Dear me, I seem to be further behind than ever with this blog. This is probably because we have been so busy. I have been looking after my grandson for quite a bit of the time, and after that, and producing supper for 4, I am only fit to fall into bed.
On Good Friday, the plasterer finally appeared and plastering was done all over the house, making a lot of mess. We have dust sheets down, but somehow they aren't always quite in the correct place, and plasterers have very dirty boots and use a lot of water. The worst place was the kitchen, where a whole wall had to be plastered, using a great deal of water, so a lot of cardboard was put down on top of the dust sheets to help absorb the water. The resulting paste of cardboard and plaster was put straight into the skip. The skip, when it arrived, was sensibly put in the house driveway. Skips left in the street tend to fill up with other people's rubbish! Unfortunately, it wasn't put quite far enough inside, so it is hard to squeeze between the skip and the metal gates. The gap is too narrow for the pushchair, and we all have to squeeze through sideways.
The plasterer and the electrician took turns in complaining about the cold, and had to be assigned heaters - fortunately, we had obtained a second one to stop us freezing solid in the cold. These came in very handy, because the electrician wanted us to paint before he completed his work, and the plaster wouldn't dry in such a cold house, so no painting could be done. I had the happy thought of using the radiant heaters aimed at the plastered wall in the kitchen, and this worked, so the plaster eventually dried overnight on Saturday.
The dark patches you can see are areas that are still damp. And if you wonder how we managed to do without the heaters ourselves, that was because the plumber came on Saturday and put in a new boiler. So from Saturday night we had heat again in the house. This was a great joy, and we began to feel comfortable again and no longer afraid to get out of the lovely warm bed in the middle of the night and creep down to the freezing cold bathroom. Of course, Paul had to go and put some more money on the prepayment meter after that!
Yet another joy that arrived over the weekend was having a proper bed! Our son visited Ikea late on Saturday and bought the bed, and he and Paul built it, which was, apparently, no mean feat. The design of the bed-slats has apparently changed, they now have to be put together and are very complicated, so the bed-building went on until midnight, but at least we are not now crawling onto a mattress on the floor. One thing that made the bed possible was the laying of a new carpet in the 2nd floor bedroom we are now occupying. The Ikea bed is large, so it needed to await the removal of the old filthy carpet and the arrival of a nice new clean one.
The rest of the Easter weekend passed in an orgy of cleaning and painting. The walls and woodwork had to be washed with sugar soap to get rid of the filth, and then the faintly grey ceilings had to be given a couple of coats of paint. There was a lot of discussion of paint colour for the walls, and some paint which had previously been chosen had to be returned, as our daughter-in-law rejected the colours. Further different colours were examined on Easter Monday (everywhere is shut on Easter Sunday) and eventually suitable colours were selected late on Monday, necessitating a great deal of driving round different B&Q stores. I have never understood why DIY stores have lots of sample colours of paint which they don't appear to keep, and no sample pots of the paint they actually have on the shelves.
One shop which was open on Easter Sunday was the marble worktop supplier, and we were able to inspect worktops in the marble we had previously only seen in tiny sections. This resulted in a completely different marble being selected for the kitchen worktop, the one originally chosen from a small sample appearing absolutely hideous in a large slab.
By the end of the Easter break, our son was disappointed that there was still so much to be done, but I suspect he was glad to get back to work!
On Tuesday the electrician said that not enough work had been done by way of painting to enable him to finish off his work, and did some whip cracking so that everybody had to work harder. It was just as well that Paul was over his cold and feeling better, and walls were painted. Our temporary kitchen had to move around the house as rooms were painted.
Although it had been convenient for it to be in the downstairs front room close to the kitchen sink, it is not too convenient when there is no kitchen sink.
As you can see, the kitchen sink has left, so our only source of water is the bathroom sink - the cracked one with no plug! A new bathroom sink is on order, and will arrive some time next week; then we have to await the arrival of the plumber to install it.
By Wednesday, Paul was becoming quite critical of the electrician and on Thursday they had a severe falling out. It is true that most of the switches and power points are not straight, but it is hard to work when Paul is standing over you treating you like an incompetent child. Eventually, we had to agree to vacate the house on Friday so that the electrician could work without interference. I had to faithfully promise our son that we would arrive in his flat no later than 7.55 so that there was no danger of the electrician, who planned to arrive at the new house at 8, meeting Paul again. We were further punished by discovering on our return on Friday evening that none of the nice new shiny but squint power points was actually working, and we had to run huge extension leads from some old power points in the kitchen up the stairs so we could use the vacuum cleaner and charge the phone. There is no point in having the phone you are using as an alarm clock charging overnight two floors below you.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment