We finished the kitchen wall at the weekend, also the bathroom wall and the canopy over the front door. We also went to Farmington quarry to order our date stone which will be going on the front elevation of the house, also found their gravel is cheaper than Travis Perkins, which will knock hundreds off the projected price of our driveway! And our delivery of mesh arrived, although we think it was possibly meant instead for someone in Peckham: Here's the canopy roof done. We had no problems with the water-based adhesive, despite the temperature dropping well below freezing that night:

The front elevation battened and counter-battened. We cut a spare bit of the Kerto edging beam to the size of our date stone (500x300mm), allowing us to position the battens correctly:

And the kitchen wall battened and counter-battened. Note the space between the windows, this will be infilled with cedar boarding once the render is finished:

We then attached our first piece of galvanised metal mesh to this elevation, and found that it was far too flexible between battens placed at 600mm centres. We will have to close up the centres of the vertical battens to more like 300mm centres in order to keep the mesh taught enough to support the render properly.

Alex did come round as promised, but we spent more time talking about house building and continent travelling than we did actually building anything.