Annabelle’s room has been complete for a week now. She loves her new room! We’ve now moved on to Natasha’s room. Walls and ceiling have been painted with white emulsion ready for her chosen colours! Eeek, shades required!

We should be able to complete the interior decoration by Christmas (landing and fourth bedroom need doing as well) and then I hope to lay the laminate flooring in the en-suite.

Hey! I forgot to say that I’ve had the last of the window parts delivered It’s taken this long to get someone to listen, understand and then do something about it! My garage is full of ’spare’ window parts including sashes, sealed glazing units, beading and security tape. I’ve got to now dismantle some of the windows in order to fir them with the parts that were originally ordered.

Thanks to Amanda @ Jeld Wen who sorted it out.

The plasterer arrived today (after being delayed a couple more weeks) so the room is gonna be ready for painting soon!.

As it was a very skilled job to get a finish (which would make or break the professional look of the job) I decided to get someone in.

If you’re ever stuck for a trade to get into - take up plastering! They’re absolutely impossible to get hold off. When you do find someone interested in doing the task, be prepared for weeks of waiting.

Windows 2000 has (by default) removed the capability for a user to remove certain optional components - namely the Accessibility components, games, multimedia and communications utilities. If you are like me and have no need for some of these then read on!

Navigate to %systemroot%\inf
Edit the sysoc.inf file and locate the ‘; old base components’ section.
Remove the ,HIDE text from the appropriate lines, save and close notepad.
Run up Add-Remove programs, select Windows Components and then select the Details for the Accessories and Utilities item.

Voila, the items that Microsoft doesn’t want you to remove!

Well, it’s been a tough ride but hopefully the windows will be arriving in the next couple of days. Basically, Travis Perkins didn’t order them six weeks ago like they were requested and so YET AGAIN I’ve been delayed as a direct result of their efforts. I’ll be looking to obtain some compensation over this as I’m furious with the matter.

As we’ve had no windows, work has been very slow - I can’t do much bar fiddle around until the shell becomes water tight.

As previously noted, Travis Perkins wasn’t that impressive as a supplier. This delay cost severely and unbeknown to me at the time, would cost me lots of time and effort in months to come…