Spoke too soon?

In the last post I was saying how well the work had gone (with a few glitches) but the last few weeks have been a different story. The major problem has been that the company doing our work (ROK) went into administration two weeks ago which was a huge shock up here as they are a big company and had full order books but as is so often the case, problems in one branch of the company, plumbing and heating in this instance, pulled the rest down. We feel so sorry for the guys we have got to know well over the last few months. In particular, our decorator had been in every day for weeks and the project manager had been involved since the beginning of the year so it is hard to have just had them all pulled off the job with no warning.
All credit to our insurance company though who have got in another decorating firm so the dining room was started yesterday and already have made good progress.

The same week that the news broke about ROK our plumber started work on Sarah and Joes bathroom and our en-suite and more problems came to light. Because of the design of the house (possibly because of its listing) there are no external soil pipes which means there are limits to how much the plumbing can be changed and the plumber found that there was insufficient fall to install the showers in both rooms and so both have had to be raised on plinths which created extra work. The same day they also found that the water pressure was too low for the shower we had purchased. We were just sorting out that issue when the fire installer came to tell us that there were problems with the 'straightforward' change from an open fire to a woodburner in the living room. He had taken out the fire, expecting to find a large fireplace behind in which to install the log burner, only to find that for some reason the previous owners had filled it in and concreted it, removing the original lintel in the process so there isn't enough width to install the stove. We looked at various options, none of which really appealed to us and he is coming back on Monday to see if he can install a new lintel and reconstruct the fireplace. It will be very messy and may not be successful - we will see....

Despite all of this the house is beginning to take shape again with carpets down now in Mum and Dads sitting room, Richards study, my workroom, the middle landing and the hall downstairs - I am just about keeping 'paint drying time' ahead of the fitters and am currently on the stairs trying to complete them before the runners and the mid landings are done on Wednesday. Because of the amount of traffic in the house I can't usually paint until the evening so it complicates things a bit...

We had to vacate our rented accomodation last Monday - more packing and cleaning, and are currently camped out in Sarah and Joes spare room living out of boxes as our room is inaccessible at the moment and it is still very dusty everywhere with work on the bathrooms ongoing.

Mum and Dad arrived into the middle of this last Wednesday along with a frightening number of boxes and after three nights in a hotel decided that they would rather brave the chaos here and are now gamely unpacking and steadily finding new homes for their belongings. Fortunately, because Pickfords had packed for them, a number of the boxes were found to contain vast quantities of paper and only a few items so the number of empty boxes grew rapidly and I was able to take around thirty back to Pickfords yesterday. It has been an enormous change for them and we hope they will be very happy here. They are getting used to a welcoming committee of chickens and Rhema is having to learn not to lean on them, as she is prone to do!!

Today Joe and Sarah will be here and hopefully by the end of the day Joe and Richard will have constructed a plinth to raise Mum and Dads fridge to a better working height as well as the doorway into Sarah and Joes 'flat'. This has to be done before the carpet is fitted on their landing at the beginning of December and as they are going away on 29th and have to move out of their rented house next week there isn't much time..

The weather has generally been good up here with frost some mornings but clear skies and little rain which has made all the comings and goings easier and minimised the damage to the new carpets!!

Last, but definately not least we have been thrilled over the last few weeks to share Daniel and Julies joy at the arrival of our new grandson and we can't wait to meet him next week when we head south for a few days. We are grateful for the technology that gives us skype but it is no real substitute and we are looking forward to seeing the Winchester branch of the family as well on that trip.