Plastering started yesterday, by George Love and Marten Winterburn, professional plasterers from Upper Hutt. The job would have been done by our builder, Bruce Henderson, but unfortunately he’s been called up to have a gallstones operation tomorrow. This will see him out of action for at least another week.

Fortunately he has largely finished his inside work. It was ready to plaster and we wanted it done straight away so we could start painting and have a fully operational room by Christmas.

George and Marten are an interesting pair who recently returned from Dawin, where they were plastering houses built by the state government for local aborigines.

George (left), gets around on stilts. (Click to enlarge)

When he’s fit again, Bruce will hang a wooden door on the new inside second toilet and install a large new back door in the old part of the house. Then all he has left to do is minor tidy-up work. The heat pump still needs to be installed, along with lighting and our TVs, Sky and home theatre gear. Liz and I have now largely painted the outside of the house extension.

Finally the sniff of completion.

We’ll be thinking of you tomorrow morning, Bruce.

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