first full weird house day
And by heck was it WEIRD!
First I woke up early to let the plumbers in and as I sat down to drink my first coffee I was greeted buy this view of the morning sun streaming through the blinds to light up our “new” sideboard.
Note to self I’m too old for camping mattresses on timber floors but the heated blanket was wonderful.
The plumbers set to work draining down the system, re-filling, pressure testing and flushing before repairing and servicing the boiler, then filling checking and setting up all the radiators.
After coffee I got stuck into the master bedroom. The end wall had some flimsy plywood panels that needed to come down. They didn’t put up much of a fight but they did reveal a surprise underneath. I definitely was not expecting to find very 1970s ceramic tiles. They look weird enough in the passageway, I’m positive I don’t want them in my bedroom.
I was very excited to show D and our neighbour my discovery but I’m not sure what their reaction meant.
After lunch I returned to carefully chip away at the corner tile to work out what they were mounted on and I had another big surprise. It seems the tiles were mounted on a huge mirror. My mind raced. Why would anyone want a floor to ceiling full room width mirror in their bedroom?
I rushed to tell the girls and the plumbers about my discovery and we all came to the same conclusion, that the old couple must’ve been swingers and that explains, two bars, mirrored strips on many of the ceilings, and the huge mirror in the master bedroom.
So tomorrow I have to work out how to safely get the biggest mirror I’ve ever seen, which is covered in ceramic tiles, off the wall it’s stuck to with sealant/adhesive (without damaging the wall) and away.
I finally remembered to put the planning notice up for the work we need to do to the trees.
Late afternoon the plumbers finished testing and running up the system so howler the house was about the temperature of the surface of the sun. They left just in time for our electrician Tom to arrive.
We used Tom before on our log cabin build, but even though I warned him that this was going to be a big project I don’t think he was quite ready for the scale of the mayhem that the previous owner had left for us.
Anyway he seems to be up for it. The plan is basically to rewire everything as we go. Tom‘s gonna bring the car charges over from our old house wire them up to a new consumer unit to start with, and then slowly but surely, we will run all new wires from that new consumer unit until we have replaced all the old wiring and can then decommission the old unit.
After a rather she shocked Tom left my new bed arrived in a little box. I unrolled it and it grew into a very squishy futon which hopefully will be a lot more comfortable to sleep on than the camping mattress.
I was gonna start dinner, but then as tends to happen when I’m on my own, I got sidetracked by the huge gas fire and flu in the middle of the living room. So had a poke with a bit of wood and freed up the flap in the chimney that had rusted shut. You can see daylight up there now.
After opening up the flu, obviously I had to clean the gas fire by taking it apart and hoovering all the little bits. While doing this, I discovered the flap that opens on one side to reveal the control knob. So obviously once I put it all back together, I had to try hard not to turn the gas on and not try it because that would be really dangerous.
I would imagine that if I had got it lit there would be a huge flame and you could spend many hours hours rearranging the fire pebble things so they all glow nicely red.
Obviously, I’m going to call the plumbers again tomorrow and have them come back and check it over and make sure no one will get themselves poisoned but it.
To be fair, I think they are going to have to come back to check on the boiler because even though they said it was fixed, it seems to be losing pressure.
By this time it was about 8 o’clock and I decided I really should have my evening meal, a nice hot shower and relax and write a blog post with a well earned beer.
Good day!