The master builder is wearing thin! Building from 7 till 10, then rushing into the workshop and polishing silver fascia strips for Rolls Royce - an incredibly demanding job requiring everything to be done under a 10 x lens - then cooking my tea; it's a hard life. But this is him relaxing with his friends, and we're off for a mini-cruise on the Forth Clyde canal which should be pretty stress free. The Falkirk wheel and 4 locks and that's it. We once did the Birmingham canal system which involved 96 locks, most of them ancient, which was really hard work, so hopefully this will be slightly more relaxing.

Now that the mornings are lighter and frost free, and occasionally even dry, Mike's able to get on with his nifty stonework. Much of the building will be lap board finished, but a bit of stonework ties it in nicely with the existing building - and very much impresses passers-by! Only about a foot can be done at a time as otherwise it all caves in; and of course he is sticking it together with cement whereas on Grand Designs they'd be using lime mortar or some such, and in the Andes they'd just leave gaping holes.

We get the stones from a quarry up in the hills where they are perfect chunky brick like efforts; it's always nice to get your own materials - even the lap boarding will be from Carradale trees though we're not chopping them down ourselves. When we revamped the original byre we got all the sand and gravel off the beach, so just continuing the tradition. Then I could carry a bag of cement; now I manage about four wee stones.

Inside is progressing - just dreary stuff like plaster boarding and finishing. We even have pipes in in case we want to put in a radiator, though we reckon it will be warm enough as it is. Unlike the rest of the house which still has no central heating since October; still, it is actually , finally, likely to be installed by tomorrow. Cross fingers.

So that's the current update.

There's no doubt it will be MUCH easier when we have a stair. At the moment it's up and down the ladder to the new room while Mike ponders the best way to make the stairs. Right from the start this has been a bit of a puzzle - we can hardly have a majestic curving staircase stretching into our tiny sitting room. Then on Grand Designs I saw a 'monocoque' (spelling?) staircase which just hung in the air with no apparent support, but that's been turned down. So it's going to be an open staircase against the wall with (hopefully) amazing bannisters made by Howard. Meanwhile anything would be better than a ladder.