Loose ends

Things are gradually starting to come together with the house.  We have now been in the house for 2 months, initially camping in it, but now it is more like a home.  We even had a house-warming party last weekend for over 20 of our local neighbours and friends.  There are still things to do, which require the builders to come and finish various things.  The builders are now working elsewhere and getting them to come back and finish what they started has become something of a challenge.  Despite this, the list of jobs remaining is gradually reducing in size, even if the snagging list is gradually increasing!

The garden needs some attention!  Our lawn 'expert' has still not turned up, so we will probably bite the bullet and seed the lawn area ourselves.  We currently have a thin post and wire fence marking the boundary of the property.  Part of our planning conditions is that we also have to plant a hedge.  Off we went to a nursery to enquire about the purchase of about 12 metres-worth of hawthorn (the local hedge) where we were told to come back in a month's time.  Apparently the leaves should be off the trees before you plant hedges.  Another lesson learnt!

Waiting for grass seed

Waiting for hedging

We have now emptied all of our respective neighbours garages and stables of all of our belongings and re-assembled everything in our own garage.  Again, more trips to the tip were involved to dispose of items which had not survived 2 houses moves in the same number of years as well as the huge amount of packaging material involved.  Although the builders still need to do a small amount of work in the garage, we have been able to sort things and find a home for nearly everything. There is even room to put a car in. 

This car has never spent the night in a garage before!

Inside the house, the joiners finally graced us with their presence last week and were able to finish the skirting and architrave in the hallway and cloakroom.  This meant that the carpet fitters could come this week and fit the remainder of the carpet.  It was a shame that this couldn't be done before last weekend's housewarming though.


Shortly after we moved in, I found myself locked in our bedroom after the door latch failed.  Fortunately, the joiners were on site and they had to climb up a ladder and through a window with their tools to get the door open, and even then the lock had to smashed.  The latches were supposed to be of good quality and they were expensive, so the suppliers were surprised and put it down to a one-off incident. Can you see where this is going?  Yesterday morning I was woken up by Lesley informing me that we have a problem.  It seems that the replacement latch had again failed and we were locked in the bedroom again.  This time though it was 6am and our mobile phones were downstairs.  We have a landline in the bedroom, but not many of our contacts are stored on it (another lesson learnt).  This time the failure was slightly different and with the patient use of a nail scissors (the only tool available in the bedroom!), I was able to move the latch in a little at a time until we could just open the door.  Needless to say, the latch assembly was then rapidly removed from the door to prevent this happening again.  The builders were informed, who again contacted the supplier.  The supplier now wants to come and look at the door and the latch as they are adamant that this should not happen and it must be an installation problem.  However, I am struggling to see how this could be the case.  We'll find out more when they can 'spare someone' to visit us.
We have now had the blinds fitted in our bedroom which means that Lesley is able to sleep without the moonlight keeping her awake.  However, it does mean yet another remote control, although these blinds can be controlled by a timer, or from our phones as well.  Although all the blinds should have been fitted earlier this week, the installer would not install the upper blind on the staircase because apparently it is too high up and a risk assessment needs to be performed before the blind can be fitted!

Just to finish off, autumn is really starting to take hold here and we have notice the leaves floating passed on the canal, but the colours in the sunshine have been amazing so far.

Blue sky over Cropredy

 

Autumn colours