Tuesday

Definitely back to work with a bump. Projects and work coming out of our ears. Worked very late, had pizza, went to bed.

[6 Apr 2021]

Wednesday

With the Wirral bid written yesterday, today it’s back to SC1 work, then Oxford for the evening. Thankfully I did manage to squeeze out a few minutes today to finally get my sweetpeas planted up. I suspect however that I am going to need some bigger windowsills.

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[7 Apr 2021]

Thursday

Oh my heavens. What a day.

For me it started with back to back calls, rapidly swapping between projects. Finally just working on actually doing the work. Matt however is taking the opportunity to make some progress on the plumbing with his first multicouche. Hopefully his book is coming in handy and helping him to learn French, he’s going to know a hell of a lot of useful vocab that I don’t know doing all this. There was a hell of a lot of rubbish behind the bathroom sink though, I have no idea how long someone’s rather big knickers have been back there…

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Then, the first batch of accounting. This is the time of year that we both hate and love our accountants. I for one cannot stand doing my accounts, personal or corporate. So for that, my heart goes out to the accountant at this time of year, Jeff!

With €1,500 fine per foreign account you forget to declare I am glad I thought to check one of those credit rating companies. At least that should take care of the credit lines. Not so sure about the rest but hopefully we have captured it all. We can’t stand much more so will do the next bit tomorrow. I need to get a little more work done still. It seems that nobody wants their contractors to take leave. I can’t do much more, that makes any sense at least, this evening so time for bed.

[8 April 2021]

Friday

Lots more meetings today and the weather is pretty rubbish. Feels pretty chilly and very overcast so not much to drag me outside. It’s been such a busy week this week, you wouldn’t think that most people are sitting back and relaxing with their kids. No such thing as a holiday for a contractor though, maybe there was something in having a ‘proper job’.

There has been a minor catastrophe today though. I was checking on the plants and there’s a shiny trail in the tomatoes that Cressida gave me. Not sure what’s happened but I’m going to have to repot it in case something is living in the soil. I just hope it’s not escaped to take out anything else.

While I’ve spent all day on calls again and writing bid responses Matt has also been busy. With a little help from me (holding the board in place) he’s put up his manifolds. Apparently drilling into our walls isn’t too easy.

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He’s run pipes from the hot-water manifold next to the boiler up to the ground floor bathroom sink and shower, and also across to the utility room where there is another manifold that feeds upstairs front half of the house and the kitchen + utility room sinks.

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Seems he’s ready for me to come help look at things. First job is to detach the old copper pipes from the back of the hot water tank to attach the new pipes and re-pressurise the system, this means letting some water drain out above the fitting (most of which went all over the floor as it’s a devil of a space to get to). Time to try re-pressurising the system.

Unfortunately, it seems that one of the problems with having about 100 different plumbing fittings is that there are a lot places that can leak, and many of which did (thankfully not so severely as to spray me in the face).

Several key parts now need to be taken apart again and more washers and plumbers tape added. Plan aborted, back to the old plumbing and we’ll have another go tomorrow.

[9 April 2021]