Joists

Last week saw rapid progress with the garage part of the extension. The inner skin of blockwork has shot up and as of yesterday we have joists at first floor level! So it's starting to look like a building rather than yet more retaining walls. The thermalite blocks have also turned up (for the bedroom walls) so it's good to be using blockwork with a high recycled content at last.

Meanwhile we seem to have a problem with the woodburning stove, which is proving to be a pain in the cold weather. Not sure if this is something caused by building rubble falling down the chinmey when they cut-in to the cottage to fix the joists - but we've had dark brown tar run down the outside of the flue onto the woodburner the last two nights once it's got very hot. Not very pleasant and rather smelly! Hopefully it'll be solved easily but we need to get in touch with the guy who installed it last year to find out how to remove the chimney lining plate. Just another job to do.....