Could this be the rush to the finish?

7.2.2012

BUILDING NEWS

Today was full on. Richard worked an extra day at the rendering, Stevo arrived early and began working out the rest of the fitting out work and as if that wasn’t enough a team of three plumbers arrived (unexpected), and swarmed over everywhere. At the end of the day we have solar panels for hot water on the roof and a mess everywhere else pipes go.

One good point is that the stove, radiators, sinks, taps and toilets have now moved out of my dairy so at last I have my working space back for cheese making. They are now cluttering up the working space in the house instead. There seems to be a slight problem in that not all the water pipes line up with the fittings. I brought the fittings before the plumbing started to try and avoid these issues but it seems we get them anyway.

Whilst the plumbers were finding that we were not open to the idea of buying new fittings to suit their pipe work, Edd, Stevo and I made our plans for the bathroom vanity bench and wet room ceilings. Once again we were drawing chalk arches and debating over heights of units. Al has given us rough guidelines about how he visualises it working out, but we have to hone this down to practical and possible plans. I tell Stevo that he has to think of a beer bottle when building the bath/shower area. He likes that. Anyone else but Stevo would have a fit!

Edd spent the day trying to be everywhere at once. He had to put up architraves so that Richard could work in the changing room instead of the laundry. The plumbers’ arrival changed our plans there. Then he had to work with Steve to organise what materials were needed or his work. Josh is pretty much self managed at his waterproofing but he could hear what the plumbers were doing on the solar room roof and called Edd up to monitor things at intervals.

I had no chance to get at the grouting areas that are left but I had to draw out what we want Steve to do and check things on the Internet like average bathroom unit sizes. I also had to clean up after everyone to stop lime being spread everywhere. It has been a hectic day.

OTHER NEWS

I would not even have thought about fires if other people were not making such a fuss about the three-year anniversary. It has been a cool, still, day so there was no danger to remind us. My focus is on the year ahead, not three years in the past. This year has quite enough challenges, awaited pleasures and worries for me to take on board and the past has already developed into some sort of mythology that I am not sure I even relate to.

On a totally different topic I was feeling that I had done well this year with tomatoes but yesterday I called in on Bo and discovered she had a laundry basket of tomatoes that she had grown that were twice the size of any I had produced! I lose again.