I know, I know. We’ve been very lax and it’s been two whole months since the last entry. After Christmas everything went quiet for a couple of weeks and, although it meant nothing much got done, we quite enjoyed the break. Once things did get moving again, we saw a number of major leaps forward. Here are the high points of the last two months.
The kitchen is now pretty much kitted out, including getting the cooker hood and the last bits of worksurface fitted and the arrival of the new fridge-freezer. After so many weeks walking all the way to the living room every time we wanted a bottle of milk (12 steps - I counted) it was a real joy to only have to take the 2 steps to the new fridge - at least it was on those occasions we didn’t walk all the way to the living room before we remembered. The old fridge-freezer is now sitting on the front lawn alongside the old cooker, bath, kitchen sink and other assorted rejects. The only other thing to be done in the kitchen (apart from some tiling and odd bits of paintwork) is to get rid of the old mains water pipe that is still coming up through the floor, preventing the last two tiles from being laid, but more on the plumbing front later.
We now have Warmcell (loose fill recycled paper) insulation in the new section of loft above our bedroom. It’s more expensive than the standard fibreglass rolls but is the cheapest of the various ‘natural’ alternatives and we decided to just do this part to begin so that we could see how well it worked before ordering the rest. The builders weren’t all that impressed, since it tends to produce a lot of dust and is messy to install (although at least it doesn’t give you lung disease if you inhale the fibres like the other stuff) but we’re going ahead and have ordered some more for the remaining loft section.
After being fobbed off once too often with another “won’t be able to come for at least another 3 weeks”, we finally sacked the plumber and started looking for a new one. Within a week we had engaged the services of our new Saturdays-only plumber (who happens to be married to a colleague of Liz’s) and by the next weekend we had the downstairs toilet plumbed in, isolator taps in lots of useful places and the shower connected and working, although sadly it doesn’t yet have a door (which arrived today!) so it’s still not much use. The following week we got the utility room sink fitted and plumbed in, as well as an outside tap and connections for the washing machine. The new mains supply in the utility room is not yet connected (waiting for a digger to come and find the mains water pipe for us) but the washing machine is now in its rightful place in the utility room and being supplied with mains water down the pipe that will eventually carry water up to the rest of the house. Moving the washing machine out of the kitchen made way for the rather expensive-looking ‘shelf’ that had been sitting in a corner for the last two months to be moved into the space vacated by the washing machine and converted into a dishwasher - it’s a whole new world!
One of the nicest things about working with a user-friendly plumber is that we get to be much more involved in the planning and decision making and, as a result, I’ve learned a huge amount of useful stuff. Got a bit carried away on the push-fit plumbing website and ended up designing a system that will allow us to isolate the hot and cold water for any room in the house from a single central location on the landing. Don’t know why every home doesn’t have one. The only small issue is that our new plumber isn’t Corgi registered and can’t fit the new central heating boiler for us. We’re still looking for someone to do this but so far everyone we’ve tried is booked up until at least May.
Meanwhile we (and various other friends and relations - thanks all round) have been busy painting, decorating, fitting curtain rails and putting up shelves in the pantry (yes, we have a pantry). Emma’s and Debbie’s rooms are done all but a little bit of painting and the laminate floor that has been sitting around ever since the fateful trip to IKEA. After a reminder from our mini-Oddie (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/wildbritain/minioddie) I took a sneaky break from the decorating last weekend to build a sparrow terrace out of kitchen cabinet drawer fronts left over from the old kitchen to make it up to all the families that got evicted during the build. I’ll probably put up a picture for you once it’s up on the wall.
The next major event will be the arrival of the rainwater tank, which has been ordered and is waiting for us to set a date for delivery. We need to coordinate this with the builders so that they can be on site on the day it arrives and have the digger booked to come the next day. Hopefully this will be some time next week.
Well, that’s about it for the moment. I’ll try to keep a bit more up to date from now on.