quiet week this week
I thought it was going to turn out to be a quiet week this week, I’d not expected to see the fire fitter really and I knew that the window fitters wouldn’t be over till the weekend. Couple this with Ray the builder having some really bad news on Tuesday and having to skip site then I really didn’t think that this week would amount to much.
Anyway worked late on Thursday and I was a bit in a fug on the way home, I’d not been feeling myself all week and had made the mistake of starting smoking last week. I’d kicked it into touch but the nasty feelings had dragged and my throat wasn’t feeling great and I was feeling knackered all of the time. I’d got in the car not feeling my best and managed to get entangled in a traffic jam in Darlington that hadn’t helped matters. Anyway cutting along the clear country lanes later I arrived home and nearly drove past my own house. Y’see I’d not recognised it as the shuttering had come down and in their place were a pair of rather fetching French doors. I let myself in a and I think I must have spent minutes looking at them marvelling at what a difference they made externally and internally too letting in much more light into what was once a slightly dark family room.
The house was still full of ephemera from the builders and I struck on the idea that the window fitters must have been let in by the builders, sure enough on further inspection I found out that various bits of work had been done around the house. The flashing had been done on one of the bays and the leading had been done on the other, also on closer inspection the gutters had been sorted out on the front of the house. The guttering had been shocking, the iron guttering that they took down was corroded to bits and the replacement plastic guttering I’m glad to say is the square boxy guttering, Damon too had done an excellent job in fixing it up and when looked at from the road looked marvellous with regular 30inch ties and detailed excellent work.
I found out later in the week that the window fitters had delivered the windows when the builders had been on site but had come back later when they’d gone, removed the shuttering and basically fitted the windows despite there being no-one there. They had made one slight error and had forgot to lock one of the doors, I don’t think that the builders would have been happy to find all their tools missing if someone had discovered their mistake, still never mind all was well and they’d done a good job of fitting the windows. I say good because some of the stonework left a bit to be desired, the stones were missing in some spots around the window and the expanded foam used to fill the gaps didn’t really lend to the appeal of the ancient missing stonework. Ray though, being Ray, returned the next day, cut out the expanded foam, put in more stone, pointed it up and made it look 200% better.
Got a call on Friday from Ray to explain that they’d not been able to plug all the holes in my chimney, when they plugged the ones in the attic they’d accelerated the problem with the smoke ingress into the bedrooms. Unfortunately the boxes in the box room were preventing them from inspecting the problems in there and could I move them out, four feet of free floorspace would help. Well I agreed and after around 3 hours that evening I’d managed to clear that space, now the spare room was full, there were ladders in the hallway, my bed was pushed right up against my desk in my only working bedroom (floorboards up behind it) and all is upside down.
On Saturday morning I was to meet up with Ray about the garage roof but he’d been called out on another job so I met with his grandson Damon. Basically Damon introduced me to his Dad who was working on the job now and who loved my house – that’s now three generations working on my house, grandfather, father and son. Anyway I digress, Damon took me around the house which now included new soffits, I was amazed by this as they’d not just replaced the rotten bits of soffit but the entire length of soffit, they looked great, they’d used plastic ones that I’d been recommended by another contractor a week ago and they were slightly grooved, so not only did they have some legs and didn’t need the attention of wood but they also looked rather great. As I said earlier Damon had done the guttering and he proudly showed his work off, the re-leading had turned out to be a bit of a trial but the end result looked great too.
Anyway we had a wander into the garage and Damon explained that all the timber joists were rotten and what had once been a £1k exercise in re-felting the roof was now a £1.7k exercise in doing the beams too. I agreed for them to go ahead and now hopefully I can have a garage that’s not sopping wet. It’s money that I didn’t really plan on spending but I didn’t expect that the roof was going to blow off. On that subject the fire fitter had mentioned the probable source of the roof blowing off, he’d said that perhaps it was down to me removing all of the trees and hence removing all of the wind shelter the garage had been languishing in. That made some sense.
Anyway, I’ve not felt too great all week and now the house was upside down, my bedroom wasn’t looking great and as I knew they’d be working on it all day Saturday I escaped to my folks for the day with Izzi. Half way through the day Ray rang to inform me he’d needed to remove the fireplace in the box room (actually in reality the box room is the master bedroom, it’s just full of boxes 🙂 ). I told him to just whack it out, but it just didn’t sound good news.
Got home that evening to find that the smoke ingress problem was yet unsolved, floorboards were up everywhere, my bedroom was still in a rather unliveable layout, not good. I did my best to make it liveable the next day but I get the feeling it will be halfway through next week before I can start moving the boxes to a more reasonable layout and maybe getting my bedroom back to normal. Not a good weekend for me but a great week for progress on the house, I’m expecting the windows to go in in the next fortnight so once the builders are finished off here then things should start going on great guns.