Operation sanity

It’s been more than a week since I last posted. I had a five day trip to London for the memorial, so work time here seems to have been a bit short, but then Chris and Steve came to help. It feels as though we did a month’s work in just a few days and as though I’m a Cinderella, with two fairy godmothers who got out of a grey transit van proclaiming ‘You shall move house!‘

The Gordian knot Tash and I have been puzzling over was how to move from workshop to house without making both, at some point, unliveable. Turns out all it needed was an injection of will, more hands and the extra energy and thought that fresh friends could bring along with a considerable degree of autonomy and self-propulsion. A revelation!

From my train home on Sunday I nagged the electrician to move hob and oven and to my considerable surprise he replied promptly, suggesting the boys would come over the next day. Of course they were late, but they came and did what they should. As did Chris, and Steve, who he’d picked up on his way through Glasgow; the fairy godmothers with impeccable timing. It was a hectic day. Aly had arrived at eight thirty and started casting the remaining two steps and Patryk turned up later returning the surplus of some ducting and elbows I’d given him.

To make room in the workshop for bench, tools and assorted building materials, as many household items as possible had to be brought over to the house. The big table, chairs, two sofas, plus all the shelves and boxes of food, pots and pans, not forgetting washing machine and small chest freezer. Tash and I had already made more space in the house by taking a car full of my boxes to her container in Glasgow and Steve and I moved more boxes to the barn up the road.

By Monday night the kitchen fundamentals were in the house and we ate supper in the temporary dining room and celebrated this significant step with a dram – hence Tuesday’s late start.

On Tuesday the washing machine and freezer were brought over, both receiving a ritual and thorough cleaning on the way. Steve helped Chris load his transit with two pallet bins’ worth of the unburnable scrap timber and OSB from three years’ building then took Tash to the Co-op and the waste timber to be recycled.

We’d moved the workbench into the workshop and while all were away I cut it in half lengthways, better to fit the space…

To protect the wood burning stove’s flue from plaster and paint I’d wrapped it in reused bubble wrap. It had been wrapped for over a year. I stripped as much off as I could reach from a step ladder then Chris and Steve got to grips with it, removing reluctant masking tape residue and making it shine.

With the bench moved and all the wood laid out on a huge tarp between house and workshop so I could sort it (no rain forecast), Chris, Steve and I got on hands and knees and scraped the living room floor, removing the last of the plaster splashes and any cementy pimples on the screed. Contrary to general guidance I’m not using an underlay, so getting the substrate as flat as possible is essential.

Somehow, as well as all the other bold steps forward, Steve and Chris managed to wash the windows.

Which was wonderful! You could actually see that two heaps of rubbish had gone. There are still a couple more heaps to go.

Although we’d hoovered as we scraped, Chris gave the floor a final once-over, and then we started laying bamboo from the south end’s big sliding window. We’ve left a fifteen millimetre expansion gap on all sides, as much as I dare leave as the twenty millimetre thick skirting boards must hide it.

While Chris and I were cutting and clicking bamboo, Steve, having heard that the Sputnik needed a longer flex to hang over the stairs and that I’d made a tactical retreat from its complex electrical innards, had grabbed it by the horns (literally) and was in one of his many elements…

Laying the bamboo speeded up considerably once past the hearth’s awkward angles.

By the end of the day the bamboo was only less than a metre and a half from the where the slate takes over…

… and Steve had Sputnik’s fiendish wiring under control and then hung where we’d imagined it, over the stairs.

Somehow we were in the house, sort of, clothes still mostly in boxes, things still to finish, despite having vowed never to put ourselves in that position. But never having experienced the whole process before made it easy to make wrong predictions.

We couldn’t bear not being in the house any longer and being ‘in’ feels wonderful. The cat agrees.

On Thursday night my beloved daughter Poppy arrived and on Friday morning Chris, Tash and Steve drove away in Chris’ transit van. Tash rejoined us on Monday, my dear son Tom and his partner Bex came on Tuesday, and while I’ve enjoyed a week of rest and great company, I’ve managed to remove the final shuttering from the steps/sills and turn on the mechanical ventilation and heat recovery. The hot water is on and providing good showers downstairs. Must finish the upstairs shower…

Late Friday afternoon I started work and finished the bamboo.

Next week I’ll crack on with the outstanding list for our building warrant sign off.

Again, many thanks Steve and Chris for your invaluable help with the impossible house move!