Thirty Seven
I have a day off on Tuesday to meet the energy assessor at Guy’s house to get the energy efficiency certificate bit of the HIP we need to sell the house. He turns up late, stays half the time he says he will, doesn’t look in the lofts and shoves off again. He says we’ll get a rubbish rating as its an old house but that it doesn’t matter as nobody ever reads the reports. I say that must be a shame for you and he launches into a lengthy lecture on just how successful he is and how busy he is. Odd chap. I go to B&Q to buy pots for planters and then head for IKEA to get the shelf supports that they didn’t have the last time we went. We had checked their ‘on-line stockcheck’ thing and it had said ‘in stock’. Which, as they did have one bracket, was technically correct, if useless. This time I am wiser. I phone IKEA and speak to A Real Person who says that yes, they are in stock and that there are 57 of them. Hooray! I drive down in great anticipation. Big mistake. When I arrive at IKEA there are blue polo-shirted Co-Workers (never call them ‘staff’) on the roundabout outside the car park waving people past. Er, why? Everyone, naturally, slows down to talk to them, and the co-workers look a little weary of speaking through car windows. I slow down to ask them what’s happening, and am told that there has been a fire and that the store is closed. Indefinitely. For the day. (Which, incidentally, are two different things… indefinitely being considerably longer than ‘for the day’, but never mind). The damned place is SHUT. BUGGER. There is nothing else to do, so I drive home via the cake decorating shop (blocks of black icing for tyres) and B&Q for a doormat which I didn’t get in B&Q earlier because I could get one in IKEA. Which I could have if it had been open… Back to Guy’s for planting the last few tubs and arranging the doormat, then back to mine to finish what I can on the electrics. And woodstain something or other…
Wednesday and Thursday are entirely taken up with cake making – it’s a limousine cake for an 8 year old’s birthday party, and it works fine.
On Friday we have both taken another day off for the stove boys to come back and finish the inside, paint the pipe outside, disguise the orange rubber bath mat and sort out the paint mess. The boss turns up, the lads don’t – he says they are ‘busy elsewhere’. He also says that if we’d wanted a black pipe we should have asked for a powder coated precoloured machine manufactured pipe in any one of 16 agreed European colours. If we’d bloody known we could have had a powder coated precoloured machine manufactured pipe in any one of 16 agreed European colours I expect we would have asked for it, but as it wasn’t mentioned, we didn’t. He doesn’t seem to have heard of the old adage ‘the customer is always right’ and basically blames us for making his boys paint it black when that’s not really their job. As we have watched them paint stove flues black in both our houses before now, we think this is A Bit Rich. He will bring his painting expert (that’s a stove fitter who used to be a decorator) back with him to sort it all out. In three weeks time. Hey ho.
After his visit we head to IKEA again. This time we’ve phoned them to find out whether (a) the shelf brackets are in stock, (b) in stock by how many and (c) whether the store is on fire or not. They now have 55 brackets (2 sold since Tuesday, there should be some left by the time we get there) and no, it’s not on fire. We head off hopefully. It’s open!! We have a celebratory cheap lunch in the canteen and then go and find our shelf brackets. We also buy curtain hooks and rings. It is a very dull big yellow shopping bag… Then we go to several fabric supermarkets to look at fabrics for the window seats and the curtains. We’re thinking ‘brown and funky’ and don’t find anything even remotely suitable. We do, however, buy an enormous sheet of bargain foam rubber to make the window seat pads. It’s too big and too thin, but it was a BARGAIN. If we cut it and stick it in layers it’ll be fine. Probably.
We get home to find the ‘FOR SALE’ sign for Guy’s house has arrived. It’s huge, and we get to colour in our phone number ourselves… Very clever design. One teensy snag, though. It says ‘PRIVATE LET’ not ‘PRIVATE SALE’. Oops. We phone them up and they say they’ll send a new one pronto, but it might take a week. We gloss over ‘LET’ – literally, using white gloss paint. Now it just says ‘PRIVATE’, but who cares? At least it shows people the house is for sale. Or for ‘Private’, whatever that might mean.
On Saturday a couple come to view Guy’s house – so we whiz round with the hoover and tidy stuff away into drawers – Guy will be finding stuff in odd places for WEEKS! They love the house, but have only just put theirs on the market, so are in no position to buy. Frustrating. We go home to start on the window seats, but the first job is wood cutting, and it is pouring with rain, so we wait. And we wait. And we wait.
It never really stops, so we stick bits of wood into the pew ends instead… We call it marquetry. A carpenter would probably call it ‘amateurish filling’. The weird soggy looking bit (which will be inside the window seat) is a test of woodstain to see if it looks right. We think it will be fine…
Sunday is better and after a visit to the farmer’s market and a coffee in a trendy café with Karen, we crack on with woodworking stuff.
We cut lots of bits of wood to size and glue them together to make the window seat frames, cut some maple tongue and groove to size for the seat fronts, cut MDF for the seat, er, seats, and sand down our ‘marquetry’ on the pew ends.
We also cut and rout the shelves which will go on the brackets we eventually bought.
Achieved: We’ve done lots of woody things and we made a nice limousine cake.
Hours worked: Not that many up until Saturday, then we felt like we were slacking, so we did lots on Sunday.
Purchases: Shelf brackets! 6 of them. We checked, re-checked and checked again that we had 6.
Companies not to employ: The cleaners we had to do Guy’s house. We’re still finding all the bits they didn’t do. Can’t name names, obviously, as that would be libellous, but think famous film by Stanley Kubrick involving a large citrus fruit going tick-tock…
Plan for the week: Window seat frames need screwing together, then putting in place, stain maple for seat fronts, stain pew ends for seat ends, stain shelves for, well, shelves. Do battle with large sheet of foam rubber to make seats.
Wildlife update: The squirrels are very bouncy - obviously Spring is in the air! And our favourite badger is called PaintPot because he has a white tip to his tail... and he truly LOVES apples.
Hope for the week: That the beech tree doesn't come down in the promised storms and turn the shed into matchsticks.
Guy’s house sale progress: We’ve had an encouraging amount of enquiries, and one viewing already, with another one booked for Monday. Keep your fingers crossed!
Wednesday and Thursday are entirely taken up with cake making – it’s a limousine cake for an 8 year old’s birthday party, and it works fine.
On Friday we have both taken another day off for the stove boys to come back and finish the inside, paint the pipe outside, disguise the orange rubber bath mat and sort out the paint mess. The boss turns up, the lads don’t – he says they are ‘busy elsewhere’. He also says that if we’d wanted a black pipe we should have asked for a powder coated precoloured machine manufactured pipe in any one of 16 agreed European colours. If we’d bloody known we could have had a powder coated precoloured machine manufactured pipe in any one of 16 agreed European colours I expect we would have asked for it, but as it wasn’t mentioned, we didn’t. He doesn’t seem to have heard of the old adage ‘the customer is always right’ and basically blames us for making his boys paint it black when that’s not really their job. As we have watched them paint stove flues black in both our houses before now, we think this is A Bit Rich. He will bring his painting expert (that’s a stove fitter who used to be a decorator) back with him to sort it all out. In three weeks time. Hey ho.
After his visit we head to IKEA again. This time we’ve phoned them to find out whether (a) the shelf brackets are in stock, (b) in stock by how many and (c) whether the store is on fire or not. They now have 55 brackets (2 sold since Tuesday, there should be some left by the time we get there) and no, it’s not on fire. We head off hopefully. It’s open!! We have a celebratory cheap lunch in the canteen and then go and find our shelf brackets. We also buy curtain hooks and rings. It is a very dull big yellow shopping bag… Then we go to several fabric supermarkets to look at fabrics for the window seats and the curtains. We’re thinking ‘brown and funky’ and don’t find anything even remotely suitable. We do, however, buy an enormous sheet of bargain foam rubber to make the window seat pads. It’s too big and too thin, but it was a BARGAIN. If we cut it and stick it in layers it’ll be fine. Probably.
We get home to find the ‘FOR SALE’ sign for Guy’s house has arrived. It’s huge, and we get to colour in our phone number ourselves… Very clever design. One teensy snag, though. It says ‘PRIVATE LET’ not ‘PRIVATE SALE’. Oops. We phone them up and they say they’ll send a new one pronto, but it might take a week. We gloss over ‘LET’ – literally, using white gloss paint. Now it just says ‘PRIVATE’, but who cares? At least it shows people the house is for sale. Or for ‘Private’, whatever that might mean.
On Saturday a couple come to view Guy’s house – so we whiz round with the hoover and tidy stuff away into drawers – Guy will be finding stuff in odd places for WEEKS! They love the house, but have only just put theirs on the market, so are in no position to buy. Frustrating. We go home to start on the window seats, but the first job is wood cutting, and it is pouring with rain, so we wait. And we wait. And we wait.
It never really stops, so we stick bits of wood into the pew ends instead… We call it marquetry. A carpenter would probably call it ‘amateurish filling’. The weird soggy looking bit (which will be inside the window seat) is a test of woodstain to see if it looks right. We think it will be fine…
Sunday is better and after a visit to the farmer’s market and a coffee in a trendy café with Karen, we crack on with woodworking stuff.
We cut lots of bits of wood to size and glue them together to make the window seat frames, cut some maple tongue and groove to size for the seat fronts, cut MDF for the seat, er, seats, and sand down our ‘marquetry’ on the pew ends.
We also cut and rout the shelves which will go on the brackets we eventually bought.
Achieved: We’ve done lots of woody things and we made a nice limousine cake.
Hours worked: Not that many up until Saturday, then we felt like we were slacking, so we did lots on Sunday.
Purchases: Shelf brackets! 6 of them. We checked, re-checked and checked again that we had 6.
Companies not to employ: The cleaners we had to do Guy’s house. We’re still finding all the bits they didn’t do. Can’t name names, obviously, as that would be libellous, but think famous film by Stanley Kubrick involving a large citrus fruit going tick-tock…
Plan for the week: Window seat frames need screwing together, then putting in place, stain maple for seat fronts, stain pew ends for seat ends, stain shelves for, well, shelves. Do battle with large sheet of foam rubber to make seats.
Wildlife update: The squirrels are very bouncy - obviously Spring is in the air! And our favourite badger is called PaintPot because he has a white tip to his tail... and he truly LOVES apples.
Hope for the week: That the beech tree doesn't come down in the promised storms and turn the shed into matchsticks.
Guy’s house sale progress: We’ve had an encouraging amount of enquiries, and one viewing already, with another one booked for Monday. Keep your fingers crossed!
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