Confederacy of a Dunce - Ah! the perils of the landed gentry

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

« Moved in! | Main | Caught holding the bag. »

Since we moved into the Dunce Arms, posts here have been few and far between. Things have been really busy at work, and there's no shortage of things to do at home. As I mentioned in my last post, we started off with some bold plans, but reality quickly intervened. Instead we've been focusing on doing things gradually, focusing on those things most necessary to quality of life (facilities for eating, bathing, lounging, laundry and sleeping, perhaps not in that order). We've finally reached a point where most of the boxes are unpacked, though many things have not yet found their ideal locations yet. And a few windows are covered now (a couple of blinds, one set of curtains and another set hung temporarily in the living room so that "they" can't see in so well. And we've moved a bunch of luggage up to the attic, and moved items of furniture to their (mostly) permanent homes. And the cat seems to have (mostly) calmed down about all the new smells, noises and general strangeness.

There are still quite a few things still to come, such as a new bed (arriving next week, until which time we will get by with the sofa bed). And we still need to find more curtains, and down the line there's some really nasty wallpaper and carpets in certain places that will need to go really soon. And the back door frame is doing very poorly and needs to be replaced at some point. But then on Friday we had our first real fun excitement as homeowners... the lovely 30-year-old water heater decided to give up the ghost. Well, not exactly giving up the ghost, it just started spewing water (or at least a fast drip). Turns out an old repair on an old heater had finally given way. Fortunately this is an "instant" heater using only gas and not electricity, so it wasn't like a huge water tank suddenly gave way, but a continuous drip is a bad, bad thing. Plumbers jerked me around all day on Friday; eventually (at the end of the day) they claimed someone had left a message earlier in the day saying that no one would be able to come to my area that day (of course this happened at the end of Friday, when presumably they hoped to get me on a weekend call-out). The drip was slow enough we went through the weekend with the bucket system, and today a plumber (from a different company) finally came round to check it out. His opinion was that it must be replaced, and soon. To the tune of £1600, but fortunately for us they can do it in a day, given a day's notice. Can we say OUCH? The cat cowered under the chair at the sound of that, and I would have too if there was room for me. So it looks like we're going to be spending a hefty sum in the next few days. Looks like those jewel-encrusted bicycle tires will have to wait another week or two.

house

Tuesday, March 06, 2007 5:25:00 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)