Coutts Sailors' Home: Next steps

Up to Newcastle on Saturday, back on Sunday...very tiring. Hours spent in the car and also hours spent on site with the builder and the project manager, making many decisions so the next week or so of work can be planned...and one of us (Di) will need to be back on site shortly to make even more decisions.
Over the next little while, painters will be finishing off upstairs, more skirting boards will go on, the renderers will continue. Then there's cabinets to sort so that wet areas can be taken to the next step...plumbers and then tilers!

While it doesn't immediately seem that lots of work has been done, closer examination shows that there has been lots of time consuming preparatory work done in many areas - so the next few weeks should see more obvious progress. Each time it feels a little more like a house, at least upstairs where much of the work has been done.

The doors now have handles (and locks),

and the corbells and rosettes have been put on the cornice
(The downstairs hallway doesn't even have a ceiling yet!)

I suppose this time the 'wow' bit was seeing the sides of the staircase - mainly because it was a wonderful surprise!!!

It has a beautiful scroll pattern on it, and now that the brown paint is being removed, you can see that it is made of two distictively different woods - one quite dark and one quite light. When we first glanced at it, it looked as if the paint had been take off one part and not the other, but closer examination (and more sunlight) revealed the real beauty of it even with the cables and things dangling in front and with a make do banister!!!

As soon as upstairs is at 'first finish' stage the stairs will be refurbished. We think we will be able to save the risers, but the treads and noses will need complete replacement!

The painters have been busy stripping paint as well as putting it on - the back verandah supporting beams have been petty well cleaned up as well as the woodwork around the arch...looking better each time, though obviously still a work in progress!

There has been some work downstairs, and the lounge looks particularly interesting with a unique patchwork finish to it where the plaster has been removed (that pesky drumming again).