping with cleaning and working all hours God sends as well) and it is nearly finished!

I am very pleased with the end results- Jake has a lovely big room with fantastic views out over the trees to the moors and a cute little shower room – which will look fab once finished  (I spent a very happy two hours in B and Q yesterday choosing fixtures and it will look very classy.) I am going for a contemporary look with a very nice sink and some fab dark metallic mosaic tiles. He has chosen a colour scheme of red,black, white and grey and I have just about got everything else sorted or ordered.

We will still have Jake’s old room which is going to be a study/guest room with just about enough room for a single bed (don’t worry Mum) and desk. Next step is to get painting and find some decorators to do hall, landing and stairs as I do not have time for that bit.

As a bit of light relief from pics of the messy stuff here are a couple of pics of my lovely new firepit/bar-b-que to replace the rusted through chiminea which we tested out last week and of the beautiful clematis that is in bloom in my garden. And of the lovely rose bush my students bought me last week when they left. Thank you very much all of you (and for the chocs and wine – they have come in very handy this week!). Rest assured I have been talking to it!

Will post some of the Rome pics when I get chance….. now off to play moving house on the Sims – so much easier!

We are now about half way through the build and so far so good. Despite everyone telling me horror stories about the amount of horrible black dust there has been little mess really apart from the bit where they took the  ceiling down which was only to be expected. However the builders have been fab and they sealed all of the rooms so there was very little mess anywhere but the hall, landing and stairs which I have spent most of the last three days mopping! However it is all looking very good – have not been up in the roof space yet but it looks like it is going to be a lovely big room for Jake and we will have an additional bathroom – (yay three toilets to clean!). The stairs are going in this week and then I will be able to go up and and see it and work out how much room we have for furniture etc. Jake has chosen his colour scheme and we have bought various bits this week like the bed and chosen tiles, flooring etc so it is all coming together. I was absolutely dreading the whole experience as I hate mess and am really obsessive about cleaning but it really has been remarkably stress free so far thanks to the lovely builders. I am so glad as things are still really busy at work and I would not have had the time for major clean ups.

Below is a little slide show to show you the build so far.