Bit close for comfort ...

As the saga of the room continues, we asked our builder to remove a wooden panel under the window to find out why the sealant next to the floor had gone black with mould over the years. He did, and revealed just how fine is the line between security and disaster: that brick-sized space just below floor level leads to an iron-grille-covered Victorian air vent which on the outside is only one and a half inches above the garden. 

There were two pieces of completely rotten wood which you can see in the foreground; underneath I'm happy to report that the joists are still in good nick. In the original incarnation of the room, the kitchen sink would have sat here in the window, and just out of shot in the lower right corner we found the remains of the mains water pipe.  Another reminder, all this, of how close we sit to the cave walls and play at civilisation ...

Apart from this, we had one of these days when a great deal of hard work made very little difference to the room itself: the gas flue was removed and replaced, with much falling of sooty rubble and more stour that you can shake a stick at. The faces of both the builders were black by the time they'd finished, and they were exhausted with working on top of the tallest ladder I've seen (to reach the rooftop chimney) and having to run up and down to the loft to deal with the internal part of the job.

Meanwhile, we're trying to choose a paint colour ...