This week we’ve been calling him “the imp” – he’s been nibbling things, escaping, playing football!

We now have the main window installed, and the first floor structure finished.

I tried chalking the first floor room layout onto the floor to see how it would look ( you might be able to see some blue lines in some of the pictures). I ran into one problem – the skylight for the bathroom is over where one of the walls should go.  The blue chalk lines show the plan, the red lines show where the wall will have to go. The den in the second picture is the little area over the original door which has the top row of windows – probably will be full of bean bags/toys/games!

Last week they came an put in the timber frame for the ground floor including the first floor. The second floor frame is to do next week. We still don’t have the window in the old main barn door; when they came to fit it, they found it was the wrong size. Its been away for some alterations and should be fitted next week.

We still haven’t thought of a suitable name for him, so if you have any goaty suggestions let us know.

Katia gave birth to a bouncing billy kid at about 2:30pm today. Mother and son are doing fine.

What a differnce it makes now we can see the barn without its covering of iron work.

You can see the windows better, and the solar panels! It looks like a real house now.

The front is not quite as finished, but the main window will be fitted later this week.

We’ve had some very fine days recently, so I thought I’d share a few views of the local scenery.

They have finished the roof, apart from the chimneys (due to us not deciding on which log boiler we are going to have and thus what size flue it needs). The solar panels are installed for the hot water, not plumbed in but fixed to the roof.

The best news is that the windows have gone in, really good with this horrible driving rain we have been having this week. Earlier in the week it was looking like the rain would stop the tanking being done on the inside of the wall where its below ground level, which would have stopped the base plate for the timber frame, and thus the timber frame wouldn’t have happened next week.

Hopefully this means the scaffolding can come down and I can at the garden and start planting some things. I managed to get 1 row of potatoes in where there was room next to the scaffolding. It will soon be time to plant runner beans, carrots, beatroot and all the squash plants I’ve got in pots.

Cecilia’s brother Henry (+ wife Anna) who live next door at the Hall are opening up as a B & B, you can see the details if you go to the home page of our site . To support this I had to rearrange the things with Google so that they appear first on the list when you search for Johnby Hall. All weekend I’ve been fighting with their webmaster tools trying to get them to update the sitemap. Now I know why it wasn’t working – Google had the goats in, and they must have been eating every sitemap I submitted!

Goats at Google Mountain View headquarters (c) google

The roofers have been doing a grand job ( and they have a great name: Vertigo !), they have finished the front and are part done at the rear but they had to stop to wait for the solar panels to be installed (should be Tuesday). Inside they have poured the final concrete and have started putting down the base plates for the internal frame that insulates the walls and is the structural support for the first floor.