Diggerman Dave
Everyone knows that boys love their toys, especially Dave, and even more especially when said toy can be driven - so imagine his excitement when we decided to hire our very own mini digger for the day! Last week's 11 man hour slog with Dave, my Dad and Craig was a supreme effort, but cumulated with approx 1/9 of the required digging to be done - so to have any chance of completing the drive before Mini-H arrives, we decided to go automatic.
Our mean digging machine was delivered first thing in the morning, and after a brief lesson on how to control the various knobs and levers, Dave was in action and soon operating like a pro. He had until 4pm to shift our enitre front lawn while manoeuvring the rapdily growing pile of soil about, to gain access to the un-dug bits as he went along. Unfortunetly, this task took until about 3.59pm and so there was no time for Dave to try and get the digger sideways round the nearest roundabout.
Meanwhile, I have started maternity leave - hurrah - so can do useful tasks during the day, like pickup things from Screwfix Direct, wait in for deliveries and council tax inspection people (who are convinced we should continue to pay tax on 2 flats, even though we clearly now live in 1 house - just because our kitchen happens to upstairs..?!).
Our loft sanctury is very near to completion. We have operational radiators and electric sockets, and are fitting the lights this week. Also ordered curtains at the weekend and got a carpet and blinds for the nursery/ensuite sorted. We started assembling the baby's furniture so the nursery is beginning to take shape (even if it does have waste pipes sticking out of the walls - however these have been tastefully disguised as handy places for cuddly toys to sit..).
Next steps are creation of a bespoke wardrobe creation to fit the slanty but otherwise perfect space for a wardrobe to be and more front drive work with team Hartley this weekend.
Dig it man...
Clan McGuffin arrived for their first visit to the new place at the weekend - we celebrated their arrival by making them perform hard labour in the front garden for hours on end. Well, the boys got stuck into excavating soil to form the base of our drive while the girls went shopping! Craig had supplied Guiness which was an excellent plan seeing as we were digging on St. Patrick's day. Pictures show the commencement of the ground works, it's amazing how much more space soil takes up when you've dug it out of the ground…
I reckon we shifted a couple of tons of soil between us which was a great start. There was lots of head scratching about setting digging depths, but a plan formed. George dug an 'exploration trench' so we could set the level of the drive. Looks like we will need some fancy civil works, i.e. a retaining wall and a nice contoured ramp up onto the drive as well.
The carpet arrived on Saturday morning (picture in last entry - we are running behind on keeping the blog updated…) It feels like we are so close to finishing in the loft now, just need some wiring and a connection to the central heating down on the middle floor. This will involve taking apart the kitchen, again… Hopefully we will have the loft fully operational, including the nursery, by the end of next weekend. That will give us 5 weeks advance readiness before the baby arrives - yikes!
A Whole Lotta Gloss
Having been so desperate to reach the painting stage in the loft, we are n
ow thankfully coming to the end of it, with hopefully minimal damage to the baby due to solvent ingestion... Each section of lovingly measured; cut; sanded and wiped skirting board, door frame and architrave has been treated to white undercoat and 2 gloss coats of 'Ivory Beige 4' (so beige gets to feature somewhere!). Our carpet was scheduled for installation this Saturday, so the painting has felt pretty relentless to finish the task on time - however now we are delighted with the end result and looking forward to putting the final touches in place.
The baby's room/eventual en-suite is coming along too. We have bought a crib and chest of drawers, and once the carpet is down will be able to start fitting it out as a nursery. We are prompted along by the news that an NCT friend's baby, who was due a week after ours, has put in an early appearance and we can no longer live in denial that we have plenty of time to get organised!! Of course, this calls for an impromtu day off shopping for me to get a hosptial bag organised and the car seat fitted (any excuse...)
Hartley Labour Camp continues to be well supported, with Jean and Roger last weekend and the McGuffin/Leslie crew arriving this weekend. Jean was well employed with disposable gloves and a paint brush helping with the loft painting team (particularly in completing the tricky task of repainting the ceiling edge paint that had been ripped off by the masking tape - without going over the lines...) - while Roger was set to work with a sledgehammer to remove our front fence (including 4 massive concrete posts - just as well we had a few recovery beers in place..). This week's labourers are coming armed with pick axes and shovels to carry on this task of preparing our front drive for inhabitation by our car. Our kerb dropping work has been put back a few weeks to coincide with school holidays to avoid disrupting the school runs with our traffic lights - hopefully this will make us slightly less unpopular in the neighbourhood when they go up..
Meanwhile work has begun in ernest on the kitchen. The builders have been in for over a week now and have transformed our kitchen from; 'empty shell' to 'cowshed' and hopefully are now on the way back to 'empty shell with fabulous glazing and shiny new roof'. The 4 skylights in the roof and new tiles really look fabulous and after so much deliberation and difficulty in finding the right combination of style, light and budget we're really pleased with how it's shaping up. Unfortunetly we will have to live with the very large hole in the wall for another 4-6 weeks while the sliding glass doors are made to fit - then we have to contend with yet more utility issues with old pipes, drains in the wrong place etc. but we're moving forward at last!
