This was something we had been planning for a long time. If we could, we would have engineered a dumb waiter! Nothing wrong with elements of Victorian design creeping into a contemporary house.

We cut a hole in the ceiling of the utility room so that small items of laundry could be passed down to a cupboard ready for wash day. Hooking it up so that it can be accessed on the landing at the top of the stairs was reasonably easy but did mean we had to steal some space from one of the bedrooms.

 Firstly we cut a similar hole in the wall, and then lined it with some cut down architrave.

 Then we prepared the back for a lining and a cover. More next week.

 Here we have a single sink on a vanity unit base. We have to make templates for the work tops to be cut. At the back is the plywood to fix the tiles too. This is slotted so that log settlement is allowed for.

The little box in the corner was a neat way round the log dovetail that protrudes into the corner. It provides a little ledge for all those bathroom things that you want close to hand.

 Well the lights are now up in the bathroooms, and we have got the tiling done and the bath in. Not so many entries at the moment as the detail work takes much longer than the earlier “first fix” type activities. Lots of head scratching and deciding exactly how we want things.

 It takes a lot of planning to get tiling looking as if it has been planned rather than put on after the event. In a perfect world you make sure the length of your tile runs match the size of the tiles you are using. Laying your tiles out before hand can help decide which patterned tile goes where and makes sure you don’t get any nasty surprises when the tiling is finished.

 With this tiling behind a vanity unit which is supporting two sinks we were able to adjust the studs in the wall to take two cupboards that will be set into the wall, and site over the two sinks. The vanity unit is made on site and therefore can be made to suit the tiles. The cupboards are also being made to suit so we should end up with a nice symmetrical layout when it is all finished.

  We tried to make the layout of the picture tiles on the bathroom wall irregular, but couldn’t get it to look right so went for three lines. It’s a bit boring, but sometimes you can’t get everything how you imagine it can be.

We continue to struggle with leaks on the most exposed south side of the house. We are blessed with a number of windy and wet days, punctuated by dry days, so we can continue our detective work with the mastic gun or gaffer tape.

  This knot on a header above the double doors looked suspect, so it gets the usual plugging treatment.

 In goes the glue which is plugged with a Western Red Cedar dowel shaped by hand with the chisel.

  This electrical cable for an outside light above the doors looked relatively well gunked up, but it lets masses of water in, we think! So to remove this from the equation of water sitting on the top of the door frame inside the house we make up a plywood plate with a very small hole for the cable.

 This is sealed and screwed in place. We will wait for more rain to see what these mods do. Of course the plate will be removed when the external light is fitted, and this will cover up the cable exit in the log, but we need to isolate the causes of the leaks before internal architrave can be fitted.

The painfully slow bit continues, with all the detail work taking forever. However, when some of these bits get finished, you do feel you have got to a definite point, rather like a milestone!

 Here is our first oak door in place with handle and catch, architrave and skirting. Yes one room pretty much complete, only 5 more on this floor to go!

Well, we had hoped to be in the new house for Christmas, but the devil as they say is in the detail and it is taking a long time to get all the little bits and pieces sorted. Mid December we had some strong Southerly winds and 24 hours of rain that gave the south facing logs a good testing and sadly found them lacking.

 We found the leaky knots in the last post, but also some strange drips from some of the studs that run vertically through the house, just above the top of the frame of the glass double sliding doors. We think it could be water running along some of the “shakes” in the logs and some how getting round the 6 seals that run along the log. So as well as filling short shakes with glue as per the last post, we have also covered some of the larger shakes higher up the house with duct tape, to give us a quick idea as to whether they are the culprit.

Of course now we need mother nature to repeat her strong Southerly wind and persistent heavy rain. With high pressue weather, light winds and no rain over us for the last 10 days, we may have to resort to simulating the rain.

 Like this! Here we were trying to find a very small leak during that day of rain, and in the end had to resort to the hose pipe. We found it, but it was so small, we’re not sure how to seal it. It’s a real strange one between the bottom of the external architrave and the window sill and other than taking the architrave off again, we may have to “can foam” it from behind.