Day 19

I seem to be in a nightmare; I can no longer remember the thing that percolated into my consciousness at 3 am - it could have been no-one mentioning the wall-mounted bath taps [so the pipes have to run inside the partition wall], or the absence of piping for the VMC, or the realisation that the bath waste may be in the wrong place [I was thinking they meant to run it in the upper level of floor, but realised that there is insufficient depth].

Anyway, I didn't get back to sleep, so by 4.45 am I was up & having a cup of tea, waiting for it to get light enough to go cycling. I finished my whole cycle ride before the sun got up [lazy thing!]. Although being in a valley, it's not as impressive as it might sound.

I also got my exercise DVD out of the way [today's thanks go to Harvey Walden IV], and had just finished 10 minutes of yoga when the builders arrived. I'm seriously trying to get fit again, and am not allowing the work to get in the way! Sadly, I keep waking up at 3 or 4 am thinking whether this-or-that aspect has been dealt with [usually it hasn't], so am not getting the rest an overweight, unfit person needs to cope with Angie or Harvey, as I think of them [in a futile attempt to make them less intimidating].

I think some of the stresses are starting to show [coupled with less than three hours sleep] and I had horrible stomach ache so ended up going back to bed this afternoon, cuddled up to a hot water bottle. It has rained for several hours, but the temperature is still 21.8°C - which is way better than the 25° we managed on Friday!

My excuse is: tired/'hurty tummy'/raining. So, I didn't go out to the stable until after dropping off David at the station...

[Apart from, of course, dealing with a problem over light placement/ceiling reinforcement - no, the ceiling hasn't been reinforced; yes, J-M knew where the light was supposed to go; no, he hadn't told me or the electrician.]

I almost wish I hadn't gone there, now!

Sorry about the fairly useless photo, I was trying to draw arrows to show what's wrong where, and ended up with a Word doc of over 14 MB, so screen dumped it into Paint so I could send it to David...

[Yes, I know, there must be a very simple way of sending two photos with arrows & text, small enough to attach to an email, but have you tried making sense of "Help"? Especially when you don't have a few days to research it. It would only let me use the online version, which is even more useless than the normal one!]

The window is supposed to be 200cm tall, butting up against brickwork on the outside. What we've got is an opening 177cm tall, with 22cm of concrete lintel showing under the brick arch [which is itself a horrible pastiche of what it's supposed to be]. The inside, if you ignore the missing step, is 200cm tall, but that's not the point, I don't think... Once the opening is finished, it would be smaller still, so getting out of it without cracking your head would be fun.

Note: David and I are both "normal" sized humans [~5' 8"], so it's not like we are asking for a lot! 200cm easily would allow my 6' 4" brother to go out. In fairness to SMS, the builders, this was missing from the project document, and the drawing J-M did was wrong [although, apparently it's the builder's fault for not noticing that!], but he did correct them verbally.

Oh, and the bath waste is in the wrong place.

We have decided that David can mail T+B/SMS about this, because I am on the point of saying "Stop!" and going away for a couple of weeks before I let anyone loose on our poor house again.

It should all be fairly easy to remedy, but I'm getting fed up of being the only one looking out to see that the work is done correctly, and pointing it out when it's not.

I think I'm going to take my stool out there and just sit watching what happens.

The only reason I am not *SHOUTING* "Stop!" is that if we can get the window openings sorted out in the next two and a half weeks, M. Baty will be able to start making the windows late August. If we don't get that part of the building work done, work realistically will re-start the first full week in September, and the windows get delayed by another month and a half.

It gets seriously cold here in the winter, and I've done a couple of early autumns without heating, and don't want to do that without doors/windows, but the opening broken through.

How do I feel now? Now that I've sobbed by heart out to David, composed myself to create a document that shows the problem, and he has notified the project & builders managers?

I don't want to lose any more teeth!