Sicknote

Hallo,

Well, it's been frustratingly slow, yet busy.

The past four weekends I have paid visits to London, Coniston, Liverpool, Gateshead/Chester-le-Street and Leicester. So as far as DIY is concerned nothing has happened over weekends.

I also managed to hurt my back 2 weeks ago which means I've not been able to lift, twist, bend or walk particularly well! This is a real pain in the .. back. I'm getting a little concerned that we will be living in a building site for a long time if I can't get cracking with plastering the living room soon - and before I do that there are various bits and bobs that need doing - like rewiring the living room, running speaker, network and AV cables through the living room and fixing stairs.

I planned to get a lot done over Easter and take 2 weeks holiday to do it, but if the back isn't up to it I'll have to hold off - but as all weekends in August are booked up, as are 2 in July, 1 in June, 2 in May and 3 in April with more inevitable to be taken up time is already very precious! I'm maybe prematurely worrying, but my dream of sitting back with a cooled beer in my living room on the 12th of June to watch the start of England's victorious World Cup campaign does seem to be slipping away.

Any hoo, so "what has been happening?" I can't hear you shout...

Steve the fireplace man has just about finished but still has a days work to do in clearing up and actually fitting the stove. The stove is purchased but we are waiting for delivery which should be in the next couple of days. It is a 4.7KWh AGA defra approved wood burning stove. Kirklees is a smoke control zone, so to legally burn wood you have to have a super efficient stove - which inevitable costs more! Apparently it works by burning the smoke twice, or something like that I read somewhere. I might do a little more reading. We purchased it from a local stove shop who did an excellent job in price matching the web and were very helpful. So big up to the pot belly stove shop on Lockwood road in Huddersfield. Hopefully Steve will be back to install it this week - after he has put a stove in a thatched cottage in Suffolk apparently - erk! Spot the hazard.

Phil my electrician chum has spent a couple of mornings installing a consumer unit in the kitchen to replace the fuse board and testing the installation and all the cabling. He has done a fantastic job - so neat, you'd think he had been doing it man and boy...

My circuits have all been tested apart from the living room stuff ( I think anyway!) and so far have come up as being all good. Had a lack of continuity on the upstairs ring negative which was a dodgy connection in a socket, and a low resistance on the insulation on the negative on the kitchen lighting circuit - but that was a trapped cable in one of the kitchen light fittings which has now been fixed up too. So it's looking good. I need to change some of the cabling in the living room, but this is easy enough and should only be an evenings work and will comply with all the rules and regs. brill.

What else? mm oh yes, the beam. Turns out I can't read structural engineers drawings and ordered the wrong size of wood. Gutted. So with a bit of messing about I am getting it exchanged for the correct size. The builder is hopefully picking it up today and installing it this afternoon, but we'll see... you never really know do you?!

To be fair, the builder has been very good. He has fitted 2 conservation friendly ridge air vents on the roof which seem to be doing their job of alleviating the damp in the roof space. He also managed to carry the  beam I had ordered out of the house on his own - I am more than impressed by this. Me and another chap struggled with it to get it in the house. Admittedly, apparently his head was very red and close to exploding, but lived to tell the tale. Hannah did note that he was 'beefcake', which apparently I'm lacking.

Hopefully this new beam will be the badgers nadgers and do the job so we can get it ticked off.

That's all for now. Photos to follow soon... maybe.