It has been snowing in North Wales. To give you an idea of the scale…





Now I have got the pretty pictures out of the way, I will return to the work, as I can tell I have not managed to distract you.
On Sunday, I worked in the cafe whilst Mike continued to fit the joist hangers and then put the joists back in place to form floor 2. Mike was quite busy but, oddly enough, with snow thick on the ground the cafe was pretty quiet for the top end of the week. Some of you may know that we are just off the A470 which had been well gritted, but the minor road across the river bridge and up the steep slope to Plas was not so well tended, so we can quite understand people avoiding it.
The joists are being replaced at 90 degrees to the original joists. On Tuesday, I had another destructive day (quelle surprise) as we removed the sanitary ware from an en suite, and I then removed all the remaining tiles, frames and so forth.


On Wednesday we needed our heads for heights. We blocked off a redundant doorway, finished the joists for floor 2 and on Thursday we finished fitting the floor over the joists, created the stud wall to the bathroom and then advanced to floor 3…



…where we have to lift floorboards in order that we can continue our new stud wall from floors 1 and 2 up onto floor 3.

In the afternoon, we cut down two hemlocks (which we have been asked to remove from the grounds as they are regarded as weed species here) to serve as Christmas trees. One has been lashed in place in the old stairwell and the second will be positioned in the dining room so that it can be seen from the front of the property. So there’s only a little bit of decorating for me still to do then…?!?