My father and I put the 200 litre water ballon up today, in what will hopefully be the kitchen. Had to borrow a pulley from a friend or we'd have never been able to do it, but after much messing around it went up ok.

Some friends emailed me this little poem after my accident, I was quite touched, so I thought I'd post it here. Ive entitled it "Take care"

Gren you silly bat
You've got to wear a hat
A hard one not a beret
Because I think you may
Not finish what you started
And we'd be broken hearted.

Finished the end wall thankfully. Just the little bit at the side left to do now.

A

Back at work having rested my leg for a week and having borrowed some scaffold from a friend to continue building the wall above the doorway, one more day at it and it should be finished. Rendered the section of the wall where the water ballon will go too, but I'm going to need some help getting that into position, will need a pulley at the very least I think.

While my leg was too bad to do any major work I built up a small wall along the side of the kitchen to hide the sink drain too. Oh I also cut and roughly shaped a large beam to form the base of the kitchen steps into the living room.

Here's the damage to the ladders from the falling rocks.

Heres a few more photos of the work on the kitchen window. Work has ceased for the time being as I had a very nasty fall from the ladder whilst building the wall above the door. It wasn't so much the fall as the rocks that landed on me afterwards, fortunately they landed on my leg, as I don't think it would be melodramatic to say, had they landed on my head, I may well be dead. And everything I say rhymes! Will be at least a week before I can start work again.

I haven't posted anything for over a month now, so lots of pics to go up today. I had a small exhibition of prints in the local village, and met and made some friends as a result.

Had no money left at the beginning of the month so worked on tidying the garden. Built up the garden wall next to the road and cleared and dug over a large portion of the bottom garden, including removing a large tree root from the corner. I discovered a good method is to dig out the root as best you can creating a moat around the stump, then fill it with water, leave for a day or two and keep filling with water, then you can remove the mud from under the root, I got quite far with this method before the local farmer kindly removed it for me with his tractor, saving me a lot of effort.

Towards the end of the month I had a little bit of work so earned a few quid to enable me to get on with the house again. Bought some cement and some windows for the kitchen so been busy building up the kitchen walls ready to put the door and the windows in. The kitchen door is in now actually, sanded a couple of the old beams from the ruin for the door frame.
Put a large beam in the kitchen too, to support the roof struts.

 One of the door frames after sanding

 The old beam before sanding

 and after.