Snakes & Ladders

Progress is slow but steady and we are just about through, getting out all the bad stuff from the CF flat and are now at the stage of putting stuff back in. We had a really good day on Tuesday, greatly helped by the fact that Snake, the plumber recommended by Ian at Ampthill Glass turned up as promised. Okay, it took a reminder call from Phil first thing in the morning but nonetheless he arrived and got the entire bathroom suite and kitchen sink out in just under 2 hours. We have great faith in Snake and just hope he can work a miracle with the IKEA micro kitchen; we have some concerns because the existing pipes come out of the floor and not the wall but we think, if anyone can do it, then Snake can!

Steve the aerial man turned up also on Tuesday with his ladders and fitted a new aerial for 90 quid. Unfortunately his partner is the one that fixes the phone cables so he couldn’t sort all the telephone wiring for us. This is not a big problem; we’ll just have to get out our MK ex BT engineer. The wires are driving Phil crazy and if I don’t get someone out soon I know he is just going to cut them off himself, leaving us with no phone line. After Steve finished, we’d packed everything away, locked up and went to B&Q to get 9 boxes of floor tiles and some mid grey grout and adhesive.

We also had a productive day yesterday; Tommy the new plasterer turned up before 8am just as he said he would. Both Phil and I like tradesman that start early and we definitely will use Tommy again. I didn’t have such a great start to the day though; Phil realised that he’d forgotten all his tiling tools and phoned me to ask me to bring them to the flat. Unfortunately his tiling stuff was in the garage and I didn’t have a key as I’d given my key to the agent. I had to leave my porridge and drive to Cranfield to get Phil's garage key so I could get his tools. When I got to the flat Phil chucked the old toilet in the boot of my car and asked me to drop this off at the dump on my way back. I did as he asked but I hadn’t realised just how heavy it was and it nearly killed me getting it out of the boot but somehow I managed it.

Betty from next door remains to be a constant distraction and irritation to works in progress. She was chatting to me through the bedroom window yesterday and as I was half way round the room with the roller, I realised I’d picked up the silk paint tray and not the matt tray. Silly mistake which now means I shall have to go over the walls and half the ceiling again in the matt. I managed to get my wall mounted picture boards painted in a mixture of green, red, purple and mocca and very nice they look too. They needed 2 coats but hopefully should be dry enough to hang back on the walls today.

After Tommy left, Phil finished getting all the tiles of the walls in the bathroom and kitchen. He also got the disgusting shit brown and white old ceramic tiles up from the bathroom floors. It took several trips to the tip to dump off all the old tiles and a lot of sweeping up in readiness to lay the new tiles. Phil was going to start this yesterday but by the time we’d finished sweeping up it was nearly 1pm so we decided to put on street clothes and go and find somewhere to eat. We ended up in Wootton and had a delicious juicy fillet steak at The Rose & Crown pub at the very end of the village. It had a traditional English pub lunchtime menu but in the evening the pub turns into an Indian restaurant and takeaway. Most bizarre and if, and when, we ever finish the CF flat and stay the night there, we will definitely go back to The Rose & Crown and try out the Indian fare.

Must publish this blog now and get going, traffic is bad with the school run after 8.30am and it gets worse the nearer you get to 9am when the school opens. Today we are going to tile both the kitchen and bathroom floors. Not sure how we’re going to get out of the front door with out having to walk over the new tiles but we’ll figure something out when we get there. Betty’s husband Adrian has Thursday’s off and he and Betty go to Asda in MK for their weekly shop. They drop their little daughter off at school and then make their way into town so I reckon we should have peace and quiet until at least midday. Pure heaven, and if we get going now we should get all the tiles finished this morning, just in time for lunch.