Renovation Day 2

So now our home is cleaved in two.  I don't mean that in a Shakespearean warring family type metaphor, I mean almost literally.

The labourers/workmen/demolition crew believe they found some asbestos in the kitchen yesterday.  I suspect, but do not know, that it's simply a single sheet above the Aga rather than 90% of the panelling.  My budget hopes so.  Anyway, as a result they have forbidden us from walking through kitchen.  This phase was inevitable anyway, and I thought it was going to happen this week anyway, so it's not a big deal.

The upshot is that we have two separate halves of the home that we must travel outside to get between.  The larger half has bedrooms, bathrooms, toilets, lounge and playroom, many of which will in future be ripped out anyway.  The smaller half is where we previously had a utility room, media room and office, and instead have a "mini" kitchen, dining room with oversized table and snug lounge.  The kids seem happy with this arrangement as they like the cosiness.  Let's see how they feel about it in February.

The builders also moved the cooker yesterday to our new mini kitchen.  I had sorta figured that we probably ought not to plug the cooker into any old socket.  They have solved this issue by running a cable along the outer wall from where the cooker used to be, then drilled it into the garage and from there into the mini kitchen.  This seems an interesting choice, given that the rear wall of the old kitchen, will in due course be fully demolished, so where power will run from then is entirely unclear.  That's a problem for a different day.

The other visible sign of progress is the partial demolition of the old porch.  This has revealed the shadow of what I assume was once a simple rain cover over the original front door, which is a sweet touch.  It also gave the postman a bit of a quandary, but he gamely solved the task.