On Friday, right after work, the poet assembled the first of our new chests for the bedroom, a 10-drawer chest, 5 big ones, 5 small ones. It took him a couple of hours as, of course, there were holes pre-drilled in the wrong places and he had to learn how to put the drawers together. We manhandled one of the old chests outside, installed the new chest, and I transferred the contents.
On Saturday, he spent the bulk of the day building another two chests. Another identical 10-drawer chest plus a tall chest of seven small drawers. In between, to give himself a bit of a break, he went and did the shopping. Imagine? Doing the weekly shop as a *break* from assembling flat pack furniture. By the end of the day we had three lovely new chests in the bedroom and the room smelled of new wood.
On Sunday, he was back at it, this time building the two wardrobes, both 2-door, both 2-drawer, and by now he had the drawers off to a tee. Of course, there were still holes that had been pre-drilled in the wrong place and the doors didn’t quite meet, but such is the experience of flat pack furniture assembly, and by the end of the weekend we had a full room of lovely new bedroom furniture.
For my part, I spent much of the weekend finding stuff, throwing stuff away, fitting stuff in the new drawers and wardrobes and, again by the end of the weekend, all of our clothes were out of bags and boxes and in their rightful places. We also had a proper Sunday dinner – pork steaks, cooked beetroot, carrots, potatoes – cooked by the poet (he had a very busy weekend) in the new oven, followed by mini-meringues with raspberries and Greek yoghurt (and runny honey).
There are no catches at the bottom of the wardrobe doors, so the poet is going to source some that he can fit outside of the flat-pack pack. But otherwise, all he has to do now is paint a couple of narrow bedside tables we brought with us to match and paint some overhead wall-to-wall fitted cupboards already here that we decided to keep as they were too useful not to.
Parts of the country were relieved by rain on Sunday and while we had rain forecast too, we didn’t actually get any. The last house, naturally, caught it. Typical.
Monday morning dawned and we were up on time. I fed the dog and had my dirty cuppa. The poet went straight into a Teams call and after my dirty cuppa hour I had my reading hour followed by a housework half hour, as there isn’t much to do. I put a washload through and that was it. I rebooted my daily exercises before playing with the dog while he had zoomies up and down the side of the house.
At about 10:55 I made my trigger cup of coffee, rattled off the blog so far, started my first Pomodoro, and settled down to a writing hour. Our internet was booked in for an afternoon installation and I didn’t want anything to distract me from the writing.
By the end of my session, I’d written another 1,006 words, bringing my running total to 2,041 words with a chunk still to be written, although I’d already written the last two paragraphs. My Pomodoro alarm sounded and it was time for breakfast. I was going to have a short breakfast break and come back to finish the story, if I could, but the internet man showed up so I had to look after him instead.
He managed to cut through our Sky cable, the one that was only put in a month ago, and then asked ‘Is it live?’
[beat]
Is it me…?
Anyway, I said he’d have to get Sky out to fix it, the same day. He checked with his supervisor and supervisor said no, as we’re the customer, we had to call Sky…Fortunately the poet was here and he ‘encouraged’ the internet engineer to try and fix it with him. Eventually they did fix it, but only because the poet knew what he was talking about. And it’s a good job they did fix it or I would have been onto the internet company insisting they make the call to Sky, and pay for the emergency call out.
The good thing is, we now have internet. And that means we have streaming on Sky too, thanks to the poet’s skills. We’re going to be spoiled for choice now, what to watch on the telly.
I spent the rest of the day sorting out the office. The poet helped where he could, but he was supposed to be working too and could only help with the big stuff. I didn’t do any more writing, and I didn’t even get started on the proofreading. So I’m really glad I managed to write a thousand words at least.
Today, the window fitters are coming, so that’s another work day down the drain. I think they’ll just get on with it. But the dog will think they’ve all come to see him and he’ll need watching all day. Especially if they keep going in and out of the garden gate.
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Aren’t you tired of people bad at their jobs? I sure am.
Sounds like the house is coming along well.
When I get some writing done first thing in the morning, it sets a positive tone for the entire day, even if some of the rest of it is derailed. Well done!
I must admit that while I briefly closed my eyes in dismay, I did think ‘I know someone else who wouldn’t be impressed by this…’ 😉
It will be nice to have at least one room finished, when the decorator has been, although even then we’ll be waiting on a new door. But we are looking around and marvelling at how much we’ve done in only a few short weeks. It’s a good job we cleared the office a bit too, as there’s no way the fitters would have been able to reach the window today otherwise. And they, at least, seem to be doing a good job.