Just a final twist in what proved to be a week of heightened cortisol levels for your correspondent.
It all began with the earlier than expected arrival of the plaster sheet hangers. "It's a bit of pressure.." my low-key plumber said, as he slaved to finish off his work before access was plastered away forever. That would be code for "Geez Woman! What were you thinking!?"
The answer is I was thinking they weren't coming for another couple of days, but as per usual I am beating them off with a stick. Unsuccessfully.
Never mind.
Next to head for the hills was T2 himself, who either had other work to attend to or a holiday in the Carribean, hard to tell which.
The house was filled with surprisingly massive plasterboard and quickly followed by the surprisingly fruity hangers. After a "gentle" reminder from me that perhaps a "swearing in" of the plaster was neither necessary nor entertaining for the preschool families parading in next door throughout the day, they got down to the serious business of walling in all the pipes and cables I was worried either weren't in the right place or incomplete. On the one hand, they were fast. On the other hand, they were freaking me out.
After all, they DID back their car into my brand new house, knocking off the corner and leaving the scene without a word.
Meanwhile, the freshly painted external architraves were either sitting out in the rain and mud or being trampled inside while T2 stocked up on coconut oil. Or worked on another job. (He's a hard worker, so I'm thinking the latter).
A site meeting was clearly called for, a summit was held and nuclear launch aborted.
We went our separate ways for the day, and then came the text: "I'll do the verandah next week - can you organise the materials?".
Lets just say there were a lot of decisions and technical details that had not yet been made, leading to a degree of panic I normally take care to avoid. Verandahs seemed a frivolous detail that I had relegated to "later". Captain Laird gently reminded me that in fact they would be a requirement for our occupancy certificate.
And so, I ended up thrown by a seemingly minor detail: what size post holder did we need?
Enter the King of Rock, who you may remember from an earlier episode involving boggy driveways and early winter mornings. I'm sure he thinks we exist in a permanent state of last minute disorganisation, but he tolerates it well and by that afternoon he was on the doorstep with a brochure, pricing, wisdom and a promise to return at an ungodly hour on the weekend to scrutinise our post footings.
This was set against the backdrop of dashing about from Croydon to Clifton Hill making last minute decisions about corbels and roses, meeting with a tiler, and getting the laundry re-measured which necessitates prolonged discussion of the AFL finals, State (not confined to our own state) and Federal Politics, and the irritating habit of goannas secreting beer cans in their outback burrows.
Suffice to say, it has been a little distracting. But I need a challenge, so now I am going to do all that not just with a baby on my hip, but with school holidays in play too.
I'll tell you all about the electrical cable issues next time, but here's a few snaps to keep you occupied until then:
First the kitchen was a woolly Ugg Boot:
Now it looks like this:
Lovely green tree waving outside the master bedroom:
The dining room gets its chimney breast:
The exterior gets roughed up in a hit and run:
To add insult to injury, by time I had returned to collect that piece, the guilty party had parked his car fair and square on it.
Now that's just rude.
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