Badly timed flush

Today is the anniversary of our getting council permission to build the extension. And now it’s almost finished. Feet draggingly.

I woke up this morning, let the dogs out for their constitutionals then set about performing my own. It wasn’t until I flushed the toilet that I realised we had no water. I tried all of the taps but to no avail. There was no water. Fortunately there was enough left in the kettle for a coffee.

I eventually logged on to the South East Water website to find that they were investigating a problem a few streets away from us, closer to Farnham. They’d started investigating at 6:47. The water didn’t return until about 3:30pm.

The lack of water made things a bit tricky. There wasn’t going to be any workers at the house today so I’d planned to organise the bedrooms upstairs. This meant cleaning the last quarter of the green room then doing a bit of a dance with the contents so things were put back to rights. The trouble was the lack of water to clean the floor.

Even so, I managed to shift things around in the Green Room and pulled up the last of the tape, cleaned off the last remaining window sill of the many trades’ detritus and took the last of the ‘stuff’ downstairs. I then stopped, checking for any sign of water. Of which there was none.

I then shifted my attentions to the extension, downstairs. Since Mark the Tiler has finished, I could move the remaining tiles (which we’ll eventually use as stepping stones) out of the room and round the side of the house. I also moved the last of the painter’s stuff into the lounge.

Suddenly the room looked immense. I powered up my reliable Dyson and sucked up tons of dust and dirt.

Checking the water for the millionth time and only getting a thin trickle of dust from the spout, I decided to finally strip the grey tape off the big glass doors. Given the ‘stuff’ had now gone from in front of the last door, I could also rip off the last of the masking tape.

Then Dave and Robbie turned up to clear away rubbish (yay!) and fill the drive with sharp sand. The sand is for two jobs: To go in the bottom of the big planters and for screed to go on the curved steps. Dave finally took away the plastic guttering and assorted bits and pieces from the back of the garden. It’s been there so long, the bushes had claimed it as their own.

Eventually, Dave left Robbie to it and drove the rubbish away, though not before moaning about Optiplan’s failure to take their own rubbish away. This is something I agree with him on. There’s so much ‘stuff’ left over that you’d think they’d offer a service to get rid of it. As Dave said, they expect money up front so it’s not as if you can withhold final payment until they get rid of it.

Robbie finished off the planters with a few more barrows of sharp sand then left as well. The house once more descended into quiet only punctuated by yaps from Emma and the occasional growl from Day-z. Interestingly, I’ve noticed that whenever Day-z barks at anything outside (cats, squirrels, invisible threats) Emma immediately runs to me and sits on my foot. She stares off in Day-z’s direction, safe in the knowledge that I’ll protect her while Day-z does the guard dog bit.

And then the water returned. The first indication being the sound of the cistern filling in the laundry. Naturally, I had to run the taps to clear the dirty water away. Where does this come from? It always happens. The water is cut off and then, as soon as it comes back, it runs brown for a bit. If it’s accumulated build up of what is normally there in minute quantities, it means we must be drinking quite a bit of dirt over time. I guess I’ll never know.

Having water once more meant I could fill the steamer and get to work on the floor upstairs and then most of the extension tiles. Afterwards, I sat back and admired my handiwork.

And, lo, it was good, and I rested.