Halloween, Cats and Brick Dust...

 As you can see from the photo, this year's pumpkin, although hastily done, had a cat theme. The teen drew the shapes and I cut the pumpkin.

 The teen gets on well with the cat, who lives rent free, does as he pleases, is intermittently crazy, grumpy and completely self obsessed...

Hang on, I have lost my thread... was I talking about cats or teenagers? Hmmm

 Moving on then, the cat above was discovered in Wivenhoe Station. Popping in to use the facilities whilst dropping artwork off locally, boyfriend and I were delighted to find a real big old station cat; living in the waiting room, with blankets, food bowls, scratching post and sleeping chair, all just feet from the platform where trains roared past. How wonderful!


Back home and the building work continues at speed, frequently filling the downstairs with brick dust. I am cleaning about 10 times more than usual and yet the house is at least 20 times dirtier than normal. In the words of the teen: Fail.

Foundations done, walls and roof are built.

For the first time it starts to resemble a building:

When the new back doorway goes in, it is time to brick up the old doorway and replace it with a window. (Cue dust)

 The front begins to resemble the garage it will become:

 (Note the front door looking somewhat the worse for wear...)

Internal door frame goes in, along with outrageously expensive electric Velux window (it comes with a dvd to instruct on the use of, I kid you not, despite the fact that I only need it to do two things: Open and Shut). The plumber re-routes the gas boiler to exit the garage roof (more dust). Next morning the builder does not realise that there is a gap round the flue and uses an angle grinder setting off a massive cloud of dust and flakes of wall insulation that shoots into the kitchen and spreads through the downstairs. What fun, more cleaning, lucky me.

In order that I don't miss the dust at the weekend, boyfriend kindly sets to moving the sink to make way for a door into the extension, and re-sites it temporarily under the new back kitchen window:

Then he sets to digging up the kitchen floor to bury some electrical cable and pipework, to be continued this coming weekend. So I haven't seen the last of the dust yet, not by a long way I fear...


You will notice there is very little artwork being produced! I have been doing some printmaking but despite having a seperate studio the constant dust, builders-tea making and car crash of a kitchen is taking it's toll on work production. Still the end is in sight, I can just see it through that cloud of brick dust.