what’s that coming over the hill, is it a plumber? is it a plumber?

if anyone does read this with any frequency or indeed with no frequency at all they will know that I have a rather special relationship with my plumber(s). Well, tomorrow they have promised to return again to put the shower in. At the moment there are just two bits of hot and cold pipes jutting out the wall, this time tomorrow… who knows? i should really take photos and everything but it is quite possible that having the memory of this slowly fade away leaving a beautifully pristine bathroom is actually the better option.

So, fixing the shower… well on the positive side it shouldn’t mean taking up any floorboards which should limit the possibility of putting one down and drilling a hole through a water pipe. On the negative side those two bits of pipe are at ninety degrees to the wall and could make a really big mess were they to go off accidentally.

I’m going to stop speculating. At least I will try and stop speculating. I mean, we want them to switch the tap heads and fit a shower door as well…

apologies

Sorry not to provide more updates recently. Been busy:

Unpacking boxes

writing 3 articles

1 novel (unfinished)

organising 40th birthday party (am old man soon)

taking arlo to doc’s in London

doing above while avoiding snow

worrying about house

-for some reason am convinced the plaster’s going to suddenly fall off the wall, the kitchen floor will cave in and one day when we flush the loo in the upstairs bathroom the soil pipe will fail and there’ll be a jet of toilet flush shooting across the garden into nextdoor neighbours… not that it keeps me up at night. Oh no.

Also convinced the fact that bulbs keep blowing and fire alarm goes off loudly if you even whisper the fact that you’ve got the oven on is evidence that the electricians stitched us up.

Need sleep, methinks.

Arlo thinks our lampshades are lovely. And so does his finger puppet dolphin. And they are.

hold on tight

I do seriously wonder what Arlo thinks of all this. I mean, 2 and a half and moved into a new house with no decoration and various eccentricities occurring and builders and plumbers moping about.

“I phone Matt.”
“Matt the plasterer?”
“Yes.”
“Why, Arlo?”
“Do some plasterastering.”

Most recently I wondered what Arlo makes of this as he watched me holding on to the washing machine as it hit 1600 rpm or somewhere there, making a sound not unlike a pneumatic drill and threatening to career off towards the wall where the outflow pipe has been fixed (hell it would have demolished the wall and made it half way up the garden given half a chance).

Seem the lovely lovely plumbers who ‘installed’ the machine did not level it, with the result that it makes excessive noise, vibrations and movement just like it says it will in the instructions. Such excessive vibrations a screw in the back almost came out – I unplugged it when I found this. So anyone know any good plumbers?

Because I don’t.

I know some plumbers who come when you tell them the bathroom installation they’ve fixed for you is leaking and who ‘fix it’ and then put down a floor board and hit a water main (that they put there) with the first screw they put in. (Matt the plasteraster was beside himself with joy at that, made his day coinciding with the plumbers for once.) These plumbers leave saying they’ll be back to do the shower when we’ve tiled and a few hours later it’s clear the leak is not fixed – or maybe it’s now leaking from somewhere else. And when you ring them to tell them it’s leaking they ask what you think is wrong. For the love of….

So they’re coming back tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow.

And on Saturday the Virgin crew are back because our broadband modem has developed a fault.

Is Mercury retrograde or something?

“Are you tired, Arlo?”
“Yes. All that running around.”

this one’s for steve

Hi Steve,

Sorry not to have posted recently and not to be able to take your call this afternoon only we’ve moved house. We are now entering the second night here and apart from the 5 / 6 hours sleep it’s constant motion.
Ikea finally finally delivered the rest of the kitchen today – horah!
The damp patches in the kitchen are definitely coming from the bathroom plumbing and not the holes in the walls cos Will filled the holes – boo!
Plumber comes back tomorrow – sort of horah, only sort of cos I have grievances now – just discovered the kitchen sink is leaking too. Boo.
Front room and bedroom and kitchen looking good – horah!
Oh, also my computer has crashed out on me and I’m looking at having to reinstall the operating system afresh. Boo.
Yes yes I know I’m still using it NOW, but I lost a keychain somewhere when I turned it off suddenly and consequently it’s refusing to reload programmes, remember anything in the internet browser and mail won’t configure my accounts. La la la la la la. Boo. It’s why this blog has become wordy and not pictury. iPhoto can’t load my photos anymore…
Might try sorting it out tomorrow… between plumber and everything else.
We are going to try and give Arlo a bath tomorrow in the new unchristened bath. On the one hand this part of the deal has nothing to do with any leak – on the other hand since we’ve not used it yet it might prove to be even worse.
So you see Steve I’ve been a tad busy. Arlo is still trying to talk the owners of the local coffee shop into coming back home with him, he’s also discovered the joys of riding his trike to Wilkinsons for buying kitchen ware and fearsome weapons of carpentry, and I’ve discovered he doesn’t really know right from left…. although having said that it is considerably more fun to drive your trike off the pavement, into cars or in circles when your dad’s pushing you than it is to just go home.
Must go sleep.

plumbers vs plasterers

Our plasterer doesn’t like our plumbers. There have been moments (well, one) when the plasterer says he almost walked out because he ‘couldn’t work’ with the plumbers in the same room (strangely reminiscent of theatricals not being able to work together). The plumbers were borrowing his kit without asking, putting their drills down on his beer crate (he uses it to stand on and get to the top of the wall), sitting on his bench and putting their drills down on his beer crate again.

My problem with the plumbers is that they’re untidy and don’t clean up after themselves – unless the mess is made of copper, in which case it disappears in under 24 hours. 

By the way, my old radiators got me 15 quid from the scrap merchant, my plumber on the other hand is going to Thailand for two weeks on Xmas Day. He got the copper.

So tomorrow the plumbers will work the back of the house, and the plasterer the front of the house and let’s hope they don’t meet in the middle. Although now I think about it, there may be disruption to the water supply so who knows how this will play out.

“Never put two trades in the same room,” says the plasterer. Now he tells me.