Progress

After almost 4 months, most of the rooms in the new house are starting to look the way they're supposed to. There are still a couple that haven't been unpacked, but we can just close the doors to those rooms for a few weeks :). I took these pictures right in the middle of the day so the light from the windows is a bit bright, but here goes.

Here's the family room:


The dining room:


The view of the piano from the other side of the dining room:


The main guest room:


The second guest room:


Another view of the second guest room, to show the cupboards we had built into the eaves:


And finally, for now, the last guest room (it's a sofa bed):


We've got one more bedroom to decorate, but we won't do that until we find out if the room's occupant is going to be a boy or a girl. Then we're having the office furnished the first week of May, and I still have to take pictures of our bedroom, which is finished but not particularly tidy today :).

It's So Shiny...

At the end of November, we went up to London for the weekend and bought a piano. It wasn't one of those 'went out for a loaf of bread and ended up with a piano' moments; we actually went to London with the intention of buying a piano, as the shop was having a pre-VAT increase, pre-2010 price increase sale. We bought a beautiful Model A, 6' 2" black grand piano, and arranged to have it delivered to the new house in early January.

We planned to have it delivered in the first week of January, but then we got snowed in so had to postpone the delivery. Then we decided to have the piano room decorated, including new carpets, so we postponed the delivery again until today.

So, almost 4 months after we paid for it, it's finally here.


There was a bit of a cock-up with the stool: this is the one from our upright piano that's still at the old house; we're selling it to a friend. The delivery men said the stool would be coming separately by courier, and after watching them lug a grand piano up a flight of stairs I didn't have the heart to complain about that, but when I contacted the shop about when the stool would be delivered, the lady told me it should have come with the piano... They are going to arrange to have a stool sent to me but the old one will do for now.

I love this piano. I didn't intend to get one as big as this; we had in mind when we went to the shop that we would get a Model M (5' 7") or a Model O (5' 10 3/4"), but when I tried this one it sounded so much better than the others. Just need to spend some time practising now!

It's not just DVD cabinets either

Check out these plant pot holders that Rob's Dad made for me!

After nearly 20 months...

... our DVDs finally have a home. When we couldn't find a suitably sized storage unit for our 570-odd DVDs (to include 250 box sets), we asked Rob's Dad to make us some units for them, and he brought these cabinets with him last weekend. He gave them a final coat of varnish and fitted the handles this week.

I'm sooo pleased with them! I'm going to catalogue all the DVDs next week using Delicious Library, so it's not an hour-long job to find a specific DVD, like it has been for the past year and a half...

Letter from Bathroom Company

We are very pleased to advise you that all works at your property have now been completed. Payment received in full with many thanks.

We hope you have been satisfied with the work carried out and would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your custom.

My Reply

I write this while looking at a shaving mirror that's sitting on my dining table. It should be on the wall in our newly installed bathroom, but it's not. So I would have to disagree with the first sentence of your letter of 29 February.

I also have to disagree with the second paragraph too - we are not satisfied with the work carried out. We have a downstairs cloakroom that we intended to ask you to do if we were happy with the job you did on the en suite. I think it’s safe to say that we won’t be asking you to do any more work for us.

Another Room Done

I took pictures of the office weeks ago after we painted the walls and the furniture was fitted and forgot to post them. Again, the room's so small that it's difficult to get a decent shot, but here it is.

In the time it's taken to refit our en-suite...

... the company I work for has changed name, and bought out another company;

... the lovely Nikki (who was very patient with me this week when she told me for the second time how to edit our website after I was stupid enough to think I didn't need to take notes the first time round - thanks Nikki) has gone from 10 weeks' to 20 weeks' pregnant;

... 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans have withdrawn from the US presidential race;

... Sarah has surely set the record for the number of blog posts during this period - 245;

... Britney Spears has been forced into hospital on mental health grounds - twice;

... Rob has bought two bikes;

... and my favourite, showing just how slack the bathroom company has been at completing a 7-day job: French President Nicolas Sarkozy has met, dated and married Carla Bruni.

Although, I am still reading the same book that I was reading 10 weeks ago. But in my defence, it is a 1,000-page book and I've nearly finished it...

Today...

• Rob, Ben and I re-arranged the contents of the shed and moved the patio furniture into it from the garage;
  
  
• I waited in for the man to come round and clear the garage of a van load of stuff we didn't want, including Rob's old bike (which the man promised would go to a good home, not just onto the tip), then I tidied up what was left in the garage and swept it out;
  
  
• Rob and Ben went into Southampton to get a banker's draft for Ben's deposit on his new flat;
  
  
• I practised Clair de Lune on the piano for almost an hour (and it doesn't really sound any better, but I'll keep working on it);
  
  
• Rob and Ben picked up the keys for Ben's flat, and bought a bed for it;
  
  
• I hoovered (sorry Ben, vacuumed, as I used a Dyson) the smallest bedroom, which yesterday was fitted with office furniture, then moved all the office-related stuff into there from the spare room for Rob to set it all up (computers, wires, folders, paperwork etc);
  
  
• Rob and Ben washed both the cars;
  
  
• Once they had finished washing the cars and the risk of bringing dirt into the house was diminished, I mopped the kitchen floor and Ben vacuumed the lounge;
  
  
• I talked to Small Jen on the phone for an hour;
  
  
• I did two loads of washing;
  
  
• I mapped out a 4-mile run for Sara and me to run tomorrow morning.
  
  All before 3pm.

After that I was quite lazy - it took me till 8pm to do two more loads of washing, another half-hour on Clair de Lune and clean all the bathrooms. Slacker.

And... Breathe

Crazy week at work this last week. We had a load of people here, first in London then in Southampton, for a few meetings, plus there was an event in London on Wednesday that I had to go to, which involved getting up at 5.15am. I enjoyed the week, though - better than not having enough to do. But I do have a lot to catch up on next week now.

My New Year's list of jobs to be done is now reliant on other people doing stuff before I can complete it. We will finally be having our bathroom spotlights fitted early next week, after someone came round on Friday to skim the ceiling. He also took out the radiator screws, replacing them with shorter ones that didn't come through the office wall, so now I can get Peter in to fit the furniture in the office. And when that's been done, I'll get the carpet cleaner round to do the lounge, stairs and landing, and I'll also need to get the man with a van round again to clear out the garage, so we can put a bike rack up for Rob and all his new bike paraphernalia. He cycles into work now and has spent a lot of money kitting himself out properly: bike, for starters, plus windproof clothing and padded shorts, water bottle, lights, helmet, paniers, gloves, waterproof overshoes... I had no idea there was so much involved!

It's STILL not finished, but...

... at this rate I'll have long given up on this blog by the time it is, so I've decided to post a picture of the en-suite bathroom now. It's not like we can't use it; we're really pleased with what's been done so far and it does function perfectly well. There are just some finishing touches left to do: the electrician needs to fit spotlights into the ceiling and fix the shaving mirror to the wall, but we've hit a snag with that and without boring you senseless, it doesn't look like it's going to get resolved any time soon.

So here it is, and as I said we're very pleased with it. The shower is great, although you can't see it on the picture - it's set back on the right. We've got double doors on the front of the shower, so they don't come out so far into the room as the old single door and it feels more spacious. Which is great, because even as en-suite bathrooms go, ours is quite small...

What I actually wanted to show you, though, was this, which must have been done before Christmas but which we didn't notice until yesterday morning when we cleared out the contents of the smallest bedroom (Rob's office) to decorate it in preparation for the furniture being delivered and fitted this week. It's quite difficult to get a sense of scale, but what you're looking at are two screws protruding about an inch through the wall in the office, the other side of which corresponds exactly to where the radiator has been fixed to the wall in the en-suite. Now the wall separating the en-suite from the office is at least 3 inches thick, so I dread to think what size screws they've used - the radiator isn't even mounted on the wall; it sits on the ground at the bottom so the top screws only serve to hold it in place a bit better.

We called the bathroom company as soon as we noticed, but of course Tony the project manager doesn't work on a Saturday, so Rob left a strongly worded message asking him to ensure that his first phone call on Monday morning would be to us. I was going to say I can't believe they've done it, but all things considered - it was an 8-day job that was originally due to start on 19 November and next weekend will be 19 January, plus they've had our money since the end of October so there's no incentive for them to do a good job or finish on time - I'm actually not all that surprised. We'll wait and see what Tony has to say for himself tomorrow - probably a whole lot of waffle, which is his usual answer to any question I ask him. I got so sick of it on Friday that I banged the receiver on my desk a few times while on the phone to him, then told him to call me back when I was less angry at him.

The good news, though, is that we did get the office painted - we did two coats of pale blue on the walls yesterday then painted the door frame, door and skirting boards white this morning. I'll work from home on Friday so I can be here for when Peter comes and fits the office furniture - assuming, of course, that there are no screws poking through the wall by then...

UPDATE MONDAY 19:00: Tony didn't call back. All day.

It only took 6 months...

...but the bathroom is now tidy. Just the two spare bedrooms, office and den to go now - today's job is at least one of the bedrooms, if not both. I need to do them this weekend, if possible, because it's back to work on Monday and I'll be less inclined to do them after working all week. Ben's going to be living in one of the bedrooms from next Saturday, so it will be nice if he can actually see his bed.

Operation Ship-Shape

Happy New Year! We took Chinese and Thai food round to Adrian and Sara's last night, then played a charades-style game called Masquerade that Rob won - just. It was really difficult! It wasn't just a case of mime the title of a well-known TV show or film - it wasn't even a case of mime a well-known phrase. These were just sentences, that made only grammatical sense - Rob had '101 ways to cook a halibut' and I had 'A frog getting legless in France', for goodness' sake! It was good fun, though - we'll look out for it next time we're shopping.

Having spent more than half of December away from home, and the rest of the days preparing for Florida and/or Christmas, the house was left in a fair old state, and it was all waiting for me when we got back yesterday :). This is what it looked like the day we left for Christmas, and it looked even worse this morning, if you can believe it. All the space you see on the floor in the living room was covered in bags we brought back from our travels. And it didn't stop there: there was laundry still in the dryer and pizza boxes in the kitchen from 2 weeks ago, the dining room was filled with wrapping paper and other Christmas-related stuff, all the bedrooms upstairs were a mess (but two of them have never actually been tidy since we moved in) - I was actually quite looking forward to being able to start getting it all in order again. I did the living room, dining room and kitchen today, and made a start on the enormous pile (actually two piles) of ironing that's built up since the beginning of December. Tomorrow I'll make a start on the upstairs.

I also have a list of other projects, some larger than others, that need doing at some point, including: -

• Re-decorate downstairs cloakroom, including new toilet and sink and new flooring, as we took the old carpet up a few weeks ago when the radiator leaked all over it
  
  
• Sort out main bathroom - there are toiletries on every surface and loads of empty cupboards
  
  
• Finally get round to sorting out the two spare bedrooms and putting away all the clutter
  
  
• Sort out the office - this is subject to our getting furniture for it. We ordered it ages ago from the same guy who furnished the company's office in Chilworth and he told us it would arrive around the end of November, but we haven't heard from him since...
  
  
• Take car to garage to sort out dubious sound to exhaust
  
  
• Fix broken slats on our bed
  
  
• Get living room carpet cleaned
  
  
• Clean or replace carpet on stairs and landing - another radiator-related incident
  
  
• Clearly the most important at the moment: get plumber to sort out central heating system
  

Good job I've got the rest of the week off to make a start on the list... :)

Not the best of days...

...but equally, I don't feel nearly so annoyed by today's events as I might normally do. Not sure why that is - maybe I'm just past caring and looking forward to Christmas.

We flew back from Miami on Sunday evening, getting into Heathrow early yesterday morning. Adrian's driver was waiting for him to take him back to Southampton, but instead of going with him, Rob and I got the train into London because Rob arranged to see a client today, and I had a meeting this morning. We spent most of yesterday catching up on e-mails and sleeping. I got up early this morning and went to the gym, then turned on my computer to check what time my meeting was - and saw an e-mail from the girl I was due to meet saying she was off sick and would have to reschedule. So I'd spent the last 24 hours in London unnecessarily, and could have been at home sorting out the mounds of washing and ironing I have to do before leaving here on Friday for Christmas.

So I got the tube to Waterloo, and the train back home. I spent a few minutes sorting through a week's worth of post, then went upstairs to check out the bathroom. Hmm. In the last week all they had done was fit the toilet roll holder, towel rail and cabinet to the wall. There was still no shower head, and there were no spotlights in the ceiling, just the old lampshade. I called Tony, the Project Manager, and was told that he was off till January, but Pam told me the shower head was due to be fitted today and the electrician would be in on Thursday to sort out the lights. She did at least tell me the truth when I asked why hardly anything had happened for the past week - that she didn't know - instead of waffling away a response that didn't actually answer my question. The shower was fitted while I was out this afternoon, so that's something.

The first time we turned the heating on in this house, when it first started getting cold after the summer, we found a puddle in the kitchen - the radiator was leaking from a tiny hole in the bottom. We turned that radiator off, which means it's always cold in the kitchen now. Then the day before we went to Florida we were out all afternoon Christmas shopping, and got back to find the carpet in the downstairs toilet soaked through, because the radiator in there was leaking. This afternoon I got back to find a dirty wet patch on the carpet in the landing, and a plastic box catching drips from the radiator. The guy who came to fit the shower head noticed that this radiator was also leaking and turned it off and put the box there. Straight after New Year we'll have to get someone in to look at the whole central heating system - I have a feeling all the radiators will need replacing...

08:45 is the new 08:00

It was still dark this morning when I left the gym to drive back home. It's usually dark when I arrive at the gym but the sun has risen by the time I leave. Today, however, I had had to get up earlier than usual to fit in going to the gym then getting home and showered in time for the bathroom fitters arriving at 08:00. So why, when they sauntered in almost an hour late, was I just pleased that they had shown up at all??? Just goes to show that if you lower expectations (see previous post about delays already suffered) your customers will just be glad to see you, and won't mind nearly so much that you've made them late for work...

I gave them the spare key before I left, and told them to lock up after themselves. They then said that they weren't doing the tiling; someone else would be coming to do that, and depending on how fast they could rip out the old fixtures, it might be ready for tiling tomorrow. I've no idea what position this leaves me in regarding the key: if they're not coming back tomorrow, they said they would post the key through the letterbox, which presumably means that I'll have to wait in again tomorrow for the tiler and be late for work two days in a row...

UPDATE 17:00: The good news is that the ripping out of the old fixtures only took a day. The bad news is that it was scheduled to take two days, and the tiler isn't available until Wednesday as he's finishing another job, so no work will be done on the bathroom at all tomorrow. The guys who were here today did at least have the sense to take the key round to the project manager, who will pass it on to the tiler on Wednesday morning.

Contractors... Grrrrr

Work was due to start on our en-suite bathroom last Monday. A letter arrived from the contractors at the end of last week, saying that two of their fitters had had accidents, which had delayed the jobs they were on, and they wouldn't be able to start work on ours until today. So this morning we cleared out the en-suite of all toiletries etc and I took a couple of 'before' photographs and waited for the fitter to arrive.

Other than the letter telling us about the delay, we hadn't had any communication from the contractors for at least a month, but I thought when we placed the order and paid our deposit that they had said the fitter would turn up between 08:00 and 09:00. I was just about to call them at 09:00 to find out where he was, when the phone rang. It was the contractor, telling me the fitter assigned to our job went home sick yesterday and is still not back in today. He said he'd left me a voicemail yesterday afternoon, which I found interesting because we don't have an answer machine on our home phone.

He rang back this afternoon to say that a fitter would be here on Monday - a week later than planned. This isn't all bad, I suppose, because the job is estimated to take a couple of weeks, and we'll be in Florida for the second week, so hopefully (and given the story so far, it's a big ask) we will return home to a new bathroom and won't have had to live with the mess for a week.

We'll see.