Well we made it in. Despite the ice and snow.
In fact, the only slip was by Graham and he only carried one thing! Cheers Graham 
The big old house is feeling like a home now, the tree is up, the kitchen is stocked and there’s beer in the fridge.
Pics will be up in a few days… enjoy your Christmas everyone!
John and Andrea.
We have been working flat out on the house. Not just us by any means either, Mary and especially Dave have been really putting the hours in (they must really want us out of the flat 
).
There are some new photographs of the house up here, these were from just after the plastering was complete, it looks a lot different now!
A few weekends ago we went down to see Shona and Simon in Birmingham to mark the occasion of Simon’s 30th. As usual, good times were had and there are pics up here.
The “in by Christmas meter” is currently on a 9.9 out of 10! Current pics to come after the weekend.
We’ve had a great weekend of friends, football, fine food and fun at the house!
Our long-term lodger, Debs, is leaving us on Monday and Julie was visiting this weekend, so today was the perfect opportunity to exploit, I mean have assistance, at the house.
We were all present, along with Graham and Beth, at Newcastle United’s victory yesterday. Sitting right down by the corner flag where Carroll celebrated his equaliser.
Today we all descended upon the house along with Mary and Dave to continue stripping, painting and cleaning. We have now had the house 2 months and next week should hopefully see the end to wallpaper stripping. It’s been a long time coming.
As you can see from the new photos the French doors were fitted last week, we are still waiting for them to be finished. We now have a consumer unit instead of the old fuse box and the remaining building work should be finished in the coming week. Plastering is set to commence in 2 weeks.
The “in by Christmas meter” is currently on a 7 out of 10.
You can’t do a whole lot about awful tradesmen. The little I can do is make sure anyone puts “Lynch roofing” into google finds this post and is warned against using this useless outfit.
This is our wall 3 weeks after our roof was “fixed” and we paid £120 for the privilege. After rain last week and the damp re-appeared I rang them back and informed them the leak was not fixed. To cut the story short this then led to 3 planned visits that did not happen and I have rang them at least once a day, every day since to get it sorted. Yesterday, 6 days later, he finally got round to examining the roof again.
This morning I rang back (the promised call yesterday not materialising) and the roof needs more pointing and the gutters cleaned… but it will cost us another £120!
Other quotes are now being sought.
Here are the details you do not want to use…
M Lynch Emergency 24hr roofing, 11 Oxford Street, WHITLEY BAY, NE26 1AE, 0191 251 6312.
John.
House pics updated, new ones starting here.
The builders are in replacing a couple of ceilings along with a few other jobs and the windows are done. New doors going into the bay next week.
The “in by Christmas meter” is currently on an 8 out of 10.