The visit
Today was the day San and Russ were turning up – my Mum and Dad too.
I’d only done a bit of the loft flooring, so I needed to get up early and get some work done before they arrived.
Straight downstairs and I was out chopping logs for the two fires, back in the house the two fires were lit and then a quick breakfast.
Breakfast done and up to the attic.
Around an hour into working and everyone turned up, I’d still not done enough flooring to justify moving boxes loftwards, so over a cup of tea we decided on me continuing in the attic while Sandra and Russ moved the boxes from downstairs up to first floor. They also surprised me over tea with a delivery of an early Christmas pressie (from the wonderful Sandra, Russ and my parents) of a single super-whizzo electric blanket, also some new covers for my couch and three electric oil-filled radiators that San and Russ had brought over from their house for me to borrow.
I forgot to explain but Sandra and Russell – while not only being super-generous with their free time – are like a force of nature, a whirlwind of work, so while I got on with work in the attic they:
- Tidied up the two bedrooms I’d been painting. Basically they removed all the rubbish, sorted the tools and gear into one room, they swept and mopped the floors and got both rooms looking ship-shape before even getting a box up the stairs.
- They then sorted out all the boxes in the living room and carried them all upstairs by hand. This is no small feat, I’d done this by myself and it had taken me days, they managed to do it in a matter of hours. Some of the boxes weigh a lot, the bigger boxes are 84 litres and when filled with hardback boxes they represent some ten stones plus of dead weight.
- After this they set about the living room. My living room had suffered a soot bomb some months back, I’d done my best to clean it but there’s only so much cleaning one can do before one gets well and truly sick of cleaning up soot. The soot on the picture rail would definitely wait and the large helpings of dust and disaster could live till I had the energy to do it all. Well that might be fine for me but for Sandra a gauntlet had been thrown down and hours later the room was gleaming, the picture rail was as clean as it had been in decades, the unpolished and dusty surfaces were all now polished and shiny and basically the room was a marvel to behold.
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Add to this my Mum cleaning the kitchen, making food, degreasing and tidying my bathroom all while my Dad got on with removing the hardboard facing that had been fitted over the panelling in each of my doors to reveal wonderfully carved panels.
Meanwhile up in the attic I was steadily working through the flooring – believe me I was motoring but in comparison to the work being done below me it seemed rather trivial.
The day was only broken up by lunch of soup and thick wedges of buttery bread and a plumber – not the one who’d promised to visit – visiting to assess the jobs that needed to be done. The other plumber I had booked cried off and told me he’s be over in the morning. Anna turned up with some Christmas pressies and we all cracked on again.
Anyway half way through the afternoon I finished the new loft platform, Russ and I then rigged up an electric winch Russ had borrowed and we screwed large screws into large lumps of wood to secure it for the massive task ahead. I also fixed a large hanger I’d bought from Amazon that was designed as a boxing heavy-bag support. Things were starting to fall into place.
Meanwhile Sandra was hovering the stairs and the landing while Russ moonlighted from winch duties to help Sandra stack my valuable timber in the garage. Once done they removed more chipboard sheets from the garage and passed them up to me in the attic for future flooring and a temporary box landing platform as they arrived in the attic.
A quick break for some tea of Lasagne, a visit from Anna and Izzi and we turned our attentions to those mightily weighty boxes.
Winch in place, pulley on boxing bag support, ladder at steep angle to support boxes, me in the attic, Russ on the winch control, Sandra helping load up the boxes and flipping the steel line around the boxes and fixing them in place with a hook – it was all stations go. We started with the really heavy boxes, my winch support held out, the bag support was unruffled, however the ladder did snag once in a while and with enormous boxes swinging on a steel hawser it did get a bit scary at times. Still we worked through the heavy boxes, through the medium boxes, back to a few heavy ones and many stressful moments later we had a large pile of boxes in the attic, the only victim being one box that cracked in a corner from the steel hawser.
All in all a brilliant days work.
Feeling good about my days of work I surrendered to a bottle of wine and a movie.