BrideShedRevisited

Tuesday is a fun day – it’s Guy’s birthday!  Given the amount of work he has put in for this pool, I decide to really spoil him, so give him the ultimate present: The Hazelwood Pool Installation Survival Kit.  Contents:  Bottle of Whisky, Bottle of Radox Muscle Soak, Industrial Strength Hand Cream.  I can tell he is pleased – speechless in fact.  See – I can do this ‘spoiling’ stuff.

On Wednesday NPower are booked to come and change the meter for a ‘cheap electricity overnight’ meter. This is to heat the pool which I don’t yet have and was arranged some weeks ago.  I stay at home until 9.30 when mum arrives to house sit while I go to work.  Mum arrives, man doesn’t.  At 12 she phones NPower who say yes, the man is on his way.  2pm still no man.  She phones again.  This time they say that they can’t put the meter in until ALL of the other electrical work is done and completed – total change of tune.  Mum is justifiably furious (if you haven’t met my mum rest assured that she can do ‘furious’ like no other) and gives them several pieces of her mind.  They say they will pay £20 compensation.  Which will pay for two bottles of restorative brandy for one irate mother.  However, the day improves when the Pool People phone to say my pool will be shipped NEXT TUESDAY!  This is terrific – especially as I have no base, no shed and no electrics.  Marvellous – Things Are Clearly Going Well.

On Thursday Mike the Base arrives early with more idiot builders to lay the final slab.  They appear to know what they have to do (or am I just past caring?) and I leave for work.  When I return home I find that I HAVE A BASE WOO HOO!  I am VERY EXCITED!  Excitement is slightly tempered by finding that they have dumped all the spare bits of concrete in … the electrical trench.  I get a spade and dig it all back out again. 

Mike the Base returns later for his money and offers his team’s services for further building work (and I know my utility room needs rebuilding).  Oddly, I feel slightly faint at the prospect.

The really good news is that, besides all the normal building debris, he has left behind TWO cement mixers and TWO wheelbarrows.  This means I have a breeding pair of each.  I hope that, given warm weather and the right environment I will soon have enough of each to start a shop.  Or sell them on Ebay.  My mind is clearly wandering and I should perhaps lay off the Sloe Gin.

On Friday, better news still!  Keith the Shed phones to say that they are starting my sheds next week and he will deliver them the week after!  WOO HOO AGAIN!  Too much excitement for one week….

Saturday Guy and I HAVE A DAY OFF FROM POOL STUFF!!!  This means we rip out an old fireplace in his house before breakfast until we closely resemble SAS Night Time Assault (Camouflage) recruits, spend an hour cleaning up all the soot and ourselves (another excellent tidemark in bath!) and hurtle off up the Valleys to look at wood burning stoves.  Guy buys an excellent green enamel wood burning stove, and I buy a wicker fishing basket for the pool room.  We have a picnic in the Brecon Beacon National Park with Blunkett and she swims for the very first time in a shallow pond.  Apart from the fireplace thing, almost a proper day off!

On Sunday we whizz to the salvage yard to choose slabs (for outside the French windows of the pool room) armed with chalk and a measuring tape so that I can pick slabs, lay them out in the pattern I want, mark them up, make a plan and re-lay them when I get them home.  Instead, I see a pallet piled with slabs that ‘looks about right’ I buy it, they’ll deliver and we’ll wing it from there.  The chalk and measuring tape return home unused.  We spend the rest of the day chainsawing debris from the old garage, two Leylandii in the wrong place and two disgusting doors Mike the Base left because he thinks I want wood for burning and doesn’t understand the difference between ‘logs’ and ‘rubbish’.  It is very hot and, yet again, we end up very dirty.   This is becoming A Habit.

Hours worked: Not that bad!  Half an hour digging concrete out of the elec trench, rather a lot of hours chainsawing on the hottest day of the year so far and two hours dismantling Guy’s fireplace but that doesn’t count because it’s Not To Do With The Pool.

Achieved:  I HAVE A BASE!  I am still excited about this!  And Things Are On Their Way – pools and sheds and slabs and stuff.  Exciting week!

Casualties: Two ex-Leylandii.  That’s ok, they deserved to be ex.

Wine consumed: Three bottles.  Well, it was Guy’s birthday….

Pressies and Purchases: Fabulous fishing basket, unknown quantity of slabs on a pallet, more Sloe Gin.

Endangered Species News: One of the wheelbarrows and one of the cement mixers have taken flight.  Sadly no prospect of breeding.  Am suitably gutted.

Apologies for the delay - the week started easily enough!

Monday:  Fill in drainage trench.  Apart from the sheer physical labour and the nagging feeling that THE BUILDERS SHOULD HAVE DONE IT, easy enough.

Tuesday:  Dig out part of electric trench – the one the builders had filled in.  Apart from the concrete the builders had chucked in, easy enough.  MY POOL HAS BEEN SHIPPED.  Very exciting!

Wednesday:  Guy and I start to dig the main electric trench.  It is going all along the edge of the lawn and will be covered with a brick line to make mowing easier – I meant to do this years ago and never got round to it – which is lucky, as if I had, we’d be digging them all up again…  Very hard work – lots of little tree roots and RUBBLE, of course.

Thursday – evening off!  I have decided I rather like my incredibly short haircut from hell, so go to have it trimmed again.  Wyn the Wire phones to say we’re all set for Saturday to lay the cable, but that it is VERY heavy (75kg) so we arrange that I will go to his house early to help manhandle it back into his car.

Friday – we finish the electric trench.  We are ridiculously pleased with ourselves!  Have Chinese takeaway and fall asleep on sofa…

Saturday 8am – I find a stray cat in my utility room, pick BB up to let it out, stray moves, BB goes ballistic and sticks ALL of his claws into my arm and hand.  He eventually lets go (I think the screams did it) and I discover my arm and hand are seriously punctured and lacerated.  Blood everywhere.  I (a) panic (b) burst into tears and (c) phone for help.  Mum and Guy arrive in double quick time and administer TLC, brandy and bandages.  The brandy was purely medicinal – I appear to have gone into shock.  However, it has the desired effect and a lovely warm glow surrounds me – apart from the arm which is raging hot.  I am now completely useless.  My fingers can just move, but I can’t even open my post (I tried).  So how, exactly, am I going to help lift a 75kg cable drum?  We decide to call in the troops, and Guy phones Darren the Digger who has his first day off in 6 weeks planned, but drops everything to come to the rescue.  He arrives, we drive off to Wyn the Wire, and stand around discussing the best way to shift this incredibly heavy cable.  During which time, Darren the Digger simply picks it up and puts it in his car!  That’s the first problem cured, then!

Back home again, Darren the Digger unwinds the cable, it gets laid in the trench, Wyn the Wire clips it to the house very neatly, the cable gets covered with sand, lovely yellow plastic saying ‘WARNING ELECTRIC CABLE BELOW’ more sand and then the line of bricks.  I take absolutely no part in this – I have gone a lovely putty colour and go to bed, freezing cold despite the sunshine.  Shock, apparently.  Darren the Digger wonders how much I paid BB so I could have a day off….

Sunday:  I start typing this. Left hand very infected and size of a watermelon… I go to hospital where they want to admit me to be put on IV antibiotics for 24 hours.  Luckily no beds, so I am sent home at 4 with strict instructions to return at 7pm, midnight and 6am for more drugs…

Am hugely frustrated that I have safely been lugging slabs, building walls, laying concrete bases and digging trenches without any problem and then get laid off by A BLOODY CAT.  To Whom I Am Not Speaking, by the way.

Hours worked: Quite a few before the weekend, then ZILCH.  Apart from Guy who has done enough hours for at least two people, and Janice (Mrs Wyn) who helped hugely with the bricking…

Achieved:  Drainage trench filled in, entire electric trench dug, cable laid and clipped to house, filled in and lawn brick edged.  And mostly without my help.

Wine consumed: Remarkably little.  Until Saturday, when I had a brandy before 8.30am.  Hope it isn’t habit forming.

Skills achieved: Ability to unscrew bottles holding between my knees.  Have mastered the important stuff – bubble bath, olive oil and Sloe Gin.

Pressies  and Purchases – bought 540m of tongue and groove to finish the inside of the shed. That’s a LOT of tongue and groove.  And it all has to be stained…

Shed Progress:  Delivery next Wednesday!  Will I still be one-handed, or able to help?

Pool Progress: IT’S ON IT’S WAY!  It left the US on Tuesday so it’s somewhere on the ATLANTIC.  Let’s hope there are no icebergs…

And finally, a cheery grin from the invalid!

Postscript:  On Sunday when I went back for my next dose the nurses took one look at me, said I looked horrible (thanks, that makes me feel SO much better) and kept me in for two days…. so now it's Tuesday.  I have been on a ward where I lowered the average age by about 40 years and was the only one that kept my teeth in at night.  Time for a bath and some sleep!

As you will know from the end of ‘Week 7’, I lose all of Monday and a sizeable chunk of Tuesday stuck in the hospital….  However, the sheds are due to arrive on Wednesday (all sorted thanks to bedside hospital phones) and so the remains of the shuttering needs to be removed on Tuesday.  Guy arrives (this man needs a medal) and removes shuttering while I point and say ‘shift that’ or something equally loving.  I do a bit of the work one-handed which is a seriously bad idea – have to go and lie down!

Wednesday:  The boys (Keith, Gary and Mick) leave Essex at 3am and arrive at 7am.  Good grief.  After bacon butties (rapidly becoming my speciality) they crack on with the sheds.  The small shed replacing the old garage is up by 10am, then they fell some branches which are in the way and start on the big shed.

And they never stop!  First the sides go up, then the roof trusses, then the roof, the felt, and that’s it!  I HAVE TWO SHEDS WOO HOO!

I don’t even have to lift a finger (just as well given the current lack of working fingers).  I simply get them cold drinks, make cheese toasties for lunch, and watch progress.  I may yet become a good ‘work spectator’!  The boys finally leave at 4pm – it must have been after 9 by the time they had battled round the M25 to get home – I am duly impressed.  If you ever want a shed, check out the link to Keith The Shed!

Thursday – I do absolutely nothing.  I don’t know whether it is the excitement of Wednesday and the sheds arriving or the new antibiotics kicking in, but I feel extremely unwell and spend most of the day in bed.  I do, however, watch some of the pool installation video and veer wildly between ‘I can do this’ to ‘oh my god’.

On Friday Guy drives me to a builder’s merchants to look at hardwood surrounds for the pool – we meet a fabulous chap called Dave who loves wood as much as I do and invites us back to his wood mill.  We all have to tiptoe around as swallows have nested inside and are just learning to fly – he doesn’t want to disturb them - this is my kind of person!  Way too exciting for ill people though – we return home and I crash back into bed. 

On Saturday Guy arrives to Do Useful Things – poor chap arrives to find me in a foul mood as I have just realised the idiot builder, Mike the Base, has not put in any sort of damp proof course.  I phone him and he says it was never discussed.  As it was on Annie’s original drawings for Planning Permission, and on my sketch, and WE DISCUSSED IT ONE MORNING WHEN I WAS SITTING IN MY CAR OUTSIDE THE OFFICE I know he is talking baloney.  However, I am not feeling at all robust and certainly not up to arguing with prats of builders who say they ‘Don’t Normally Put Damp Proof Courses In Garages’.  BUT IT’S NOT A BLOODY GARAGE IS IT IT’S GOING TO HAVE A SWIMMING POOL IN IT THAT’S WHAT THE PIT IS FOR.  As I say, I am not up to arguing, and spend the rest of the day thinking of Things I Should Have Said But Didn’t.  Bummer.  I visit the pool shed for the first time since Wednesday (told you I was feeling rubbish!) and it smells unbelievably damp. The pit base is still particularly wet - Mike the Base said it could take 6 months to dry out….  This is not good as the pool arrives in two weeks. .  Guy and I decide the only thing to do is to get all the concrete dry and then seal it – so he takes me off to the local tool hire firm and we hire a dehumidifier and an air blower – so as not to dry it out too quickly.  The hire firm deliver, position and plug in and I go back to bed.

By Sunday morning the dehumidifier is doing it’s job and has collected nearly two buckets of water… amazing!  Wyn the Wire and Mrs Wyn arrive to wire the cable into the house, Guy arrives to put all the stuff back in my garage, and I sit around telling them all what to do….

Hours worked:  0 by me, lots by everybody else! 

Credit time: HUGE thanks to Guy, Wyn (beautiful wiring), Janice, Keith, Mick and Gary for doing more than they needed to because of my incapacity.

Achieved:  I have TWO SHEDS!  The pool shed is way too beautiful to be called a shed and I am trying to learn to call it a cabin.  And power is now joined to the house.

Wine consumed: NIL.  It’s a no-no with the antibiotics, although I did have a Sloe Gin after my mother had driven me home from hospital – my nerves were in shreds…

Pressies and Purchases:  Nothing – haven’t been anywhere or done anything!  Unless you count hiring a dehumidifier and a blower and buying two sheds.  No – a shed and a CABIN. 

Pool Progress:  I have all the shipping details – my pool is on a boat called the ‘Ever Divine’ which is rather lovely…. Should be about half way across the Atlantic by now!

The blower and dehumidifier are doing their stuff, the pit base is drying out nicely, and I’m emptying about three buckets of water a day from the cabin.  On Tuesday it starts raining – and it doesn’t stop.  The delivery I’m expecting of tongue and groove and insulation doesn’t arrive – but that’s ok, it means another night of rest for my hand which is tired after my return to work.

On Wednesday morning (still raining) I go to empty the bucket and find that the cabin is WETTER THAN EVER.  Damp is coming UP through the pit base – that’s the pit base that Mike the Base said NO DAMP WOULD COME THROUGH.   To say I am disheartened is putting it mildly…..  I rant about Bloody Builders to the inside of the cabin, and decide on Plan B.  (Or is it Z by this time?)  I know a fantastic chap called Dave the Damp – retired now, but he is an absolute whizz with damp problems, and sorted out the sodden house when I bought it.  Time to call him in, I think!

I phone Dave the Damp.  Yes, he’d be delighted to help but Not For Three Weeks.  He is on his way to the airport for a holiday in Lanzarote.  AAAAaaarrrrgggghhh.  He must sense the desperation in my voice because he offers lots of useful advice over the phone and the upshot is that if we bitumen paint the pit we should be fine.  And we’ll do the cabin floor for good measure.

All the tongue and groove (540m!) and 25 sheets of polystyrene insulation have been delivered and put inside the cabin, so they all need to be moved out before we can treat the floor.  We put everything in my sitting room.  No, it’s not that big – it’s just Very Full of Stuff.  Put it like this – I can’t get to the telly without climbing over the tongue and groove.   I watch less telly.

Guy and I paint.  The bitumen STINKS – we are as high as kites before very long, and it’s like spreading treacle….. We ruin 4 brushes, two pairs of gloves – and run out of stuff.  So Thursday night is more of the same.  Izzy comes for a look, decides she can’t stand the smell and legs it down the garden.  Which is just as well as I need to leave the doors open for it to dry out.  To get rid of the smell I have a long hot bath and have just got to that lovely ‘clean’ stage when BB comes in – his feet covered in bitumen.  And twigs.  And leaves.  And gravel.  And anything else he could pick up en route from cabin to bathroom……  This may sound heartless – but I find it very funny.  Well, he did bite me…  He is quite the most stupid cat I have ever met.  I clean some of it off with nail varnish remover (works like white spirit but doesn’t smell as bad!) and pick most of the leaves out.  I am now sticky again.  I am rapidly going off this cat.  He doesn't appreciate my assistance, so I leave him to pick the bits out with his teeth.  Which occupies him for all of the evening and most of the night….

On Saturday it pours.  And doesn’t stop – we can’t work in the cabin because the bitumen is still drying out, and we can’t work outside because of the rain.  So we watch some of the installation DVD instead.  We sort of understand it… still veering between ‘we can do this’ and Oh my god’!  By Saturday evening I am again unwell – not sure if it’s the after effects of the massive dose of antibiotics or a bug, Guy goes to his gig on his own, and I stay home.  I’m not going to give you all the gory details, but Guy lends me a Shrek video and I decide it contains WAY too much information about toilets and bodily functions… and besides, I can’t get to the telly.

On Sunday I am still pathetically unwell, so Guy puts up guttering up to protect the shed and re-bitumens the floor again.  I manage to talk to Gareth the Wood who will do the carpentry on the surround for me.  We show him the DVD, diagrams, photographs and my plan – AND HE UNDERSTANDS IT!  Already I like him. The doors of the cabin are open to help the bitumen dry…. and then it rains again….  The bitumen is black.  The cabin now looks like a sleazy bachelor pad… but at least it’ll be a dry sleazy bachelor pad…

Hours worked: I have no idea.  I am now painting bitumen in my sleep and Just Don’t Get Me Started On Bloody Builders Who Don’t Put In Damp Proof Courses… Working hours: Probably 9 or 10.  Ranting hours: Many and ongoing.  STRESSED, MOI?   Gave up ranting when the bug started.

Achieved:  Pit base dry, walls still seeping water – more bitumen needed.  Found a carpenter and ordered iroko for the surround (like teak but a fraction of the cost!)

Drink consumed: None until Tuesday because of the antibiotics.  Serious damage to a bottle of Sloe Gin since then but only because I was still ranting about Bloody Builders.  None since Saturday.

Casualties:  BB’s paws.  Well, it was entirely his own fault, but he is STILL picking bits of bitumen out… (animal rights activists please note:  no lasting damage, and it WAS funny….)

Get Well Cards Received: Lots – thank you!  Especially appreciated was the one from Guy’s mum Joy showing a cat sharpening it’s claws….

Purchases and Pressies: Nearly £300 worth of bitumen.  BLOODY BUILDERS. Two folding wooden chairs and a folding wooden table for the patio area outside the cabin.  And 5 tons of gravel.

Pool Progress:  The ‘Ever Divine’ docks in England on 29th June!  Then there’s some paperwork, then a lorry, then it gets DELIVERED!  Could perhaps arrive this week, may try and delay till Monday of next week to make life easier….

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are wiped out with my wretched unwellness, so they don’t count.  I am off work and not eating, so am pretty damned feeble.  Still, it’s good for the waistline!

On Thursday Guy comes round in the evening to put Jablite in the walls ready for tongue and grooving.  I have stomach spasms now so spend the evening bent double saying ‘you’ve missed a bit’ which I am sure is Most Helpful.  The pit base bitumen doesn’t get any air circulating on it, and the forecast is for more rain, so the blower and dehumidifier are back to help dry the base out.  As we don’t want to stand on the pit base, Guy balances precariously on planks across the top of it.  I must admit a lot of my thoughts lately have been heading towards ‘why did I make the pool partially inground?’.  I’m sure it’ll be Lovely When It’s Finished although I may well be heading for a nervous breakdown in the process….

Messy stuff to cut, Jablite.  We don’t want it sticking to the still slightly tacky bitumen, so Guy cuts it in the sitting room.  Bits everywhere.  Still – look on the bright side:  the bits of polystyrene take the eye away from the collections of dust.  I haven’t done any housework in weeks! 

The cats have enjoyed having an adventure playground in the sitting room and clearly want to keep it this way for ever.  No chance.  Still not very keen on cats.

On Friday Guy does more Jabliting and I am not much help – I’m still having stomach spasms.  The chemist’s pills are pretty damned useless but we do eventually find a cure – SLOE GIN!  Must be something to do with relaxing the muscles.  One large gin later, and I am spasm-less for the first time in a week!  Hooray!  Except that was the end of the gin…

I phone the haulage company who pretend they have never heard of me, say it usually takes about 10 days for them to get round to delivering things, and they’ll have to see when they have a lorry ‘coming down your way’.  The current plan is:  Pool arrives Monday/Tuesday, by which time we have the two necessary walls insulated and tongued and grooved and stained.  Wood surround arrives Tuesday, I start oiling it.  Guy and I assemble pool walls Wednesday/Thursday evenings, carpenter comes Friday to fit surround, two good friends (Sarah and Vincent and no, they have NO IDEA what they are letting themselves in for) stay next weekend to help install pool.  Teensy snag if the pool doesn’t actually turn up, then….  I speak to woodmill man about the surround who says ‘I’m waiting for the woodmerchants to send me the wood’ and to the woodmerchant who says ‘I’m waiting for the woodmill man to come and get it.’  I politely suggest it might be a Damned Fine Idea If They Speak To Each Other.

On Saturday I wake up with the dreaded spasms again and go to the supermarket early and buy bread, papers and sloe gin.  Have a (strictly medicinal) gin with breakfast at 9.00am and wonder if I am an alcoholic.  Mum says I will only be an alcoholic when I need another drink at 9.30am.  So far so good, then…  We finish the Jablite and pick up all the bits.  Lots of bits.  I put my feet up and watch the Ladies Final at Wimbledon in the afternoon then we start with the tongue and groove….  I have done a very neat calculation of the area to be covered and worked out the metres required.  Except of course that none of them are in useful lengths, and we are going to have zillions of two foot pieces of T&G left over.  If anyone can suggest a use for them other than firewood…..  Although given my success flogging the grotty garage on Ebay, perhaps I could also sell the two foot lengths of T&G… ‘one careful lady owner’ and all that.  And my calculations were obviously way out – will need to buy half as much again for the ceiling.  No wonder I never made it as an accountant…

Sunday is more tongue and groove. Guy gave me a lovely mitre saw for Christmas (and yes, I really was thrilled) which is brilliant and saves hours.  Just as well as working out the lengths takes up all the hours the mitre saw saves…

In the middle of the tongue and grooving I have visitors….  An entire family whose great great grandfather built my house in the late 1800’s – having a nostalgia trip and asking very sweetly if they could look round the garden.  I give them the full guided tour of the house, although the effect is somewhat spoilt as the sitting room is full of Jablite and tongue and groove.  The family  are absolutely lovely, and tell me that the bathroom used to be in the kitchen, there was an odd toilet in a bedroom, and there was a well off the original kitchen (which is now a larder).  Which at least explains the damp.  The younger members of the family remember playing outside when they were about 5 years old…. Fantastic history to the house – they say they will send me some old photos, and I hope they do – I’d like to find out some more!

Hours worked: Really only Saturday and Sunday for me.  Unless you count bending double saying ‘put that there’ in which case it’s more.

Achieved:  Cabin is insulated, dry (at last) and has two walls covered in tongue and groove.  Guy and I are Very Pleased With Ourselves.

Not Achieved: delivery date for pool or surround.  Faintly critical.

Purchases and Pressies: Does sloe gin count?

Wine consumed: Zippo.  And the sloe gin doesn’t matter because it was medicinal.  At 9.00 in the morning.
Sarah’s tips on Jablite: (1) don’t cut it with a saw unless you want to resemble one of those ‘shake and snow’ paperweight things (2) don’t cut it in your sitting room unless you really, really want the cats to play with all the offcuts and carry bits into every other room (3) don’t try to carry a whole sheet in a high wind (4) get someone else to do it.

Pool Progress: The pool is in a couple of crates somewhere in the UK…. And the haulage company is doing everything they can to rush it to me as quickly as possible….  Yeah, right.