Week four - will there be light?

We have walls!  Walls with no wood chip wallpaper, no dodgy plaster - lovely, skimmed, plastered, smooth, (slightly damp - note to self, don't touch the walls) walls.

We don't have a horrible fireplace in the scary-cat-mask-room:

So that's good.  

(Incidentally, we now have a cast iron fireplace going spare, if anyone is interested)

We also have lovely, skimmed, plastered, smooth ceilings:

Oooh, lovely. 

Here's one of our lovely Bulgarian builders in the process of skimming:

But hang on.

This is Rob's 'thinking' face.  

Where are the light fittings?

Where are we going to put our lovely Scandinavian light fittings?!

Ilyian assures us that he knows exactly where the wires are behind the ceilings, provided he doesn't lose this:

That's the building plan.

Let's take a closer look at that:

Erm, yes.  Please do.

Still on the walls theme, whilst the men were discussing acoustic tape, or something, I spotted this.  

Any idea?  Nope, me neither.

There's this too:

These Bulgarian hieroglyphs will shortly be hidden forever (yes, forever because we aren't mad and won't be wallpapering these walls) so I felt it important to record them, in case in the future it turns out these are the secret to eternal life, or a warning of the world ending, or something.

In other unexplained building phenomena news, this has appeared upstairs:

I can only conclude that either:

1. The builders have adopted a pet brick,
2. The slum really is part of the Crimson Permanent Assurance and this is a hastily prepared anchor,
3. Off cuts of insulation are tricky things prone to escaping in the dead of night,
4. Or the builders, inspired by last week's installation of Nunhead's latest modern art offering 'Cast Out Cast Iron' are attempting their own contribution to local culture.

In other news, the manly Black 'n' Decker work bench is now in danger of drifting away on a sea of sawdust:

I appear to have been shaking whilst taking this photo - whether from fear of the whizzy blade machine thingy or in excitement at the manly DIY going on I'll let you decide:

They have been using this dangerous looking bit of kit to make things like this step up to the bike-storage-area (or at least I presume they have, I'm a girl so obviously wouldn't know):

Moving away from construction, there has been some more destruction this week.  

Ever wondered what lurks beneath your floorboards?  Well, wonder no more dear readers:

Yuk.

Continuing with undesirables, we noted that this is what remains of the only toilet in the slum.

Which presumably explains the suspiciously yellow looking bottles of water in the kitchen.  I will spare you a photo.

Finally, I know how much you all love to learn more about the habits of our wonderful builder friends (except, perhaps, for the above revelation).

This week, I bring to you the contents of a builder's tea break.

Let's analyse that.

1. Instant coffee.
2. Tea bags.
3. Sugar.
4. More instant coffee. 
5. Milk.
6. Malt vinegar.
7. Chewing gum.
8. Tobacco.

Of course.