It's over

It has been a difficult week. The plumbers were quite friendly, at least much more so than the last two we had in, but both were ill and though not our fault we both felt guilty to the point of almost feeling sick at one point. They were supposed to arrive on Monday, but because John Elliott (they have the same name as Ian, which is why we chose them) had a bad back they didn't arrive until Tuesday when they had an additional helper. On Tuesday afternoon Alan Elliott (John's step-Dad) told us he'd come to our house that morning instead of going to the hospital to confirm that he had lung cancer. His words were 'he couldn't let us down' and now he has to wait til next Friday to find out. Given that they had already arrived a day late he decided he couldn't go to his appointment. Sadly his step-son didn't seem to have tried to convince him to go.

I had hoped that the plumbers would proceed room by room so that I could put some furniture back, but they didn't put all the floorboards back until Friday afternoon. We spent yesterday moving furniture around and I'm pleased to say that we are nearly there. Of course little is where it used to be due to the presence of radiators, but we're very pleased.

William behaved very well on the whole and very few of the tools upset him (although at times he was frustrated at not being able to leave the lounge, there being floorboards up in the dining room). The one thing that did scare him was when they filled the system with water and Alan let the air out of the lounge radiator. If there's one thing that William really fears it's hissing sounds. Ian once hissed like a snake after watching the film Anaconda and William fled the house.

I shall blog some photos of the house this afternoon after we've finished the kitchen.