Deadline achieved

Today is the day that the deadline, that I set back in February, was sort of met. We are only ten weeks behind schedule. By coincidence ten weeks is the length of time it took for the builder to make the alterations that we had done in 2005. It just goes to show a carpet shop what can or can not be done in ten weeks. That's enough moaning - these delays will all be forgotten about now. No the won't, otherwise we will end up in the same pickle next winter when we plan to get the hall, stairs and landing decorated and carpeted. Anyway today the third of the three carpets was fitted but very nearly wasn't as the carpet fitter was so late arriving that we thought that he had forgotten about us. I was wondering how he was going to get the carpet into the house as the path is flooded and the front lawn is sodden but he managed somehow with my husband's help. It was after 7pm by the time he finished. Too late, I thought, to start putting things back into the bedroom - we will have to exist with the current jumble for a bit longer. Now things are really beginning to take shape. We now a have a bright and airy bedroom with a bright and airy shower room off it. When we bought the cottage the bedroom had an old mahogany effect fitted furniture with old beigish carpet and dated and dingy flowered wallpaper. The bedroom now has white fitted furniture with a sky blue carpet and walls painted cornflower blue. The difference is tremendous and the space has been used to much better effect by turning the room around and laying it out differently. The cottage is now starting to feel like it belongs to us and not someone else.

Three fine days and a thunderstorm

At last we have managed to get ourselves synchronised with the weather. The weather has been fine and sunny and we have had the time to get our into the garden and start attacking the weeds. The house is still not straight. We now have two of the three carpets, down but the rooms need to be put back which involves unpacking numerous cardboard boxes, washing ornaments and sorting things out. The house has been upside down for some time now a few more days or weeks are not going to make much difference. When the weather is fine I would rather be out in the garden. I am one of those people that gets up in the morning and wonders how long I have to spend on jobs in the house and other things before I can justify going out into the garden. To me the garden is the outside room for a dry day and the house is the inside room for a wet or miserable day. Having had the necessary three fine days we have now had the requisite thunderstorm and the weather is now all change to being wet. The lightening flashed, the thunder clapped and the heavens opened and within a very short time our front path was flooded and the back lawn looked like a lake. It saved me from watering the garden.

One, two, three

Thet say things come in threes and today they certainly did. Today was a bad day. A day can not really get any worse.

Work was one thing. My sinuses were aching and the last place that I wanted to be was work. Keeping the work experience fifteen year old occupied and coping with the loud and recently employed counter assistant drove me to the point of almost feeling that things could not get much worse. When I am working I find it very difficult to concentrate when there is a lot of noise in the background. In addition to the noise annoying me the counter assistant managed to stand on my foot and she is a much bigger woman than I am. So I now have a bruised foot to go with my aching sinuses.

The second thing was that when I came home at lunch time I found that a small area of the wooden floor in the living room had lifted up. We have until Saturday to get this sorted as the new carpet will be fitted then.

The third thing was that tonight when I tried to set the video to record the Andrew Marr programe I found that our twenty year old TV had gone pop. My husband was out and I don't know how to connect up our old portable TV to our relatively new video recorder. Well I would know if I had the time to read the manual but tonight I didn't have the time. By now I most definitely had had enough and went to console myself in the bath.

Breaking old ground

The concrete breaker that the neighbour promised us six months ago finally arrived today. The van that it was in was stolen, then found and impounded by the police. So now that the pipe under the flower bed has been sorted out, by the plumber, my husband has had fun using the concrete breaker which must be one of the ultimate boys' toys and my husband is still really an overgrown boy.The concrete raft in one corner of the flower bed has now been broken up and we can now get on with moving soil into the flower bed. Then we will be able to plant up the flower bed and make it a real flower bed.