Well, they knocked out a wall and a chimney breast, on Saturday, and today, Monday, there seems to be lots of hammering going on. I'll check out what it is all about this evening. I'm staying in the downstairs flat while they do the upstairs one, then I'll move upstairs and they can do the downstairs flat.

That's the plan so far, anyway. Meanwhile I can stress out about £40,000 or more being spent on my credit cards to pay for all this: more like £50,000, most probably, which may mean me applying for another card or two to cover it... Hope the property market doesn't crash just yet: it is looking decidedly toppy, what with interest rates bottomed out and most likely about to rise and the authorities finally discovering that people have been abusing self-certified mortages by lying about their incomes, thus over inflating property prices...

Where's my last entry? Anyway, plan E: 2 bed upstairs, 2 bed downstairs. Should be safe enough to pass, so the builders started yesterday. The architect e-mailed me a copy of the plan so I can print it out in miniature - he's blaming the postal strike for not snail-mailing the plans to me. The council has received them too, he says, although they haven't acknowledged that yet. I need to talk to them about where the new front door for the upstairs flat is going to go, as I would prefer it to go at the left of the front of the house and not next to the existing front door in the centre of the front of the house, as if it is at the centre, the downstairs living room loses a window as a corridor has to go in front of it: naff, if you ask me. However, the council planners don't like changing the frontage of houses, so I will have to ask them.

Meanwhile, the builders are in, upstairs, knocking out the kitchen/bathroom interface wall so it can be moved a bit, and generally doing initial demolition.

Hope those plans pass...