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!