Life in Retirement: 16th July 2012

15^th July

We have a front wall albeit un-finished but it’s up at least, I got the builder to extend it up towards the side of the house on the entry side rather than have a metal colour-bond fence near the front and then it had to be raised several rows higher than planned to make it look right (another arm and a leg, seems to be the going rate). The window people have been here twice to fix the leaky corner window and ended up removing the glass and redoing the seals. Apparently they all feel it’s ok now as the plasterer has been and repaired the plasterwork that was damaged when inspecting the leak area, he also finished putting up cornices in the garage and downstairs bathroom where I requested another arm and a leg change that necessitated removal of the cornice. When all the plasterwork was originally installed they actually ran out of cornice, but it’s all done now, the plasterer actually came back today Sunday to do the finishing off sanding.

Painters came early last week and refused to start as the house hadn’t been prepared properly, that included the un-finished plastering and protective plastic coverings that are taped down to all the timber and tiled floors. The painters came back after a couple of days and started their pre-painting preparations, there’s obviously a lot more to a good paint job than just whacking a bit of paint around. Even so the tiler hasn’t completely finished inside, he finished the bulk of the tiling including grouting last Tuesday and I haven’t seen him since and the walk in pantry behind the kitchen has to have a tiled splash back so I would have thought this needed to be done before painting. Oh well tomorrow’s another day.

As mentioned in my previous post, the electrician came and installed a large meter box into the front wall so the meter can be read without coming onto the property and a connection request has been lodged with the power service provider, be interesting to see how long that takes.

I forgot to mention, it hasn’t stopped raining since my last posting it is almost the wettest winter period in 38 years.

A few posts ago I mentioned about having the power steering pump overhauled after the vehicle service people had not diagnosed and sorted a problem with it. Well last Thursday Nancy drove the 1.5 kls to Manly village for some bread rolls, she seemed an awfully long time, which is quite normal, and to my surprise all of a sudden I saw her get out of a strange 4WD and walk across the road to our cottage and then the 4WD drove off. Needless to say I raced down the back steps to meet her thinking she must have had an accident - and I was very concerned about the car. It turned out when she attempted to move out of the shop’s car park the power steering packed up and she couldn’t turn the steering wheel, some young fellow helped re-park the car and gave her a lift home which was very nice of him. To add injury to insult, the guy had a huskie puppy in his 4WD that took a liking to the smell of fresh bread rolls and poor old Nancy had to fight it off all the way home, she squashed the rolls flat trying to protect them and ended up with a nice old puncture wound to her finger that bled like hell caused by a sharp puppy tooth.

RACQ took the Landcruiser on a truck to the power steering people, it turned out an inline filter they had installed had split open and all the oil pumped out, they have replaced it all with a stronger unit and all is well, no charge of course just inconvenience, a punctured finger and flattened bread rolls.