Veranda has been tiled

We have been wanting to do this job for ages, mainly for our benefit to make the veranda look nicer and another to stop rain penetrating through to the cellar walls underneath during the winter. So this year we decided it would be a "nice job" to do through the summer at a steady pace, and can almost say we enjoyed it until the tediousness of the grouting (my job) kicked in and with a fractured bone in my foot, gradually turned a nice job into grit my teeth and get on with it!
Well we are very pleased with the result it felt quite strange walking on them, almost like a cushion floor rather than concrete. We got the tiles through our local builder's merchant at a good price and we think it works well with Rob's idea to do the insteps in pedra (local stone) to compliment the pedra on the base walls to the house and patio.

And work on the loft conversion goes on and on !!!!!

It's been a while since we updated our blog telling you how we are getting on with our loft conversion. Having looked back through our blog I have just realized that we have only put on one post about the conversion and that was when we had finished bedroom 1 which was back in April! Since then we have finished bedroom 2 and are currently working on the middle room which will be a living room with an "en suite shower". We wanted this conversion to be a self-contained apartment, separate from our living space, so to make what we think is the best use of the 3 rooms up there, we decided on 2 bedrooms and a living room with a shower room. We decided 2 bedrooms would be better than having one bedroom and a kitchen as when family stay they will have the pleasure of the chef downstairs (me) cooking for them! When this room is finished the stairs leading from the loft will be tiled and at the bottom of the stairs we are taking out a small window and knocking out for a door to be fitted which will give outside entrance into the loft conversion and make it private from our living space. Outside steps will be fitted to the back of the house as the entrance to the stairs is on the first level of the house.

Earlier on in the summer we had a velux window fitted and unfortunately the supplier sent us a smaller one than we had originally asked for and the mistake wasn't noticed until the window was being fitted and by then it was too late to change! So we have just had to grit our teeth and get over it!!! It does still gives us a lovely view over the village though and gives more natural light into the lounge.

So now we are making progress with the shower room, firstly building the stud walls, then comes the plasterboard and then the plastering. We are using a waterproof plasterboard which you can tile straight onto for the shower and sink area.
Stud work

Plasterboard

Plastering