www.9thcircle.co.uk

cooking with gas

Oh gods - where to start?!

Matt and Emma came up at the weekend, which was stupendously cool, and thanks to Emma's handiness with a bottle of Nitromors, it meant that the front door was ready to be painted blue on Wednesday... mmmm shiny. I'm hoping Hedgie will post any day now with her promised and long-awaited musical ode to Nitromors.

On Sunday Chris attacked the bathroom with a bolster chisel, removing all the tiles (and the boiler cupboard wall which turned out to be a badly attached bit of ply :S ) and then worked well into the night making a new cupboard wall out of aquapanel, and rerendering the wall over the bath which had gone back to breezeblock (obviously the bathroom is part of the 80's extension - breezeblocks were not a popular building material in 1858)

On Tuesday the nice men came and fitted the boiler and gas hob, and then on Wednesday their sparky mate came and fitted the cooker and tried to solve the mystery of where in the hell the power to the garage leaves the house - it's part of the kitchen circuit, not just a spur, so it's pretty important we know. He couldn't help us, but suggested a stop gap solution of putting an outdoor socket on the end of the wire to make the thought of having live cables in a leaking garage less of a worry.

So now we have hot water, heating and the power to make food! The gas fire in the living room is shagged, but when funds allow we want to replace it with something pretty.

Tuesday and Wednesday also saw a lot of rendering and plastering happening in the living room where a lot of wall had come down with the paper - back to the brick again in some places. On Wednesday the first sheets of lining paper went up on the intact walls of the living room!

Thursday - I was supposed to be going to work with a friend, who couldn't make it, happen a good job as I woke up feeling like death and slept most of the day. Chris tidied and cleaned the house, and also helped the men from the council empty our garage of fetid rubbish that was starting to smell again after being deposited in there following the marathon yard cleaning session.

While he was there our shiny box of broadband bits turned up - so we have no furniture, but we have internets. Priorities sound about right to me.

Without Chris knowing, me and my parents sneaked into the house later on and rehung all the kitchen doors and got the washing machine nearly plumbed in.. we need some longer hose to finish that job. We also tried the Chinese takeaway across the road; not bad.

This morning Chris has gone to pick up Deadly to tile the bathroom, and during the course of typing this I have been trying to sort out the BT broadband (sodding thing - no I don't want to enter my password 240 million times, no I can't use Internet Explorer - I'm on a Mac - cock off!) which because it is via Yahoo (*shudder*) won't let me be signed into my Yahoo account that I've had for about 4 years at the same time. Helpful.

Also during the course of typing this, Chris has phoned to say there's a parcel - so I got him to open it. It's a piece of rubber tube, about 9 inches in diameter. How weird.

He then realises that despite the delivery bloke saying my name at the front door, he's handed over the wrong parcel. So in the past 20 minutes I have phoned the number on Business Post's website, been told to call another number then cut off. I've phoned the number, been told by a very nice lady that it's not her I need but she'll put me through, and then had the phone picked up and put down on me. Cheers.
I phoned her back, she gave me the Blackburn depot number, I eventually got to speak to someone who I think spoke to the delivery bloke who said he'd come back and swap the parcels, with the air of professionalism you'd expect from someone who doesn't want to be at work at 3pm on a Friday. If you ever have anything really valuable that you'd like to lose, have delivered to someone else or generally neglected, I'd suggest Business Post - they're fucking ace. Some bloody bastard in a van has got our shower!
I phoned Chris to tell him this, but as I was on the phone to him the house phone rang so he had to go.. the saga continues.
I can't stand the suspense, cold or no cold, I'm going to have to drive over to find out what's going on.

Watch this space - my next post should be from the house itself!