It was snowing when we woke up on Wednesday morning! It didn't last, it soon turned to rain, and became, if anything, rather colder. It is hard to bare your body in the icy bathroom in the morning, and the towels are colder and damper every morning. Once it was raining hard, I noticed quite a bit of water coming through the window of what will be our grandson's bedroom. On examination, this proved to be because there appears to be no sealant at the top of the window. The top of the window area is very badly marked, so it has obviously been like that for some time. Just another little job for Paul or our son to finish. So many things in this house have not been finished properly. We seem to have at least one new problem every day.
When they arrived, the electricians needed to put extra power points in the room where we have been sleeping, so everything had to be moved up two floors and our ex-bedroom turned into a building site. This is our new bedroom - still a mattress on the floor.
Please note the tasteful decorations on either side of the bed. Once the plasterer has been, they will turn into nice new power points.
I spent the morning having yet another go at cleaning the carpets. Most of them are to go, but I can't bear to live in filth in the meantime. After vacuuming two carpets, I had to spend a very long time cleaning the brushes on the vacuum cleaner, which had stopped working. The woman who lived here, as well as having a completely useless vacuum cleaner, had long dark hair, and huge quantities of it completely clogged up my vacuum cleaner brushes, stopping them going round. It is not a nice job, cleaning somebody else's hair out of your vacuum cleaner. It's also a very fiddly job, as well as being rather unattractive. Then I had to make like an Edwardian housemaid and take a dustpan and brush to the stairs to get some of the years of dust out of the carpets there - an upright vacuum cleaner doesn't make too good a job of stairs. Shades of Downton Abbey! Except that I needed to wear a surgical mask, the dust is so bad it chokes me.
I caved in and spent the late afternoon at my son's house, keeping warm. Poor Paul now has a streaming cold to go with his sore throat, and I don't think he should be in this cold house. You can't tell him anything though, he knows best.
The plasterer did not come today (Wednesday); he is delayed, apparently, but should come tomorrow. The plumber did come though, and confirmed our worst fears. The boiler has to be declared dead; it has too many problems to be economic to fix it and a new one needs to be installed. Heaven knows how long that will take. The plumber is providing a quote tomorrow. In the meantime, it is so cold in the house the electricians said it was too cold for them to work. They had to be provided with a heater. We ate our supper sitting crouched over the heater and wearing our ski jackets. My legs are so cold I would like to wear my ski pants, but they are back in storage. We bought a second heater, and put them both in our bedroom.
We encountered another little problem as we cooked our supper. I went to close the door to keep the heat in, there was an ominous cracking sound, and one of the door hinges fell out of the wall. This proved to be because the screws in the hinge were too small. So the holes which were too large for the screws had been stuffed with toothpicks to make them smaller! This house never fails to amaze me, I wonder how many more things can have been done wrong.
Thursday dawned sunny but very cold. Paul felt too ill to contemplate the cold bathroom and had no shower. I'll have to warn him if he starts to stink! I wanted him to spend the day at our son's flat and keep warm, but he took Paracetamol and said he felt at bit better. I had a shower, but found the towels were so cold and damp that I took them into a sunny room to try to dry them a bit; they seem not much better though. No plasterer came today again, Paul doesn't know why. There are still big bare channels in the walls with cables hanging out of them.
So there is no chance of getting the kitchen organised this weekend, I'm afraid. In the meantime, we set up a kitchen in one of the upstairs rooms. It is a wonderfully wonderfully light and sunny room, though hardly suitable for a kitchen.
Still, at least we have got the microwave and toaster off the floor, so preparing something to eat isn't quite so trying.
The day continued sunny for once, though still cold. Our daughter-in-law came round in mid-morning and carried me off for a day out with our grandson. We took him to a farm where you could get close to the animals. The baby was suitably amazed by a huge cow, fascinated by donkeys and goats, mildly interested by chickens and ducks, mesmerised by alpacas, bored by a llama, and completely unable to see all of the Clydesdale horse, it was so big. The bit of the visit he probably enjoyed most was the playground though. Somehow, I completely forgot to take any pictures!
In the meantime, Paul did ceiling painting and continued dosing himself up with Paracetamol. I wish he would retire to bed in our son's warm flat, but he won't give in. We ate dinner with them and they offered us their futon upstairs, but Paul insisted the house is not too cold tonight, after a sunny day to warm it. Our son too is looking exhausted, after a week of driving an hour to work, drilling teeth all day, driving an hour back and then driving all over Manchester to shop for building supplies and sometimes working in the new house until very late at night. At least we have a four day weekend now, so he doesn't need to make the big drive to work.
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