Taking a break from the building project for a moment, I'm going to post a little piece about my Grandad. He died seven years ago this week and he was the finest man I've ever known.
He was a Yorkshire miner of humble beginnings who went down the pit at the age of 14 as a "Bevin boy". He worked his way up through self-education and sheer hard work to become a mining engineer with responsibility for several pits in the Worksop area. He married my Nana and raised two girls who he adored.
He was a keen footballer but he didn't like the way modern footballers conducted themselves. He was highly financially astute and had a deep understanding of investments. He voted Conservative.
He could build or fix anything. He loved ballet. He abhorred bad language. He was a very quiet man of absolute integrity. He was an excellent ballroom dancer. He had endless patience. He was utterly devoted to his wife and family.
I never heard him raise his voice in anger.
He was a true gentleman in every sense of the word. He was an enormous fan of this poem by Rudyard Kipling, and this is how he strived to live his life. He succeeded.
IF
If you can keep you head when all about you are losing theirs,
And blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait, and not be tired of waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies;
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, or talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoguhts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster,
and treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on a turn of pitch-and-toss;
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone;
And so hold on when there is nothing in you,
Except the will which says to them: "Hold on.";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute,
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
Rudyard Kipling
Norman Hindley 1.3.1926 - 23.11.2003
Thursday 25 November 2010
Wednesday 17 November 2010
Fatal floor (well, wall actually, but floor sounds better)
I take it back. Since I wittered on about the scarily short time frame, our builders have worked like Trojans, (although with less of a focus on equine siege weapons and more on actually getting the job done). They have put the glass in the windows, ripped out the rest of the kitchen, installed the steels, levelled the floor, put in the electrics, built a cloakroom (nearly), and built a pantry. In fact, so enthusiastic were they, that they even built an extra 30 cm of wall where we didn't need it. This was a BAD thing.
The wall that they built is the left hand side of the pantry, which is also the back wall of the cloakroom, and which supports one of the steels. It all came down to a miscommunication on the plans. We told Gavin that we wanted to put our washing machine, which is also a tumble dryer, into the pantry so Gavin wrote "washer/dryer" on the plans. Interpreting this to mean that we wanted to put both a washing machine and a separate tumble dryer in the pantry, Nick took it on his own initiative to increase the depth of the pantry by around 30cms so that they would both fit. Ed noticed the mistake as soon as he saw the wall, and brought up the issue with Gavin and Nick the next morning. Cue much swearing and gnashing of teeth, and frantic calls by Gavin to Optiplan to work out whether the kitchen would still fit in the space available. Optiplan said that it would, so Gavin and Nick set about convincing us that the mistake would actually benefit us by giving us a bigger pantry and cloakroom. As I was already concerned about the amount of "sitting area" we were going to have at the far end of the kitchen I took quite some convincing that they had done us a favour. They really really really didn't want to demolish the wall a it would mean taking out the steel and building a new padstone support for it. This would have undoubtedly delayed things beyond the critical point for the kitchen fitters and thrown everything into disarray.
As soon as the screed floor had dried enough for us to walk on it Ed and I were in there measuring things and marking them out with whatever we had to hand - chopsticks as it turned out. We decided that we could live with a slightly smaller kitchen, and that the pantry would benefit from being a little larger, given how much we're planning on putting in it, so we've allowed ourselves to be persuaded, but it was yet another bit of stress that we didn't need on top of the various issues that have beset us over the last few weeks.
One benefit of the problem is that I have convinced Ed that we do need to get the dining table that I identified. It is a 90cm table that doubles in size when extended, which is quite rare as most usually just have an extra panel of 30cm or so. I have compromised on the chairs though and we're going to keep the ones that we've got and I'll re-cover them.
We're coping relatively well without the kitchen, although microwave food doesn't really agree with me. Fortunately the girls get a good meal at school/nursery and Ed buys half of Sainsburys for lunch each day, so he's OK. The best thing we've discovered is Morrisons fish pie, which is actually quite tasty. The worst was Morrisons risotto, which was disgusting.
Our poor neighbours have really suffered while the demolition was going on, with Amy threatening suicide at one stage. Fortunately things have quietened down somewhat now, plus we took them some wine to apologise.
This weekend the plasterer will be in doing his thing, and the floor is supposed to be going in Monday, then the kitchen will be installed Wednesday. Hopefully...
I can't post any photos at the moment as the camera has run out of battery, but I will as soon as we manage to recharge it!
The wall that they built is the left hand side of the pantry, which is also the back wall of the cloakroom, and which supports one of the steels. It all came down to a miscommunication on the plans. We told Gavin that we wanted to put our washing machine, which is also a tumble dryer, into the pantry so Gavin wrote "washer/dryer" on the plans. Interpreting this to mean that we wanted to put both a washing machine and a separate tumble dryer in the pantry, Nick took it on his own initiative to increase the depth of the pantry by around 30cms so that they would both fit. Ed noticed the mistake as soon as he saw the wall, and brought up the issue with Gavin and Nick the next morning. Cue much swearing and gnashing of teeth, and frantic calls by Gavin to Optiplan to work out whether the kitchen would still fit in the space available. Optiplan said that it would, so Gavin and Nick set about convincing us that the mistake would actually benefit us by giving us a bigger pantry and cloakroom. As I was already concerned about the amount of "sitting area" we were going to have at the far end of the kitchen I took quite some convincing that they had done us a favour. They really really really didn't want to demolish the wall a it would mean taking out the steel and building a new padstone support for it. This would have undoubtedly delayed things beyond the critical point for the kitchen fitters and thrown everything into disarray.
As soon as the screed floor had dried enough for us to walk on it Ed and I were in there measuring things and marking them out with whatever we had to hand - chopsticks as it turned out. We decided that we could live with a slightly smaller kitchen, and that the pantry would benefit from being a little larger, given how much we're planning on putting in it, so we've allowed ourselves to be persuaded, but it was yet another bit of stress that we didn't need on top of the various issues that have beset us over the last few weeks.
One benefit of the problem is that I have convinced Ed that we do need to get the dining table that I identified. It is a 90cm table that doubles in size when extended, which is quite rare as most usually just have an extra panel of 30cm or so. I have compromised on the chairs though and we're going to keep the ones that we've got and I'll re-cover them.
We're coping relatively well without the kitchen, although microwave food doesn't really agree with me. Fortunately the girls get a good meal at school/nursery and Ed buys half of Sainsburys for lunch each day, so he's OK. The best thing we've discovered is Morrisons fish pie, which is actually quite tasty. The worst was Morrisons risotto, which was disgusting.
Our poor neighbours have really suffered while the demolition was going on, with Amy threatening suicide at one stage. Fortunately things have quietened down somewhat now, plus we took them some wine to apologise.
This weekend the plasterer will be in doing his thing, and the floor is supposed to be going in Monday, then the kitchen will be installed Wednesday. Hopefully...
I can't post any photos at the moment as the camera has run out of battery, but I will as soon as we manage to recharge it!
Tuesday 9 November 2010
Day whatever...
Well, there has been somewhat of a hiatus in the blogging of the building project, which has cunningly coincided with a hiatus in the actual building. Last week I arranged for a short notice week off work to remove Josie and myself from the proposed kitchen-free situation. What a good idea, I thought. I arrived on the Isle of Wight as planned, but the week was scuppered by Millie requiring an emergency tooth extraction under general anaesthetic on the Friday, me needing root canal work, and the builders not actually doing a blinking thing due to the fact that the glass for the main windows wasn't ready. As twitter would put it #fail.
Still we survived at least, and the builders worked on Sunday to finally rip the kitchen out by the roots, just in time for us to get back from the Isle of Wight, where we'd had to go to get Josie who had been left there for the duration of Millie's operation... confused yet? I was.
Yesterday and today (Tuesday) the builders have worked as if the full fury of my mother-in-law was snapping at their heels (in case they were wondering, it is). A text from my neighbour earlier today threatened that if she was driven to suicide due to the noise it would be all our fault. I feel guilty. But pleased that we are finally getting somewhere. Nick the builder did pop round to apologise for what Amy the neighbour termed "another day of hell". She is definitely suffering more than we are at the moment as we are at work/school most of the time.
We've had two days without a kitchen so far (the plan to leave erm, anything at all, in situ seems to have gone by the board as the urgency of the situation became clear). I have served up pitta and houmous and spaghetti on toast so far for the children, and a salad and fish pie (microwaved) and peas for Ed and I. I'm concerned that I've run out of inspiration and that Josie is going through a particularly picky eating phase at the moment, but I suppose this is kill or cure.
Speaking of the girls, we came back to a note yesterday telling us to stay out of the kitchen, because it is dangerous, and to be careful on the floor above. This concerned us somewhat as Josie's room is above, and although I don't actually think the whole lot is likely to collapse, it seemed provident to put Josie to sleep in Millie's room for the time being. This is an arrangement I have been lobbying for for some time, but one which Ed has refused adamantly up to now due to his fear that they would keep each other awake, wake each other up, and generally interfere with his beauty sleep. (It wouldn't interfere with mine other than for me to wake up and prod him to go and see what the matter is.) So far, his fears have proved unfounded as they slept like babies last night - in that Josie woke up screaming at 3 a.m. but that's standard, and she didn't wake Millie. They've gone off to sleep alright tonight too, so fingers crossed. If this works then we might look at them sharing officially for a while, which will leave us with a spare room for visiting relatives.
I can't face grappling with the camera to upload the photos tonight, so please just imagine a kitchen ceiling suspended on scaffolding and quite a lot of dust. Now I'd better post this before our geriatric laptop, which currently sounds like a contented cat on speed, finally gives up the ghost.
Still we survived at least, and the builders worked on Sunday to finally rip the kitchen out by the roots, just in time for us to get back from the Isle of Wight, where we'd had to go to get Josie who had been left there for the duration of Millie's operation... confused yet? I was.
Yesterday and today (Tuesday) the builders have worked as if the full fury of my mother-in-law was snapping at their heels (in case they were wondering, it is). A text from my neighbour earlier today threatened that if she was driven to suicide due to the noise it would be all our fault. I feel guilty. But pleased that we are finally getting somewhere. Nick the builder did pop round to apologise for what Amy the neighbour termed "another day of hell". She is definitely suffering more than we are at the moment as we are at work/school most of the time.
We've had two days without a kitchen so far (the plan to leave erm, anything at all, in situ seems to have gone by the board as the urgency of the situation became clear). I have served up pitta and houmous and spaghetti on toast so far for the children, and a salad and fish pie (microwaved) and peas for Ed and I. I'm concerned that I've run out of inspiration and that Josie is going through a particularly picky eating phase at the moment, but I suppose this is kill or cure.
Speaking of the girls, we came back to a note yesterday telling us to stay out of the kitchen, because it is dangerous, and to be careful on the floor above. This concerned us somewhat as Josie's room is above, and although I don't actually think the whole lot is likely to collapse, it seemed provident to put Josie to sleep in Millie's room for the time being. This is an arrangement I have been lobbying for for some time, but one which Ed has refused adamantly up to now due to his fear that they would keep each other awake, wake each other up, and generally interfere with his beauty sleep. (It wouldn't interfere with mine other than for me to wake up and prod him to go and see what the matter is.) So far, his fears have proved unfounded as they slept like babies last night - in that Josie woke up screaming at 3 a.m. but that's standard, and she didn't wake Millie. They've gone off to sleep alright tonight too, so fingers crossed. If this works then we might look at them sharing officially for a while, which will leave us with a spare room for visiting relatives.
I can't face grappling with the camera to upload the photos tonight, so please just imagine a kitchen ceiling suspended on scaffolding and quite a lot of dust. Now I'd better post this before our geriatric laptop, which currently sounds like a contented cat on speed, finally gives up the ghost.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)