The wrong door

The saga of 'front door-gate' continues:
It turns out that the German manufacturer received the correct dimensions, but built the door incorrectly, and this was not spotted before the door left the factory.  After many, many phone-calls and emails, the manufacturer has admitted liability and has agreed that they do not want the incorrect door returned to them and we are free to use it as a temporary door until the correct door is delivered.
Monday morning dawned and with some trepidation, the barricades in the hallway were removed.  It turned out that the door would just fit in the hole, but clearly without the adjacent side panel.  So the door was fitted and it was noticed that it is hinged on the wrong side, and is also not the correct design.  It is the right colour though so that's alright then!
By the end of the morning, we had a new front door fitted and working.  Without the glazed panel, it is still dark in the hallway, but no darker than when the hole was barricaded.  We are thinking of starting a sweepstake covering the delivery date of the new door, but we expect it to be between 2 and 3 months.

Barricades removed and view of the building site

Door in-situ

Not quite what we wanted, but it works

With a sealed entrance, it meant that the ventilation system could be turned on and 'balanced' to make sure that all the rooms receive the correct amount of air flow.  It was not possible to do this, when we had a leaky hallway.  The 'Renewables' people turned up yesterday and set the system up, so we now have proper ventilation in the house, where heat in the stale air leaving the house is used to warm the incoming fresh air.  This is not so important now, but clearly is a benefit in winter.  The 'Renewables' people also finished connecting up the heating system and now that we have (basic) access to the internet, it is all controllable by our mobiles phones.  This means that we have one less remote control per room to operate!  One feature we have not yet tried is when it detects that both our phones have left an area of a set number of miles away from the house, the heating will be turned down, returning to normal when it detects one of the phones approaching within a set number of miles.

Outside the house, work has continued on the garden area and the paving around the house.  With regard to the garden, it just remains to finish distributing the top soil, and then it will all be up to us to get a lawn laid and to plant other green things in the surrounding beds.  The paving is nearly all laid, but still needs to be grouted.

Paving and 'lawn' area

Paving, 'lawn' and willow