steverands.com

Oh yeah, the blog…

I knew I forgot something.

So yeah, I’m back. Just when you thought it was safe, etc, etc. A lot’s happened since my last post in — when was it? (shuffles papers) — October. Boy have I been slacking. Anyway, here’s the juice:

Home. We did manage to move back in just before Christmas — three days before, to be precise. It was a huge effort from all involved to get enough of the kitchen and bathroom ready in time, but we made it. The place was a bit of a mess for a few weeks afterwards, but things are coming together nicely now. The kitchen and new staircase, in particular, have turned out really well. It’s finally starting to feel like a real home.

Work. Is okay. In turns engaging and frustrating. I’ve not worked for a company with this many employees since I was at Cheshire County Council back in the early ’90s, and the bureaucracy is somewhat annoying after having become used to more direct code ownership.

Expecting. The really big news: Paula is pregnant, and we’re expecting our first child in May! We’ve been trying since we got married, so although it was not entirely unexpected it’s still took a bit of getting used to. There are big changes ahead, and a few uncomfortable decisions that will need to be made, but I’m really looking forward to becoming a dad :O)

Well, consider yourselves updated. Sorry for the long delay between posts, normal service should hopefully be resumed from this point onwards.

October status report

I’ve been a bit lax on the blogging front lately*, so an update is long overdue. Things have been so hectic, I hardly know where to start.

The pit. Funny how progress on the house seems to ebb and flow: seemingly little progress for weeks on end, then suddenly a few jobs start to come together and it almost seems worthwhile. Then one of your water joints fails, floods your cloakroom and writes-off several hundred quids worth of furniture. Stuff like that. Anyway, the new target date for moving back in is Christmas (that’s Christmas this year, you comedians). Most of the plumbing and drainage is in now; the bathroom and en-suite just need tiling really. Our new staircase will hopefully arrive by the end of this week. Then the final major outlay will be the new kitchen. We’ve ordered the appliances (online, to save some money), but not the units as yet.

Time off. My employer was gracious enough to allow me to take a few days unpaid leave. Coupled with my remaining holiday for this year, that meant a two-week break to allow me to work on the house, place orders, accept deliveries, etc. This is the start of my second week. It’s been very useful: there’s certainly no way I’d have accomplished as much during lunch breaks and at the weekends. I could have done with an even longer break (say a month or so), but two weeks is better than nothing.

Other stuff. I’ve been concentrating so much on the house recently that there’s been little time for anything else. Managed to squeeze in a visit to see the One Man Star Wars Trilogy (most excellent!), but other than that, nothing. I haven’t spoken to some of my friends for months, which is really bad. I’m hoping that things will calm down a lot after Christmas, and my life will get back to something approaching normality.

* Like I’m so prolific usually, ha!

Two down, eight to go

We’ve finally (nearly) finished a couple of rooms at the house:

• Downstairs* cloakroom. Hard to believe that we bought the furniture for this room over two years ago. The loo and basin are both installed now; we just have the tiling of the floor and walls left to do. We had some initial leakage problems with the basin, but those are hopefully behind us now.
• Master bedroom. All nicely painted and carpeted. The wardrobes were installed on Wednesday this week, and look pretty damn good I have to say. We just need to buy a new bed frame and mattress, and we’re done in here.

I feel like we’re really making progress now. There’s a lot still to do, but I can definitely see the finishing line, off in the distance…

* We only have the one cloakroom: I keep referring to it as the ‘downstairs cloakroom’ so that people know where it is. Is it even possible to have an upstairs cloakroom?

Excuse me while I pop out for a moment…

So Chris fell through the ceiling at the house today. He’s okay, thankfully — no broken bones or anything, just some scrapes and bruises. In fact, considering what could have happened he was very lucky.

Continue reading Excuse me while I pop out for a moment……

Paint the whole world with a rainbow

Due to the imminent arrival of a heating engineer (aka plumber) to hook-up our central heating, and the need to paint behind the radiators before they’re hung on the walls, the past week has seen myself and Paula choosing the colours for seven of the rooms in the house.

For some reason, I found this particularly difficult.

Continue reading Paint the whole world with a rainbow…

Behold: Elastic Trickery!

The electrician arrived at the house today to connect our new consumer unit, so finally — two years after moving in, and four months after making-do with just two double sockets and no lighting — we have the electrics configured the way we want them. Hurrah!

I still can’t quite believe that our house had such a poor provision of plug sockets given that it was only built in 1985. Basically, we had a double socket in each room, with a couple extra in the lounge and kitchen. Guess they didn’t use as many gadgets back then!

The installation went quite smoothly despite (or maybe because of) us doing most of the wiring ourselves, so I think it’s a big pat on the back for myself and Paula, and my dad and two brothers for helping out. Cheers guys!

Getting plastered

We had the plasterer in last Thursday and Friday. He and his assistant did a great job. It’ll take a few days before the walls and ceilings dry-out enough for us to start painting, but it already looks so much better than it did before.

He’s coming back tomorrow morning to finish off some bits upstairs, which unfortunately means an early start for me. Who begins work at eight in the morning, honestly?

Here goes nothing

Here in Blighty it’s a Bank Holiday weekend, so naturally the weather’s dull and cold. To be fair, it was reasonably sunny yesterday, but that doesn’t count because Paula and I were at the house doing DIY rather than enjoying ourselves.

The plasterer is due to come this Thursday and Friday, so hopefully the house will look a lot better afterwards. I can’t wait to be honest: it seems like we’ve been looking at concrete blockwork, electrical conduit and bare plasterboard for months, so it’ll be great when it’s all covered over and we can start to think about decorating.

I went back to the house on my own this afternoon because I wanted to remove the old windowsills: they’re covered in so many layers of paint it seemed easier to replace them with new boards. Not one of my better ideas. I started with the guest bedroom’s windowsill, which for some bizarre reason had been painted dark green by the previous owners. It was wedged (and nailed) in pretty tight, and proved quite difficult to lever out with the bolster chisel and crowbar. Eventually it succumbed, but I damaged the surrounding plasterwork more than I intended to. So sod it, the other windowsills are staying put…