gremlins

The first gremlin was on Tuesday when the carpenters arrived to fit the roof trusses onto the garage and found that they would not fit under the window cills of the house.
John the bricklayer came back on Wednesday to take a brick course down so that they would fit - no-one seems to know why this happened; we had to stop the delivery of the garage door and ask for it to be altered.
Then on Friday, when the carpenters came back, they found that most of the trusses fitted, but that the end ones were completely wrong. This will be rectified next week, but means that we cannot move Keith's tools into the garage.
This picture shows the trusses that have gone up, and the 10 tonnes of roadstone delivered on Friday - this should be spread on Monday to give the removal men (still booked for Thursday 23rd) a reasonable surface to walk on.
This picture shows what will, in time, become our porch, with the garage to the left and the house front door to the right:


Also on Friday, Mick, our electrician got an electric shock because a short circuit had occurred in one of the smoke alarms "that's all right, I haven't had a shock for at least a month" (!!!!)
We were delighted that the heating system was commissioned, but today when we walked in to the house, there was a tropical air about it, and we found that one of the joints in the pipes feeding the amazing Energy Master (see January 10th) had sprung a leak, for absolutely no reason, as it had been tested for several hours yesterday. so Ian, our plumber, spent today sorting it out.
I was one of the gremlins, as I was supposed to grout the shower area today, and I did too large an area, too slowly, so that the waterproof grout "went off" (an expression I usually reserve for milk or chicken) and was very difficult to remove from the tiles, so I am in the dog-house today!
I felt rather better by the end, as Keith has fitted the sink, and tap into the utility room, so there is a functioning kitchen area:

It should be noted that in 13 months I have gone from regarding a dishwasher as a necessity of life, to being delighted by the luxury of having a sink with running hot water.

I went into the back garden to take a picture of the rainwater harvesting unit - which would be functioning if it had a toilet to pump water to - it will just have to wait until next week - but got distracted by the snowdrops:
This will probably be the last post for a few weeks, as we move on February 23rd, saying goodbye to Irthlingborough, where my family history goes back hundreds of years.
We hope to pick up e-mails as the pub has Wi-Fi (and is showing 6 Nations matches) but I expect my next blog post to be once we have the phone line & router connected. This is booked for March 2nd, but as our experience shows, many things could happen in the next couple of weeks!

at the end of a difficult week

We have electricity is some of the rooms (instead of just by the door!) - thanks Mick.

We have a drainage system,
an outside water tap by the house, and a rainwater harvester installed - thanks Russell & Rob.

We have our first tiled floor (well done us!)
and here is a picture of Keith collecting water from the brook to wash the floor - before the water was turned on.

We have a gas pipe laid - thanks to National Grid, although no thanks for leaving the hole in the road unfilled and the traffic lights still in place. As we remember from when the temporary water supply was laid on, the filling-in work and removal of traffic lights are done by different teams, so sometimes they are left for days.

What we don't have is a roof on the garage - a combination of snow and finishing ground works meant that the scaffolders could not get on to the site, so we really hope that can go ahead next week.
Yesterday evening we had a good time at the Denford show, where everyone kept assuring us that next year we can enjoy the snow from the warmth of our new house.

a tense few days

However we have tried to plan carefully, things don't always work out!
Russell & Rob began digging down to the sewer on Thursday, but it was much deeper than they expected, and they had to get a special box to enable deeper digging on Friday (this was so the walls didn't collapse).
Unfortunately that was the day that the local sewage pumping station station stopped working, so when they drilled into the pipe, a fountain of sewage sprayed out. I was mercifully collecting an order at the time - but I had the foresight to provide industrial size wipes as the water tap was frozen!
This meant that the mandatory inspection could not be done; and in order to prevent the hole filling up with water, we had to leave a pump on all weekend. Fortunately on Monday, the station was pumping again, the connection could be made & inspected, and the trench filled in.

It was especially important as today, a trench had to be dug for National Grid to lay the gas pipeline, and there would have been no room if the sewer trench hadn't been filled in.
This afternoon, National Grid arrived, but the traffic lights didn't. They were able to lay the pipe on our property, and leave the end to the public highway unconnected. That meant this trench could be filled, and yet another dug for the remaining services.

Edmund managed to get here on Saturday and helped to move the sanitaryware from the secure store into the house - we are most grateful as we hope to be plumbing in our shower room soon.
I spent this morning taking my very first steps in tiling and managed to get 12 floor tiles down.
So tomorrow, we hope that the traffic lights do arrive and the connection to the mains gas can be made; the scaffolding is erected for the garage roof, and I can learn how to cut tiles to fit the edge of the shower room.

here we go again!

Here comes the digger again, to do trenches for the services, which we hope to connect up in the next couple of weeks, and to put in the rainwater harvesting tank.Many thanks also to Tile Choice at Northampton, especially Joel, who has looked after the tiles we chose almost a year ago, and arranged delivery, as well as helping me to collect some so that we can make a start in the shower room.