Goodbye to all that...

Goodbye to all  that...

Tuesday 13 November 2007

nine days later...




Excruciatingly slow progress on the bay window











I haven't had anything much to report for a couple of weeks now. Our neighbours continue to be lovely and fortunately the offer of a house for Christmas ( well , for two weeks anyway - not alas as an actual gift) is still on. The building work is taking shape, but at truly glacial speed. The latest position is:

-Flushing loos - none. We still have to flush with a bucket. Nice.
-Electric rings working on my Baby Belling - one out of a possible two ( my husband managed to actually melt the other one whilst doing a very rare bit of cooking for the children. Much to his ill-concealed delight he is now banned from cooking for the foreseeable future.)
-Bay windows at the front of the house - about 60%, brickwork only.
-Roof on the extension at the back - about 10% - wooden rafters only, but there is a lovely big orange tarpaulin
-French window in the sitting room - about 20% - frame only, no glass
-Heating downstairs - none
-Lighting downstairs - none
-Electricity downstairs - none
-Plumbing downstairs - none.
-Rooms suspended in mid air supported only by a couple of metal poles - 1 ( our bed/sitting/everything room).
-Tearful and frustrated women who have no-one to blame but themselves - 1

The builders have somewhat belatedly agreed that they won't, actually, be meeting the 10 December deadline. The kitchen is being delivered on 7 January so it would be nice if they were ready for that.

On a lighter note ( ahem) I have realised I haven't mentioned the dead dog. When the floorboards in the main sitting room were lifted the perfectly mummified corpse of a small dog was discovered in the foundations. ( Not literally mummified in the ancient Egyptian manner, of course. But skin etc intact rather than just a skeleton.) The builders were completely unperturbed - apparently it's not that unusual. I had heard that dead cats were occasionally entombed to ward off evil spirits when old houses were built, but I've never heard of it happening with dogs. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been possible for it to crawl in there on its own so it must have been put there deliberately after it had died. I do feel a bit guilty about making some of my friends (and my parents in law!) bed down for the night in that room last Christmas and Easter.










Even slower progress on the extension

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