Monthly Archives: February 2016

Heavenly staircase

Posted on by

No post last weekend  – it was birthday weekend at Westcroft. The girls were home for Maddie & Becky’s birthdays – and it was also my wonderful mum’s birthday over the weekend as well. But this last week has been a great week – our oak staircase was delivered and installed (over the course of the week) and looks magnificent. As you’ll probably guess by the number of photos of the staircase we are possibly over-excited about it.

Couple of other finishing touches this week, courtesy of Mark and the guys from ODS Electrical Services. So all of the downlighters are flush with the ceilings and the cabinet has been installed in the main bathroom finishing off that room.

post

Its a whitewash.

Posted on by

Second post this weekend and back on the house project. After a pretty quiet week, the week just gone has been anything but. The biggest change has been the second fix of electrics downstairs. So we now have lights downstairs and working electrical sockets. No more extension cables or temporary lights hanging from any convenient surface. And it makes such a difference.

The tiling is all done in the new bathroom, just waiting for the grouting to be finished before the shower and the heated towel rail are plumbed in. But we are really really pleased with how the wall and floor tiles look.

And Maddie and I have been able to do something . So we’ve spent this weekend painting. Partly so that all of the downlights can be finished off, partly in advance of the new staircase going in, which we hope will happen this week, but also so that we can achieve something ourselves in our new home. At the moment we are painting everything white – ultimately we’ll be adding some colour, but until the house has finished and we have lived with it for a while we aren’t going to know what colours will work where.

And as you can see, we’ve had the bifold doors open today. Its hot and smelly work painting. The cats however seem a bit confused as to whether they can use the big 5 metre hole in the wall to come in and out rather than the cat flap. Bless.

post

Going viral

Posted on by

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Becky’s first science-related blog article. You can find that post here. I said back then that she was really keen on writing about science for a wider audience. Well she has since left her post-doc position at Imperial College and last Monday started a new role as a medical writer for a company called Synergy Vision. She’s had a great first week and on Wednesday was asked to write her first piece. That piece, explaining the Zika virus, which the World Health Organisation have declared Public Health Emergency of International Concern, in more detail went live on the Synergy Vision blog on Thursday. Not a bad achievement in her first week at a company that prides itself on its simple, effective and informative writing style. Becky’s blog article on the Zika virus can be found here.