Sarah and Guy Build A Shed

At the beginning of the week Guy is off work ill (so he really was ill last weekend and not just trying to get out of gravel shovelling!) so he stays clammily in his bed and I do cake stuff when I’m not working.  We have excellent intentions of digging a drainage ditch on Saturday afternoon, but on Friday evening somebody from the Caerphilly Woodlands Trust phones to say they know we’ve agreed to ‘man the stand’ at the garden centre on Saturday morning for 2 hours, but in the afternoon for 3 hours is almost the same and is that ok with us?.  What can you say?  I say yes.  Guy says he’d have said ‘no’ but I bet he’d have crumbled too.  As it is, we have a castle themed wedding cake to finish, so on Saturday morning I make a bride and drop the turret.  On the stone floor.  Oops.  Luckily it only breaks a bit, and we repair it fairly quickly…  It’s got to travel all the way to Scotland, so it’s comforting to know that it’s relatively indestruct...

It's Sunday, it's been a day of cakes and visitors, it's very late, and I'm going to write this tomorrow! But, in the meantime, here's a picture of a squirrel and a decorated dustbin lid... One of my better shots with Vincent's camera!  When I've finished with it, it might even be a Christmas card... More tomorrow!!

On Monday everything goes swimmingly.  The salvage yard people are delivering the Burberry reclaimed flooring between 3.30 and 4pm.  Mum is organised to sit in the house and wait, and Rob is also coming to finish the retaining wall at about the same time.  Organised or what?  At lunchtime I phone the salvage yard to check they’re really going to deliver and am told ‘yes, that’s right – my son remembered the house with the pool, so he’s already delivered it’.  Er, where, exactly?  ‘He put it outside, that’s ok isn’t it?’ Well, it’ll kind of have to be ok…  I let mum know and say that I don’t expect her to move it all, and that we have no idea how much wood 28 square yards is.  It’s a helluva lot, that’s how much it is. About a sitting room full, to be exact.  Anyway, mum texts me later to say she and a passing dogwalker (see, there are benefits to living on a footpath) have shifted the lot into the sitting room.  Where it has compl...

After the midweek excitement (yep, there was a midweek entry this week) I decide to take things easy on Thursday.  So I take the lights down, swim, clean the car, feed the birds, redecorate the squirrel feeder and photograph the cakes.  Then I have breakfast and go to work…  Rob is coming back on Sunday to take down the shuttering and make a start on the retaining wall. Friday is a completely unsheddy day – we have a fantastic night out with Gareth and Nic where we have a tournament of Wii games at their newly extended house.  Actually, it’s not a completely unsheddy day as we admire the colour of their sitting room and think it would be an excellent colour for a shed… On Saturday morning, after our late night, we sit in bed with a cup of tea and ponder our day… we could sweep leaves, we could do more to the path edge, we could do cakes… we’re just at the ‘stretching out of the toes and taking it easy’ stage when a car turns up.  It’s Rob.  SHIT!...

What is it about builders and bases?  On the pool build we had to adjust the shuttering to get it straight and the idiot builder ‘forgot’ to put in a damp proof course, and now this one hasn’t turned up… I ring Rob, somewhat miffed, on Monday morning to find out when he’s going to be doing the shuttering… later on today, he promises, and sure enough he makes a start.  It’s dark when I get home but by torchlight it looks ok.  On Tuesday he rings in the morning to say that rather than make it too big for the base to fit, he’s made it smaller – by THREE INCHES in each direction.  Suddenly our 14’ x 18’ shed is a 13’9” x 17’9” shed.  He asks ‘is that OK?’  Well, actually, mate, since you asked, no it bloody isn’t.  When we said 14 x 18 we actually meant 14 x 18.  Good grief.  I say I think it will be too small for the shed, and I ring Keith the Shed to find out.  Lovely Keith says it’s ok, he can make the shed to fit the base, and he’ll jus...

On Monday morning as I drive to work I see more bricks slung on the heap of rubbish outside the house that had useless bricks before… I investigate at lunchtime and meet the lovely builders who say I can have as many as I like, and they even help me load the car.  With three of us loading there are a lot of bricks in it.  Probably rather too many… the car is parked on a slope and when I’ve said my goodbyes and removed the handbrake it simply doesn’t move… Eventually the wheels start to go round and when I get home and unload the booty I find it’s a grand total of 67 bricks!  The good news is that I now know that that’s limits, weightwise, for a little Smart… bless it.  The boys have said that they’ll be taking a wall down in a few weeks and they’ll pile the bricks up for me where I can see them.  Seems churlish to refuse… On Tuesday they’ve done it sooner than expected and made a pile of bricks, so I load up on my way home – the pile is enormous so I ca...