Spent rather too much of this weekend watching TV and drinking coffee, with a break for heading out to the cinema to see Die Hard 4.

We also had plasterers in on Saturday morning. Our heating engineers did something under our hot water cylinder that lead to a square meter of plaster falling off. We don’t know what happened – but it is old plaster, so it may not actually have been their fault. Still, the cost of repairing it came out of their fee.

They’ve screwed plasterboard over the top of the whole, and skimmed on top. They finished yesterday at midday, leaving a ceiling that looked like it had a chocolate covered carpet on it. It’s drying slowly to pink and by Monday we can paint it.

Next weekend they’re coming back to redo our kitchen. I’ve started uncovering the weird boxes over the sink, hoping that we could remove them entirely. Unfortunately, what we found was an ugly rusty girder propping up an old lintel and bricks. So the best the plasterers can do is the cover it back up again and skim it smooth. Or… we could paint it and make an industrial looking feature out of it.

But the mess in the kitchen didn’t stop me baking when I got a moment. Homemade bagels. Some of the kneading done in the breadmaker, until the dough got too heavy and started straining the motor. To be honest, I think this falls well within the “life’s too short” category.