It’s only about eight weeks since I last had Martin the Mouse-Killer around to do his stuff. But the weather has been so wet recently that the mice have taken refuge in my loft yet again. They’ve been holding evening cocktail parties above my chair in the living room, followed by all-night roller-discos directly above […]
I originally called in the plumbers way back in May. And as of last Friday they finally left. The leak behind the bath must have been going on for many years. It took nine weeks with a dehumidifier just to dry out the bathroom so that work could commence repairing it – the first five […]
This morning I had the gardener and a team of plumbers working on the house and garden. Which led to a new record for the number of vehicles squeezed onto my drive – two cars and three vans. And of course you could be sure that whichever vehicle was the most blocked in belonged to […]
The plumbers are back to deal with the fallout from the leak in the main bathroom. It would appear that the leak has probably been going on for years – there was a veritable swimming pool of water sitting underneath the floorboards, and I’ve had to have a dehumidifier working 24/7 for several weeks to […]
My cottage certainly seems to be a regular source of employment for the local tradesmen. This week I’ve got Rob, my long-standing decorator, here for his annual week as “artist in residence”. Unfortunately, this year my list of things I want to have done exceeds both my budget and the length of time I’ve hired […]
It’s definite – there has been a significant leak in the so-called “family bathroom”, probably ongoing for over a year. The water seems to have penetrated behind the tiles from the shower, and run down the wall behind the bath, soaking the floorboards underneath. The plumbers have been back, removed the bath, and stripped the […]
The shower isn’t the only electrical problem I’ve been having this week. I got home from work on Wednesday to find that the internet was down. That usually means a call to my ISP, waiting on hold for half an hour, and then asking them to reset the target SNR on my phone line. But […]
No, I don’t mean the car for once. Though that would also be true – the Mini’s fan and aircon now only work on the top two fan settings, which are extremely noisy and blow a gale. It looks like a dodgy connection at the switch for the settings I prefer to use. Annoying, but […]
You would think that with three bathrooms in one smallish cottage, I should have an embarrassment of plumbing amenities. There’s what an estate agent would call the main “family bathroom”, an en-suite in my bedroom, and a very handy shower room in the extension. But over the last few weeks, it all started going wrong. […]
I had a really interesting chat with our neighbours over our New Year’s Day lunch about the major renovation work they are doing on their cottage. It was originally an early 19th Century toll house on what would have been the old turnpike road, and is Grade II listed. That means that, although it requires […]
