Sunday 20^th April 2008

I've not really had a chance to make a diary entry for a while even though quite a lot has happened around the house. The new job has been keeping me pretty busy though so things haven't progressed as fast as they could have.

We had some good weather over a couple of weekends so we decided to capitalize on that and do some work in the garden planting some vegetables. I stuck the fork in the ground only to discover that ten centimetres below the surface was a sheet of concrete. I think it might have been a garden path or something like that as it had no damp proof course. I broke that up only to discover another path or some such below that. This one was quite a bit older but fairly small. We dug over a good sized patch and then laid a little garden path along the edge of it so that we could weed it during the summer.

Hazel has plumbed in the dishwasher and the washing machine. That meant cutting of the pipe that was there and running in a new section with new valves on it. She also had to add an additional waste pipe. She did a great job if it with not a drop of leaking water. I was most impressed with the fact that you could push fit straight onto copper.

Bob came to stay for a weekend. He thinks we are mad for taking on a project of this size. I have to admit that occasionally I also think we are mad. It's getting there a little bit at a time though. I think the year to get it done was a it hopeful. It's certainly more than hopefully now that I have this new business to look after. I've got to get the leaking roof fixed in the near future though.

The electricity people have said that they will move the meter into the basement but I'm going to have to improve the cable run into the house. At the moment it's entering at less than the required 450mm below the surface. I suspect that is going to be a pretty tough job. The gas company have been round to quote for connecting us to the gas mains. As I suspected the house used to have a gas supply but the guy who did the survey thinks it's probably been disconnected. They are coming to test it on Tuesday anyway to fin out for sure.

Fraggle disconnected the sink in the living room today. We had to turn off the water to the whole house and drain almost every pipe are the stopcock on the sink was jammed open. She sealed off the pipe in no time flat though once she got started. Pulling the sink out felt good.

I decided to tackle the fireplace in the living room. It was bugging me that I didn't know what was behind it. All I can say now that I have opened it up is: ouch my hands. I can't believe how much work it was to open up the fireplace in that room. The cement that they used as backing plaster and mortar was so tough I ended up having to smash the bricks with the sledgehammer rather than trying to chase out the mortar and remove the bricks. What we have now is a very substantial hole in the living room for a seriously large fire.