Didn't update blog yesterday, didn't think enough to add, but now there is too much.
Tony and John have been cracking on with fixing battening to the vapour check barrier
to create a space where electrical cabling can go without penetrating the barrier.
In the living room, here, there will be wood cladding below the window height, but ...
... in the kitchen the battening is full height.
Just a view from the house of the only bit of our old garden that remains.
yesterday I moved the other rainwater gully.
This is an experiment. The roof is extended over the path to the front door so there is a need for another downpipe.
But there is not much space on the side of the house so the idea is to channel the water down the chaining
to the channel catching the water from the driveway.
Margie meanwhile has the spring bug, she is buying and planting. Here are the tomatoe plants.
The garden is blooming, hellebores are out, at least five different kinds ...
... the apple trees are in blossom ...
... and the tulips are a delight. We shall leave these behind when we move to our new house. Margie will miss this bed.
We shall also leave behind our existing living room.
This morning we got up early, at 06:35, to go to look for otters at the Big Waters Nature Reserve
just minutes from our house. No otters, but a lovely sunrise and we met a guy called John
who not only had seen otters there but had a video of an otter killing a cormorant that he showed us
on a little portable DVD player in the hide..
When we got back there was a bit of guttering left by Xanthe.
(Of Xanthe and Martin who are building a wooden house at Otterburn. Much bigger than ours.)
When I phoned them to ask if they had any offcuts of guttering Xanthe said
"Sorry, we sent our surplus guttering to Nick Keenleyside."
But then yesterday phoned to say they had found an offcut 960mm long. I said,
"Oh! that is the wrong length, it is 10mm too long." It took Xanthe a second or two to twig what I said.
In the end I just made one cut and the two pieces fit as snug as this.
(This is before I fit the two Gutter Joint with Rubber Seal.)
Yesterday, when there was no wind, I noticed there was a smell of drains near the public sewer manhole cover,
so today telephoned Northumbrian Water. I almost fell off my chair, I was ready to start recording how long it took,
when after one ring I was talking to someone, in fact I said, "Are you real, and not a recorded message."
She said she was real, took my postcode, couldn't find us, NW database said we were at Blagdon Avenue,
There is no such place, it is Blagdon Terrace. These old mining villages named the terraces, not the streets.
But anyway, she said she would pass it down to Dispatch and someone would come in the afternoon.
And here they are, three men, two vehicles.
The manhole covers are massive cast iron covers in two triangular pieces, so you don't get rocking.
It takes two people to lift one. They saw the problem and said, "We will bag them."
This involves tearing a black plastic bag open, spreading it over the opening, then replacing the cover.
Meanwhile John and Tony, lowered 8'x4' Stirling boards for me from upstairs,
did more work in the garage, then got on with the Soffit boards.
At the same time, Margie, a very happy bunny is planting plants. She is not bothered about the house.
Her garden is what matters.
Tomorrow the electricians come to do their First Fix. So I have fixed Stirling boards to the Utility Room walls,
where they will need to fix a domestic consumer unit.
Also tomorrow the electricity supply people might turn up.
From going quiet, nothing happening, it is flat out, try and keep up.