We weren’t initially expecting to add an entry today – the next big day on the agenda was supposed to be this weekend when Mark Nicholls comes down to help out. However, on Wednesday we received a call from "Property Preservations" saying that the men who were coming to do our damp-proofing and plastering next thursday could actually fit us in a week early. So, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth we snapped them up and Henry arranged to work from home for the day.
The bulk of the labouring was obviously done by the builders, so Sara went to school as normal and Henry holed himself up in the spare room to do some work – only interupted minorly when the builder cut through the phone cable, so Henry had to go down and fit a new one. Plus the occassional coffee-making session obviously (Builders must have bladders like balloons!). We opted to have them do half of the work now (living room, hallway and bedroom 1) and half another time (bedroom 2 and kitchen) – partly because of the cost, but also because Henry couldn’t be bothered to move all the bookshelves in the spare room.
By the end of Day 13, all the "hacking", "injecting" and "plastering" is complete. The main builder bloke is coming back tomorrow to render the walls, and then we’re done for the time being – with big jobs anyway. We can’t paint on the newly plastered walls for 6 weeks, and Henry’s cack-handedness when removing the radiator means we can’t reattach that either until we’ve got some new plumbing supplies! But at least we can sleep safe in the knowledge that we won’t wake up with dry-rot.
Another positive is that we are both learning lots about property renovation. Henry can now wire up telephone cables, electrical cables and knows a fair amount about central heating and pluming too. He shalln’t be giving up the day job quite yet though!!
P.S. According to the builders, Henry’s hammer is a bit "girly" – not enough use apparently! When he got it for them from the garage the witty men quipped "Do we need silk gloves to hold it with?". Mental note: Use hammer more.
