Driving-to-garden!
Just in a different country than usually, natch.
Will be so happy to walk-out-of-house-to-garden. Oh, well, that's getting closer every day, even if it feels glacially slow at the moment. We took another step closer to making the house habitable by calling in at the stove shop in West Malling on our way out of Maidstone and looked at their selection of stoves.
Still not sure we've found "the one", so we are planning some more showroom visits on Saturday. Whereas with light switches/sockets and even radiators, as long as they are not heinously ugly, I really don't care too much what they look like [as long as they work well], with the woodburner we do care that it's pleasing to the eye as well as efficient. We're more 'look at the stove' people than 'let's make the TV the focal point of the room' folks, so as long as we can shoe-horn a TV into the corner somewhere that all good.
But we do want a beautiful lump of cast iron sitting in the middle of the long wall.
A chap from British Gas came to inspect before they give us a quotation for connecting us to the gas network. We knew there was gas in the road, but not that it stopped at the neighbouring property. So not just 24 metres to connect the house to the main, but 66 metres of extending the main, digging up the lane are going to really bump up that price.
OUCH!
And we haven't even got the quote yet; I'm just wincing in anticipation.
Richard, the plumber, arrived as the gas man [sorry, I've forgotten his name] was leaving, so he asked if he'd come to connect us; no, just to suck in his teeth [he didn't really do that; my mind supplied that detail] and infer that "it'll cost you" [ditto]. Richard thinks it's going to be astronomically expensive, so we spent a bit of time discussing alternatives [propane: big, expensive tank, needs it's own concrete slab or small, easier-to-steal tanks, or oil: big tank needs it's own concrete slab and very vulnerable to theft - both of which Richard is not registered to connect, so we would need to find another boiler installer - he would connect it up to his work, so we can still continue while we wait for the gas estimate].
He came to measure for radiators [and, sadly, we've added another one], and give us dates when he can fit us in. I'm a bit disappointed that they won't be running the sanitation piping in at the same time as the heating, but I'm just trying to be philosophical at this stage.
It's going to hurt the pocket whichever way; it's my choice as to how much damage I let it cause my peace of mind!
I went round the house with Richard, whilst David helped Steve with the crawling in the roof void - and he carried on with that when I carried on chopping down brambles/hornbeam saplings by the outbuilding [I'm nearly all the way around it now - yay!].
Steve is getting on well, and if David can speed up matters by running cables in the crawl space, so much the better.
Now the only real issue I have with him is: Parker; I'm not going to be barked at in my own home, and certainly not by a powder puff!
I worked outside till I couldn't see any longer, and came in to find that David had nearly completely removed the yellow bathroom suite. Whilst he was tidying up, I amused myself by pulling some of the vinyl wallpaper off the walls.
It's not the "right" sort of plasterboard, but I'm going to keep my fingers crossed it won't get waterlogged and blister...
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