Week Eight

As you will know from the end of ‘Week 7’, I lose all of Monday and a sizeable chunk of Tuesday stuck in the hospital….  However, the sheds are due to arrive on Wednesday (all sorted thanks to bedside hospital phones) and so the remains of the shuttering needs to be removed on Tuesday.  Guy arrives (this man needs a medal) and removes shuttering while I point and say ‘shift that’ or something equally loving.  I do a bit of the work one-handed which is a seriously bad idea – have to go and lie down!

Wednesday:  The boys (Keith, Gary and Mick) leave Essex at 3am and arrive at 7am.  Good grief.  After bacon butties (rapidly becoming my speciality) they crack on with the sheds.  The small shed replacing the old garage is up by 10am...


... then they fell some branches which are in the way and start on the big shed. And they never stop!  First the sides go up, then the roof trusses, then the roof, the felt, and that’s it!  I HAVE TWO SHEDS WOO HOO!

I don’t even have to lift a finger (just as well given the current lack of working fingers).  I simply get them cold drinks, make cheese toasties for lunch, and watch progress.  I may yet become a good ‘work spectator’!  The boys finally leave at 4pm – it must have been after 9 by the time they had battled round the M25 to get home – I am duly impressed.  If you ever want a shed, check out the link to Keith The Shed!  


Thursday – I do absolutely nothing.  I don’t know whether it is the excitement of Wednesday and the sheds arriving or the new antibiotics kicking in, but I feel extremely unwell and spend most of the day in bed.  I do, however, watch some of the pool installation video and veer wildly between ‘I can do this’ to ‘oh my god’.

On Friday Guy drives me to a builder’s merchants to look at hardwood surrounds for the pool – we meet a fabulous chap called Dave who loves wood as much as I do and invites us back to his wood mill.  We all have to tiptoe around as swallows have nested inside and are just learning to fly – he doesn’t want to disturb them - this is my kind of person!  Way too exciting for ill people though – we return home and I crash back into bed.

On Saturday Guy arrives to Do Useful Things – poor chap arrives to find me in a foul mood as I have just realised the idiot builder, Mike the Base, has not put in any sort of damp proof course.  I phone him and he says it was never discussed.  As it was on Annie’s original drawings for Planning Permission, and on my sketch, and WE DISCUSSED IT ONE MORNING WHEN I WAS SITTING IN MY CAR OUTSIDE THE OFFICE I know he is talking baloney.  However, I am not feeling at all robust and certainly not up to arguing with prats of builders who say they ‘Don’t Normally Put Damp Proof Courses In Garages’.  BUT IT’S NOT A BLOODY GARAGE IS IT IT’S GOING TO HAVE A SWIMMING POOL IN IT THAT’S WHAT THE PIT IS FOR.  As I say, I am not up to arguing, and spend the rest of the day thinking of Things I Should Have Said But Didn’t.  Bummer.  I visit the pool shed for the first time since Wednesday (told you I was feeling rubbish!) and it smells unbelievably damp. The pit base is still particularly wet - Mike the Base said it could take 6 months to dry out….  This is not good as the pool arrives in two weeks. Guy and I decide the only thing to do is to get all the concrete dry and then seal it – so he takes me off to the local tool hire firm and we hire a dehumidifier and an air blower – so as not to dry it out too quickly.  The hire firm deliver, position and plug in and I go back to bed.

By Sunday morning the dehumidifier is doing it’s job and has collected nearly two buckets of water… amazing!  Wyn the Wire and Mrs Wyn arrive to wire the cable into the house, Guy arrives to put all the stuff back in my garage, and I sit around telling them all what to do….

Hours worked:  0 by me, lots by everybody else!
Credit time: HUGE thanks to Guy, Wyn (beautiful wiring), Janice, Keith, Mick and Gary for doing more than they needed to because of my incapacity.
Achieved:  I have TWO SHEDS!  The pool shed is way too beautiful to be called a shed and I am trying to learn to call it a cabin.  And power is now joined to the house.
Wine consumed: NIL.  It’s a no-no with the antibiotics, although I did have a Sloe Gin after my mother had driven me home from hospital – I had forgotten I had long since vowed never to get in a car with her and my nerves were in shreds…
Pressies and Purchases:  Nothing – haven’t been anywhere or done anything!  Unless you count hiring a dehumidifier and a blower and buying two sheds.  No – a shed and a CABIN.
Pool Progress:  I have all the shipping details – my pool is on a boat called the ‘Ever Divine’ which is rather lovely…. Should be about half way across the Atlantic by now!

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