and on

good news - secured our mortgage today - relief. on the decorating front time is marching on and, despite my continuing research (in between attending a fabulous wedding up north in the beautiful achiltibuie - will post pics shortly) we've still not nailed down a definite style for the kitchen. this could be a worry in that, according to the helpful chappy at magnet, if you want a kitchen in time for christmas it really needs to be ordered in the first two weeks of october. apparently a new kitchen for the big xmas day-do is a popular choice. who'd have thought. we're looking to get an early visit into the house before we get our keys (end of oct) so that we can have an engineer check out removal of the kitchen wall to make a big dining kitchen at the back of the house. for the interior wall to be removed we just need a ceres approved engineer to put it to the council, who should approve it within a couple of weeks. i would love to get french doors out to the back, but this would involve knocking down part of the outside wall - i am presuming that this is likely to be exceedingly expensive and will require additional planning, thus more time consuming at the council, but will research further... handily my brother-in-law is a builder, so he will be taking the lead with this ~ unhandily like all builders it will be at their pace which doesn't quite match my own enthusiasm / patience. and so we wait.