Week Eleven

I had forgotten just how stiff it is possible to get Doing Things.  Due to my rather enforced three week rest, my exertions on Sunday (up a ladder Tongue and Grooving) make me as stiff as a board on Monday.    However, I have some VERY interesting phone calls:  Woodmerchant and Woodmillman are now speaking to each other and the surround will ARRIVE ON TUESDAY; Haulage company have remembered I exist and pool WILL ARRIVE ON THURSDAY WOO HOO.  That just leaves us Thursday night to put the walls up before Gareth the Wood comes to fix the surround on Friday. I am exceedingly optimistic and believe the nice man on the DVD who says it will only take an hour.  Guy is less convinced.  We put the base coat of woodstain on the new walls.  It’s a gorgeous honey colour.  And no, I can’t really take the credit for the colour as the choices were: ghastly yellow, honey, dark, darker, very dark and darkest.   Kind of chose itself, really…

So here’s the plan for the week:

Tuesday:  Surround arrives, start oiling it. Have bought oil in readiness.
Wednesday:  Continue oiling surround.
Thursday:  Pool arrives. In bits. Assemble pool walls after work. More oiling.
Friday:  Carpenter arrives to put surround on walls.
Weekend:  Useful friends arrive to stay. Install pool.

Tuesday morning woodmill bloke phones: wood is no good, will have to bond narrow pieces together to get width for corners, glue needs to set, Friday delivery earliest. Promptly cancel carpenter, rearrange for Monday. Decide to rapidly finish tongue and grooving cabin walls instead (to make maximum use of incredibly handy friends staying for weekend). Need more tongue and groove for ceiling. Hurtle home from work, measure up, whizz to builders merchants, can't do quantity required.  Whizz to other builders merchants (arrive 1 minute before closing) yes no problem, delivery Friday all cut to size. Continue staining bits already done, do another wall. Eat dinner about 10pm. Phew.

Guy has had a day’s holiday and has spent it doing tongue and groove, and shifting one ton of sand and two tons of gravel.  Some holiday!

Wednesday I am surprisingly tired…. Or maybe it’s not that surprising.  After work I pick up my new work boots – so comfortable I may just wear them to work….  

We do more tongue and groove, cutting pieces outside the cabin in a force 8 gale.  Luckily the rain holds off until we have finished.  Tidy up in cabin in readiness for delivery tomorrow!!!  Torrential rain all night.

Thursday (the pit base is DRY despite all the rain) I go to work and leave mum sitting at home waiting for the pool to be delivered.  She says she will send me a text when it arrives.  I stay at work, no text arrives.  I get home about 4.30 - no sign of any pool, one slightly hacked off mother saying nothing ever arrives when she's in charge (remember the Npower man, Week Six?) so I phone Pickfords who do a bit of investigating and say that yes, the pool will be with me about 6pm and that the crew have been held up by the high winds.  Mum goes, I get changed to continue tongue and grooving, hear noises of lorry approaching and see it, rather faster than expected, coming up the lane.  Big lorry.  Very tall lorry.  I step up to speak to the driver, tell him he can turn at the end of the lane, step back, he revs up … and drives smack into the oak tree.  Big 'BANG', big dent in roof, big dent in oak tree.  I am more concerned about the 200 year old oak tree - driver is more concerned about phoning his office and telling them it wasn't his fault.  He is on the phone WITHIN 5 SECONDS OF HITTING THE TREE saying 'the customer told me I could drive up the lane she didn't say there would be a problem with the tree.'  So it's my fault then!  I am firmly of the opinion that a lorry driver SHOULD KNOW HOW TALL HIS BLOODY LORRY IS and it makes for a rather frosty start.  The other two men start unpacking the crate.  There are a lot of screws to undo, and they don't have an electric screwdriver, so I lend them mine.  One of the men is mute, the other is doing all the work, and the driver is still phoning his office and writing out a statement using a pen and pad he borrowed from me.  They ask where I want stuff.  'In the house, mostly, apart from the big bits which can go straight in the cabin.'  'But it's a swimming pool'.  'Yes, and it's packed in little boxes'.  They now think I am having a swimming pool in my sitting room.  I cannot be bothered to explain.  The driver stands behind the lorry and we agree he will have to reverse down the lane.  He asks me if it bends.  As this is the way he has just driven up, I am a little at a loss to describe exactly how it bends, and suggests that he walks down it for a look.  He comes back and pours himself a cup of tea from a flask.  The others carry on.  Guy arrives (on foot thanks to my 'Don't Bring Car Lane Blocked They Have Hit The Oak Tree' text) and commiserates about lorry drivers.

Eventually they are finished, they leave me with a Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire (boy, that'll be FUN to do – let’s make a start with the company slogan "Pickfords – The Careful Movers") and start reversing.  Forty minutes later they are still there.  Apparently the driver stopped half way and lit his pipe.  I go into the house and head for the Sloe Gin.  Straight from the bottle….

When I have recovered slightly we go up to the cabin and put all the pieces in more logical places, admire all the lovely boxes in the sitting room, and agree that actually we are Very Grateful that the carpenter isn't coming on Friday and we don't have to assemble the side panels there and then, even if it is only supposed to take an hour!

We have a look at the oak tree – the bark is broken and there is what looks like a split.  It may be necessary to get the tree surgeon back.  I am somewhat comforted by the fact that the noise when it was hit was a BANG rather than a splitting noise.  I am getting good at recognising ‘tree being hit by vehicle’ noises (remember Cwmbran Skip Hire, Week One?).  This is not good.  The mishaps from early on are beginning to repeat themselves….

On Friday Guy and I both have a day off and we tongue and groove (again) and take delivery of staging to reach the ceiling, more gravel to landscape the outside, more Jablite to insulate the pool, and T&G to actually do the ceiling.  Except it is meant to be cut to size and delivered.  Only about a third of what we need is delivered, and none of it is cut to size…. Hey ho.  I also have a bit of a tidy up so that I can actually see my sitting room floor…

On Saturday our very good friends Sarah and Vincent arrive to help with the pool – and, boy, do we make them work hard!  We spend Saturday putting in the enormous wood pillar that will mark the end of the stud wall.  Luckily, Vincent understands what is needed and gets to work with the chain saw.  The rest of us hold the wood in place.  Vital job.

We take two panels of insulation out of the ceiling, put the pillar up, put the insulation back, and then tongue and groove as much of the ceiling as we can manage with the wood we have.  There is one huge knot hole in the wood – big enough to see the insulation through.  Vincent has met this before – the solution is to put a cork in the hole.  Damned fine excuse for a bottle or two, if I may say so.  Just in case the first cork isn’t the right size, of course.

We duly oblige, including a bottle of champagne that I have been saving For A Special Occasion – we decide this is A Special Occasion, and so now I have a cork in my ceiling that clearly says ‘MOET’.  Cool or what?

On Sunday we (that’s ‘we’ as in ‘mostly Vincent and Sarah’) put up the stud wall …

...and then PUT THE WALLS OF THE POOL IN!!  Wow – this is the first bit of ‘real pool stuff’.  It doesn’t take the ‘one hour’ mentioned – more like three, but that’s partly because it’s down in the pit and hard to reach.  I have to say I take a bit of a back seat – I think I’m all ‘pooled out’ and it certainly wouldn’t have got done without Sarah and Vincent. 

And I still want to kill the builder – the pit base is a sandy mix and not great to drill the base into.  It’ll be fine, but he could have made it easier!

Sarah is the first to swim in the pool.  OK, so she was lying on the small steps and pretending to do breaststroke but, hey, it’s a start!

Hours worked:  I’m not counting any more.  Apart from working and sleeping, all I do is Pool Stuff.
Achieved:  Where to start?  Pool is delivered, walls covered in T&G, ceiling half done, pillar and stud wall up, POOL WALLS IN!
Casualties:  I have wood stain on my New Boots.  Still – they are meant to be work boots, and the steel toecaps were very useful for positioning the metal sides of the pool….
Wine consumed: Quite a lot of bottles (we had visitors!) and a bottle of champagne because I wanted to put the cork in the ceiling.  As good a reason as any, I think.
Pressies and Purchases: Guy is off to Spain for 10 days on Thursday to play at a music festival, so he bought me something to be busy with while he’s away.  2kg of dried sloes!!!  Now I can make my own supplies of sloe gin…  He has promised to help me finish the ceiling before he goes anywhere….
Plan for next week:  Wood surround arrives Wednesday, Carpenter on Friday, electrician at the weekend.  Don’t worry – it’ll change!