Because, contrary to expectations, no-one is doing any dust-making activities.
I rang The Man in the Office, this now the company doing the installation work, not the builders, to ask why no-one had come.
To cut a long story short, the installation in Scotland has overrun and so they won't start here until Monday next week. Or perhaps Tuesday.
I had a few firm words about Communication but actually, knowing the back story (which I'm not sharing here) I have some sympathy with his predicament. However I will NOT tolerate being treated like a mushroom 🍄! (Kept in the dark). Instead I am opening a little sweepstake for the actual start date.
Monday 10th, Wednesday 12th, Thursday 13th and Monday 17th have all been taken...
We've blocked the vacuum cleaner again with all the fine dust, but luckily it's just a matter of dismantling and washing the filters. A job for tomorrow.
I've also cleaned the kitchen and bathroom floors, and, having washed all the detergent out of the microfibre pad and wrung it nearly dry, damp mopped some wood floors. I'll have a go at the rest tomorrow.
Here's something cheering; I've been catching up on getting things that I've saved written into my Commonplace book and found this;
when the hup! installers get to open up the hundreds, well, definitely scores of packs of components stacked on the grass at the front and back of the house, on the sub-floor of the extension, and even stored inside their van for a couple of days in case it rains. (Rains?!)
It's like a mad, insane, crazy IKEA construction. These are just the walls and roof; the glass, and the window/door frames, will arrive 'sometime next week'. As for the end window, which forms the boundary between us and next door, well, that's not expected until 'sometime in September'. That will be the 30th, then? I'm told that delay won't cause a problem as they will board up the opening to make it water-tight so they can continue to work indoors while waiting for the glass to be delivered.
Now, when I open the back door first thing in the morning and stand n the step to take in the glories of nature, I lift my eyes to look at the trees, as lower down it looks like a construction site. I'm not complaining; 'eyes on the prize' - wasn't that a line in the first 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' film?
.....
On Monday I spent the day not taking up my new trousers. Truth be told, it's taking me a long tine to get round to them, which is silly as they are what I think of as 'heatwave trousers', cut on the lines of my pyjama trousers. And a heatwave is what we are having, although it's a bit cooler today, and maybe tomorrow. Instead I made a cover for a plastic fruit punnet to capture the various potions I like to keep ready; hand cream, lip salve, lunchtime meds etc.
It was easier than I thought; I took a piece of fabric (checking it was big enough) and sewed a simple hem along the top and bottom sides. Then I wrapped the punnet in the fabric, and everywhere where I would have put sticky tape if I had been using paper, I sewed instead. The buttons, from some vintage ones Ang gave me, are sewn on through the sides (the needle went through the plastic quite easily) to catch the fabric folded to the inside and keep the cover on. I think that was the most taxing bit; I'm not a fan of sewing on buttons and I used ten.
....
One of the builders said he would like our settee and took it, strapped precariously to a heap of wheelbarrows, cement mixers, shovels and I don't know what on top of his truck.
I'm sitting on my grandmother's old Windsor chair instead, suitably padded. It's a much better size and shape for me.
My parents brought the elephants when they came back from Singapore back in the 1970s.
'Step by step we're moving forward, little by little we're gaining ground'...
Which reminds me of that lovely, light-hearted song 'Mairi's Wedding', sung here by The Corries;
At zoom church today the account came from Matthew's gospel, chapter 14. The person doing the reflection (aka sermon, but shorter!) reminded us, or in my case, informed us, that it's one of the events recorded in all four gospels, so I'll get another chance to think about it when it turns up in my slow read through John's gospel.
What had Jesus been telling the crowd all day? How could 5,000 people (not including women and children!) hear him? I was trying to relate the number of people to a place I knew; during the prom concerts at the Royal Albert Hall there are up to about 1000 people standing in the middle and roughly 4,000 in reserved seating
That helps me get an impression.
The whole episode, however you interpret it is astonishing.
This was our final hymn; Gather around, for the table is spread.
I haven't been able to find a version on YouTube with singers I like, so here is just an organist and the words.
Music: William Ross
Words: Jeanette Holloway
Gather around, for the table is spread,
welcome the food and rest!
Wide is our circle, with Christ at the head,
he is the honoured guest.
Learn of his love, grow in his grace,
pray for the peace he gives;
here at this meal, here in this place,
know that his spirit lives!
Once he was known in the breaking of bread,
shared with a chosen few;
multitudes gathered and by him were fed, so, will he feed us too.
Daniel Roberts | Organist, Recorded in St. Thomas Church, Stanhope, Durham
I confess to a bit of a wobble this afternoon, resulting in initiating a flurry of phone calls and texts regarding the rather unlovely business of relocating the vertical soil pipe. This is an earlier photograph from before the chimney was taken down and you can see it quite clearly. The sloping roof of our extension starts just below the bedroom windows, so there has to be a hole in one of the prefabricated panels for it to go through.
I was under the impression (and I don't think I was the only one) that the pipe was going to be moved over towards the side of the house somewhere along its length, but there was no sign of any activity towards this work... and it was essential that the pipe was in the correct place before the walls and roof of the extension could be built. And that work was going to start on Wednesday!
Anyway, there was a long conversation this afternoon between our architect and the man in charge of ordering and arranging the hup! installation. Plans were checked and double checked, and measurements made today by our architect here on site during this conversation also checked and rechecked, and it looks likely It Will All Be Fine.
I'm not sorry for starting this hare as there seemed to be too much uncertainty around it all for comfort. It's easy to say 'don't worry, we'll sort something out' but to be honest it would have been near the front of my mind all weekend.
But look! The ground works team have been magnificent!
I took this looking down the garden, standing just inside the existing patio doors. The lower level closest to me will be made up to level with the house floor by the time the insulation and screed and flooring are laid, and the patio beyond will actually be a bit lower, ending a good foot or more higher than the grass. We'll probably add a railing, this year, next year, someday, never.
This next photograph is taken standing on the grass looking back to the house. The sandstone slabs just need pointing, as do the steps down. The steps are each only about four inches high; broad and shallow as I requested. If you can make out the white mug on the right hand wall, it is approximately where the side door steps go down.
There is still the question of how to deal with the soil pipe inside the extension; boxing it in somehow is the obvious solution; failing that perhaps we could paint it some wacky colour and drape fairy lights around it. (I'm serious here!)
.....
A week of no reading, less knitting, and moving between a low old-fashioned upright chair I inherited from my grandmother, an IKEA Poang chair and the dining chairs has helped my stiff neck/shoulder through the daytime. The settee is going tomorrow; I'm convinced that the way I slouch on it and hunch over my kindle, or books, or knitting is half the problem. I now just need to solve the pillow problem again as it is worse when I wake up in the morning. I've got a special neck support pillow, but had stopped using it when it got so hot.
A week of this constant discomfort has made me appreciate how lucky I am as I don't usually experience constant pain; people living with any kind of chronic pain deserve all our patience and understanding; it is so hard to stay cheerful when your own body is grumbling and complaining at you.
.....
The dust has, quite literally, settled after a hectic and trying week (even though all the team have been wonderful). It's 5pm, Friday, and we have the weekend in front of us... apart from some time early on Saturday when they will come to finish off and tidy up before moving on to another job. I will actually be sorry to see them go.
.......
and breathe;
Here is Yuja Wang playing Chopin's Waltz in C# minor op 64 no 2;
The French windows and back door were built, back in the 1950s, without lintels. The bricks above the opening just rested on the door frames. So removing these doors means putting in reinforced steel joists (RSJs).
More hammering, but not for long, and not as loud. In fact it was a much quieter day.
Photographs tomorrow.
Meanwhile
Arrangement by Craig Leon. The orchestra is st Martins in the Fields, with Marcus Stern conducting.
They are taking down the defunct chimney as I type (9am)... hammering and drilling out the bricks and chucking them down, clanging against the scaffolding tower, crashing to the ground, flying in a loose arc over the half-dozen cups stacked on a pile of bricks after the first 'arriving on site' coffee-tea run at 7.30am. They like starting early, and clocking off around 4pm, which suits us too.
Thank heaven for the sound-proofing qualities of double glazing, I say. And also thank heavens that our 90-year-old neighbours are both a bit deaf now. It won't go on for ever; they are only taking down the lower part, as far as the bedroom windows. I took this picture at close of play yesterday.
At the bottom is the retaining wall for the patio, which is at a higher level than the ground. There will be two broad, shallow steps down to the right - the net wall, running out of shot to the right is the retaining wall for them. Further back is the wall for the extension, coming out around ten feet from the house and running most of the width. We stopped short of the boundary wall so that we didn't disturb our neighbour's property.
The roof, a mix of opening glass panels and solid panel, will slope down towards the garden from just below the bedroom windows, hence the chimney activity. When these houses were built, in the 1950s, most 'modern' houses had a coal stove in the kitchen for heating water, something like this;
https://www.1900s.org.uk/1940s50s-boiler.htm
I can just remember one in the corner of the kitchen of my first childhood home. When we moved to a larger house in the 1960s my mother INSISTED on full, oil-fired central heating!
The other big task left before the actual extension is delivered, as far as I know, is moving the soil pipe. At the moment it just clips the corner of the back door frame, which will become the door from the old kitchen to the new kitchen. I can't remember exactly what they settled on; I have a feeling it is going to be directed towards the edge of the end wall and then boxed in.
The current French windows will be taken out and left as an open archway into the living room part of the extension. There will be very similar French windows opening onto the new patio.
The current kitchen will become a downstairs shower room/loo opening off a utility room
Well, that's the plan, the dream, the vision....
At the moment the hup! people (for that's the name of the company making the extension want to deliver everything on Monday... hmmm. There's a slight tension in the air....
......
Ring on the door bell... what now....
'I've come to deliver the glass for your roof?...eight panels?... about 1.5 m by 1 m?...'
What!!!!
Three telephone calls later, and he's driving back to wherever he came from, with the glass still loaded. He's at least a week early!
