Frazzled

Last week I was 'confused of Catbrook' this week I'm 'Frazzled of Felpersham'. No, I know we don't live in Felpersham (it's a fictional village in The Archers) but you get the drift...

Extra scaffolding had been started last week to put a complete scaffold roof over the whole cottage.

Early in the week BOB said why don't we use ply instead of plasterboard we wouldn't need all that extra scaffolding and we could crack on. Good grief.

I phoned the scaffolder along the lines of 'hey, we've come up with another way of doing it, we don't need the scaffolding' after which there was quite a long pause at the other end of the phone, followed by 'the lads have spent the last two hours loading up the lorry'. Oops. We agreed a price for the bit of extra scaffolding they'd done already, together with the loading (and unloading) of the lorry. Oops.

All of which means that they did crack on and by the end of the week we had proper insulation on the roof - and it's practically watertight.

The tiler starts tomorrow - by this time next week it will look like a ROOF!

You'll remember last week I gaily said 'this is the last of the knocking out'. Oh no it wasn't. On Monday morning the builders discovered all the old joists in the kitchen/dining room were knackered and should be replaced. So out they came... we now have a double height kitchen, but no bedrooms...

All the internal stud walls are complete, and we've even got stairs.

OK, it's a ladder, but it's where the stairs will be. That's close enough then...

And the landscaping has started - look, less lumps!

The veg patch is going to have a fence so we arranged for the fencing chap to come and see it on Thursday. We were there for a whole hour considering what sort of fence. Admittedly, it would have been a better meeting if he'd turned up but, hey ho...

This weekend we decided to pressure hose the end wall. Well, it's the end wall at the moment, but it will become an internal wall in the music room, and we're keeping it as stone as a feature.

Before:

... and after:

The stone is amazing - really fantastic colours, great stripes, and the odd bit of sparkly stone stuff in it too. It was lovely to really get to know the wall. (No, I haven't been sniffing white spirit...)

We've been talking to 'bathroom designers' trying to wedge a shower into the en-suite. Ooh, it is tight! And it seems that when bathroom designers say 'bespoke' what they really mean is 'any combination of what we already do but no we can't make it shorter'. Good grief. We are now awaiting two options and prices... We have chosen a (short) loo and a (small) basin.

As if all that wasn't enough to contend with, the boiler at the (supposedly warm and dry) rental cottage has been dodgy for the past two weeks so we have been putting down towels in a rota and mopping floors. At the weekend the rate of flow (more than a pint an hour) got worse but, no matter, the boiler was being replaced on Tuesday. On Monday evening the plumber phoned to say that the boiler supplier had had 'an accident' with the boiler (what the hell does that mean?) on Saturday and it was no longer in a fit state to be supplied and was it ok to put it off till Wednesday. I pointed out that we had no boiler, no hot water and were eating things which involved the least washing up but that if there was no alternative, so be it. He asked if the immersion heater worked - it has a switch but it doesn't seem to be connected, so let's just say no to that one, eh?

On the plus side, we got back our sofa from Plumbs who had recovered it. They had the wrong address on the delivery note, so tried to deliver it to the building site, got lost on their way to the rental place and arrived with the driver in an utterly filthy mood. They trod dirt onto the pale carpet, dropped the sofa (literally) and then asked us to pay up which we refused to do as they had lost the three back cushions which are kind of crucial to making it comfortable, which is rather the point of a sofa. And we've decided we don't even particularly like the new covers...

Purchases of the week:

Oil and paint for the oak and windows. Oh, OK, yes the window paint is Ronseal Willow.
Paint for the external stone walls - it's Feldspar White, the company still had the recipe. Phew.
Shady grass seed (shady as in 'under trees' not 'dodgy') for up near the new barn. It's under trees.
Two bathroom lights. One arrived broken.
A log burner. HOORAY! By the time it gets put in it will be June and too warm to light it. We will light it anyway and keep all the doors and windows open...

So that's why I'm Frazzled of Felpersham, but it's OK, Prosecco is helping...