Since last time, progress with the decorating has been rather slow but I have put up a selection of shelves, towel rails, mirrors and other items involving rawlplugs. The kitchen tiles haven’t progressed much further, partly due to other priorities, but mostly because I’ve just got to a fiddly bit in a corner and I keep putting it off. There’s a faint possibility it might get done before the end of the year.
More significantly, our new plumber arrived on 3rd December, only one week behind his original schedule, and we now have a new super-efficient boiler, hot water cylinder and several new radiators. Despite a last-minute change of plan due to the fact that the new cylinder was too large to fit into the old airing cupboard, completed the job in just over a week. The cylinder now resides in what used to be Liz’s wardrobe (she was especially pleased to receive the phone call asking her if she would mind popping home from work to empty it) and has a second heating coil ready to accept the solar hot water supply if and when we can afford to install the panels. The old cylinder is currently sitting rather sulkily in the back garden, but hopes one day to grow up to be a biodiesel generator. We also now have a large hole where the old gas fire and back-boiler used to be, but we haven’t quite decided what we’re going to do with it yet.
Apart from the extra heating and the wonderful mains-pressure hot water (Liz complained about bruising from the shower the first time she used it), this event has brought with it a number of other benefits. First, the large plastic pipe that has been running through the middle our new bedroom (/store room/workshop) for more than a year has now gone. This was originally put in by plumber number 1 to prevent the cold water tank in the loft (which has now been removed completely) from overflowing all over the bedroom floor. Since this was the main thing preventing us from moving into the room, we can now start thinking (possibly quite seriously) about where we’re going to put all the stuff that has accumulated in there over the last year so that we can actually move in. Second, having moved all of boxes that have been occupying the old living room to make way for the plumber, I was able to start putting up shelves to accommodate the contents of some of the aforementioned boxes. It’s a bit like one of those sliding tiles games - you just have to keep moving things from place to place to make room for the next small step forward until you eventually get the place looking the way you want it.