But at least we do have some forward movement to report.

The guys turned up with the digger to do the parking spaces.

And it looks very smart, but can you spot the mistake?

The kerb drop is correct, but they should have taken out all the grass at the front so we could get two cars on parallel to the house by parking all the way up to the bay window.  A combination of miscommunication at their end and me not having time to get out to see them while they were here (I assumed that since the guy who came out to quote had been extremely organised and printed off the photo I’d sent him to explain the job in the first place and wrote all the measurements down on it, there wouldn’t be a problem).  As we can get two onto it perpendicular to the house and men and machinery had moved on and were miles away, I suggested they simply adjust their invoice accordingly, which they were happy to do.

Chris the electrician was working on a job nearby last week, so came to have a look on the way back.  Despite living over 50 miles away, he knows the house (he did the electrics when Jeff installed the boiler for the previous owner) and is happy to take the job on – including getting the servant bells working if the wiring is still behind the walls for them.  I’ve found a fabulous website called Below Stairs of Hungerford, which has original 1920s electronic bell indicator boards, so fingers crossed.

Pete also came out last week and we went through the list of things he and Al are going to sort for me.  We had another look at that brick wall in the kitchen and after making a few more holes in various bits of plasterboard, he’s also happy that it’s not load-bearing and the beams run all the way across the corridor ceiling to the other wall of the house.  He managed to track down the source of the damp corner in the dining room area as well.  This isn’t the world’s clearest photo, but this piece of guttering had been leaking back against the wall for so long that the water had worn right through the harling and was dripping onto the stone.  Like so many houses up here, there’s a lot of sandstone in the walls and it simply soaked through.  A simple fix for once, which is great news, as I’m pretty good at ringing Pete up with weird and wonderful leaks.

Finally, Warren arrived on Friday to start sorting out the gable end where the garage was and will be back on Tuesday to finish the job off.  I’ll then need to get Magnus out to paint it white, but we’ll need to wait for the weather to warm up a bit first.

2 thoughts on “Slow progress…

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