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The big push started on the top floor of the house with plastering all the walls and ceilings, which again due to lack of funds we did ourselves and quickly found out how patient you need to be to get a smooth finish, time consuming and very very messy (I am in awe of the professionals who can plaster at lightening speed and get a glass finish leaving the room as clean as when they started). After plastering came tiling the bathroom and fitting the sinks, toilets, showers and baths, painting walls and ceilings, laying flooring and fitting skirting boards. Meanwhile in February we had a visit from some friends from England specifically my very good friend from work Nick and his son Jason who had just finished a builders course at college and offered very very kindly to build a wall around what would be our garden plot. The weather was against us but after a couple of weeks we had a small wall around a patch of mud and rocks . Back inside the house and on our own again, Each room was taking anything from 2 weeks to a month to complete and it was looking more and more likely that we would be able to finish the house completely by the end of June, then in March 2008 hiccup No4 happened.
Hiccup No4
One morning in March I woke up and couldn't move without excruciating pain in my back and legs. It didn't make any sense i hadn't lifted anything heavy all i'd been doing was sanding window frames and doors, so after a week of pain killers and doing practically nothing and no change I had to go to the doctors.
20 hours a day laying at a 30 degree angle and carrier bags full of pain relief which practically turned me into a narcoleptic for a month and I could get out of bed and move around but had constant psyactic pain down my legs.
This left only my partner working on the house whilst looking after me, which slowed everything down to a snails pace. Luckily the in laws were able to come out for a month and help out with the tiling and painting in some of the rooms, but our deadline was getting closer and we were slipping further and further behind schedule. I finally managed to get back to plastering and pointing stone walls on the 1st and ground floors in May 2008 . (2 months doesn't sound like a lot of time but everyday counts when the budget and deadlines are so tight).
By the end of May 2008 we were resigned to the fact that the house was not going to be finished completely but the bedrooms and hallways would and we could just close off unfinished rooms until after the wedding. We had now to concentrate on make the exterior building site something more like a garden area.
We knew that we would never get it done with just the two of us so we cunningly hatched a plan to hold a rock festival and enlist everyone we knew for a days rock moving and an evening of bbq and beer. We could not believe the response we got, so many people turned up and in a day we managed to shift about 30 tonne of rubble and lay out a design for the garden edged in stone and barrow and spread 50 tonne of gravel, and then finish the day off with a really good party that went on till early hours the next morning. (It was one of the longest, most physically demanding days and the following day none of us were much good for anything.)