Life in Retirement: 3rd June 2012

My God it's June already.

In an old Post of the 31^st March I mentioned the weather had improved and the El’Nino effect officially declared finished, I also cynically said something like, it probably won’t rain again until the painters were ready to paint the house. I forgot about the renderers, about two and a half weeks ago they started and had 7 days work ahead of them before any external painting could be done and sure enough intermittent showers dogged them so their job is still not finished. Last week it rained most of the week, the painters came and had a look, stood around for a while scratching their bums and final gave up. Later in the week they came back and managed to do a bit of prep work but it really was a lost cause and abandoned it again. Early in the week a husband and wife team came to sand smooth all the places where plasterboard had been filled such as joins, corners and nailing points (what a job), another chap and his daughter (usually husband and wife team) were busy for several days waterproofing all of the wet areas as a pre-cursor to tiling and cabinet work installation, that’s bathrooms, toilet and laundry. For those of you that don’t know the process, using a fibreglass tape they tape up all corners joins and seams then apply several coats of fibreglass impregnated paint to the complete area so the whole wet are is completely sealed. In the meantime the Chippies continued to hang doors and once the plasterboard sanding was completed started fitting internal trim work and skirting boards where they could. During the week tradesmen came and prepared appropriate areas for glass balustrade installation and during a lull in the inclement weather managed to get the balcony glass mounted. Sam the plaster man who fits cornices was expected Wednesday once the plasterboard sanding had been completed, he turned up Friday sometime to suss the joint out and came back Saturday to do his bit, I guess he doesn’t like anyone getting in his way when he is working, but I don’t know if it is holding up internal painting or not. Sam is a slightly built little man who must be close to retirement age, he comes from some European country I suspect and with his rather gaunt appearance, thick tussle of greyed hair, wire rimmed glasses that sit well down his nose and a monstrous dark bushy moustache he looks like someone out of the early nineteen hundreds. I bet he‘s a good tradesman from the old school.

Rained heavily all day Saturday and bucketed down during the night, all night. With ours and trade vehicle movements in and out of this place, it has turned into a bog around here, I don’t know how we are going to restore it for the owner, I’m hoping the builder will help us.

It’s Sunday morning and still raining but not as heavily and at least the sun is (read was) trying to break through so that’s promising although the official forecast doesn’t have it clearing until Tuesday when things turn really cold, well I can put up with that. We are scheduled for a few days of fine weather and then rain starts again in time for the weekend. El’Nino finished? I don’t think so.

I’ve just been to have a look at Sam’s handiwork and to my horror I discovered water ingress, what is it with us first water in the caravan now in the new house. Someone was up on the roof on Thursday or Friday doing some work and I wouldn’t mind betting they have inadvertently created a problem by either doing or not doing something they should or shouldn’t have. The builder is not going to be happy Jan, water has come inside somewhere and run down the inside of the new plasterboard into the lounge, plasterboard is like blotting paper and on a scale of one to ten for water resistance it’s about minus 3. On the other hand Sam is obviously a craftsman (old school) and the waterproofing is a pretty blue and looks impressive, may have to get him on the roof.