The Kitchen with New Floor Tiles - The floor tiles have been down for sometime now - and are behaving exceptionally well, they have shrugged off most substances dropped on them including plaster, paint, grout, cigarette ash (PHILIP!!) and gloss! Where we had chipped the original yellow tiles off the wall there was quite a bit of damage so two of the kitchen walls have been re-skimmed.

Tiling in the Cloakroom - Not the best pic in the world but enough to demonstrate Terry's tiling prowess - we were very pleased with the tiling in the cloakroom so rewarded Terry by making him tile the bathroom too!

Tiling in the Bathroom & Tiling in the Bathroom 2 - I had this idea, I wanted diamond shapes and half diamonds and I wanted them at dado height. Unfortunately the half-diamonds would be cut tiles without the bevelled edge and would reflect the light differently and draw attention to themselves. Malcolm to the rescue. The strips at the top and bottom of the pattern are usually used to seal the rubber sheeting in showers to the bottom of tiles. Here it covers cut tile edges and looks rather smart I think!

The Kitchen being Tiled - Since Terry excelled himself in the bathroom I figured the kitchen should be next! After much heart searching (do you remember the advert with the little girl trying to decide if she liked Daddy or Chips the best), I Daddy or Chips'd my way to a decision on the kitchen tiles. Terracotta coloured 10x10 cm tiles - go Terry!!

The Lounge with Latex Flooring - For several weeks I thought that the lounge would be forever decorated in the industrial style. A cement mixer seemed a permanent fixture as did the great 'snots' (thats the technical term honest!) of cement all over the floor. In the last few weeks though, now the skimming is all done, the lounge is looking better, the snots have been chipped away and latex flooring has gone down to leave a smooth surface for carpeting.

The Back Bedroom Newly Painted & The Master Bedroom Newly Painted - Having been quoted an enormous sum for artexing (which I am not a great fan of anyway) we have spent the last few weeks steaming and filling the bedroom ceilings in order to paint them. The resulting flat ceilings look great. Philip's mum managed to get a huge drum of magnolia paint for under a tenner so we have been painting walls too. The magnolia looks appalling as it dries, like the ragroll effect from hell, but once completely dry it looks very nice.

Philip Painting the Outside of the House & The Front of the House - The external decoration of the house is coming along apace, the good weather has meant we have fasicas at the back of the house and above the balcony. Philip has been able to paint most of the house himself - occasionally hanging precariously from windows to reach high spots - on sunny days you really have to have sunglasses to admire the front of the house!!