I’ve been having trouble with my wooden porch for ages. A few years ago I had a major problem with a leaking roof and the builder pointed out then a load of other problems with it – he was basically angling to get me to agree to have the whole thing rebuilt. I couldn’t afford that at […]
My fridge has decided to make the most of the recent hot weather by stopping working, or working at best intermittently. Bottles of milk have been barely lasting overnight before going off, and my butter dish has resembled an oil slick. I think it’s the door seal that has failed – the compressor still seems […]
It’s that time of the year again when Rob my trusty decorator is here for his annual week as Artist in Residence. It really is a never-ending task to keep the external woodwork in a reasonable condition – each year he does a section of the exterior windows / soffits / eaves and by the […]
I heard a distinctly odd scrabbling sound this afternoon, which sounded as if it was coming from the bathroom. Odd. On further investigation, it was definitely coming from under the bath. Even odder. My first thought was that somehow a mouse had got in there. The main stop-tap is under the bath, so there’s a […]
The water pressure was low most of Monday, and then went off entirely for a couple of hours. Apparently it was a problem with a valve on the water mains, and they had to dig up the road yet again to try to fix it. However, the water did eventually come back on later that […]
Managing the home computer network was always very much Christopher’s role. The network around the house developed organically over the years, and is a mixture of wifi, wired Ethernet and Home Plugs (i.e. Ethernet over the ring main). He never explained it all to me properly (or if he did, I wasn’t listening), so I […]
I’ve already had the first domestic disaster of the year. On New Year’s Day, my tumble dryer stopped working, with a soggy load of towels inside and another load in the washing machine. It looked to be electrically dead – no lights on the front panel at all. I tried changing the fuse in the […]
I received a Christmas card last week from Peter, Christopher’s stepfather. In it he wished me a happy and mouse-free Christmas. Well, you can guess what happened next. Almost immediately, the tell-tale scrabbling sounds started from my loft – this time directly above my chair in the living room. The mice were clearly planning a […]
I took yet another half day off work, and the plumber finally came back to put silicone sealant around the edge of the shower. Of course, I wasn’t able to use it immediately – the sealant takes about 24 hours to cure fully, so I had to wait before I could test out the new […]
The saga of replacing the shower still isn’t over, though I hope I can see the end in sight at last. The plumber has been back to grout the tiles, and has actually done a pretty reasonable job. The new tiles don’t match the original ones, as those are now obsolete. Fortunately, however, I had […]
