Kitchen troubles

The kitchen today looks worse and more unfinished than it did on Friday. Stewart noticed that the gap left for the new stove was too small (96cm instead on 102cm), so the kitchen people had to move some cupboards around today to fix that. Their solutions were all unsatisfactory, but in the end I managed to switch over to left-brain mode long enough to figure out how to sort it out. Living with Stewart for so long, some of his Virgo characteristics must have rubbed off. :-) There's still a problem with the extraction fan, but hopefully that will be fixed tomorrow.

The other team of kitchen people were busy building our wardrobe. So far it seems to be going smoothly. Fortunately, there's no appliances that have to fit in anywhere there. The guest suite kitchen is still the same as on Friday. Could have been worse, at least it didn't go backwards like the main kitchen.

The courtyard wall and the fishpond were plastered, and the top of the pool pump housing too.

We finally gave up and had Scooters pizza for supper. Blech! After more than 2 weeks without a kitchen it seemed like a good idea. But it wasn't.

Yesterday's photos

I was too moedeloos last night to put up any photos, but I am feeling a bit more positive today. Maybe this WILL all end some day and our house will be normal (and slightly less dusty!) again. The kitchen is slightly further along today, and some more walls have been plastered, and the backyard has been mostly leveled. The painters have moved into the main bedroom and have started prepping for painting (this means there's Polyfilla dust EVERYWHERE!) We can still sleep there tonight, but only just. The shower in our bathroom is still working but the toilet and basin have been disconnected. No sign of a tiler yet. The pool coping is done and the pool pump is working. The slab under the heatpump has been poured and everything connected to the rest of the pool machinery. I guess they will switch it on once the pool has been cleaned.

These photos are from yesterday. The kids wanted to go skateboarding so I didn't take any photos this afternoon.

So much activity, so little progress

Feels like every plumber, painter and electrician in the general vicinity of Paternoster decided to drop by our kitchen today. At the same time. Hammering, grinding, chiseling, scraping, knocking, whistling all day long. I have such a headache (mostly because I only had one lousy cup of Nescafe today). The electricians were moving the power points, the plumbers were closing off the water pipes and the painters were making the rest of the noise and mess. They still need to plaster over the new pipes and still have cut out the hole for the extraction fan. Plus the window has to be knocked out and the new (smaller) one put in. And the power points in the guest quite has to be moved too. All this is happening tomorrow. The guys will have to spark.

The carpenter has hung the studio doors and added on various locks, handles and things all over the place. He's put up Sarah's glass shelf in her bathroom, but still hasn't drilled the holes in the desk for the cables. I think he has a mental block against doing that. I keep asking him and he keeps 'forgetting'.

Angelo has plastered most of the low wall next to the pool, and has finished building the short wall on the other side of the pool. No sign of the pool people to do the paving today. Marius did bring the painters' ladder back but I didn't get to see him.

The kitchen people delivered the wood for the carcasses today. They only got here at 17:00. We thought they'd gone to Vredendal by mistake.

I scrubbed all the tiles in Sarah's bathroom this afternoon. It was either that or disembowel one of the whistling people with a screwdriver. Took all my frustration out on the leftover grout on the tiles. We've got most of Sarah's stuff in the right place and most of the room has been cleaned. I've locked all the building people out of there now. I am not cleaning that room one more time. Grrrr. Not QUITE ready to move in, but at least it's getting closer. Sarah can't wait to get back into her own room.

Grumpy troll march

Daniel doing the 'grumpy troll march'. Something he saw on CBeebies this morning.

Building Cats

At least the cats love the mess!

Rain just when you don't want it

The wall around the pool is mostly built now, but it started raining just after they started plastering so they had to stop for most of the day. The electricians put in a few powerpoints, and the painters started prepping the kitchen for painting.

Slowly getting nowhere

It feels as if there's constantly people doing stuff at the house but that nothing is actually happening. Either everyone is really good at looking busy or there's a lot of things happening behind the scenes. I sometimes think that the painters carry out all the furniture from the guest suite and then they go home. If the furniture is standing outside, I naturally assume that they are inside painting, but now I'm not so sure. And then just before home-time, they come back and put all the furniture inside again.

The studio doors are going in, but the glass people haven't been here yet to put all the glass in. Once the doors are done, the tiling can be finished and also the painting and then perhaps we can move some of the furniture from the soon-to-be-demolished kitchen into there. The kitchen has to be stripped early next week so that all the preparation for the new kitchen can be done.

The pool is in, but there's no paving yet, or power to the pump or any kind of heating. The solar power installer-guy was trying to get some panels up onto our funny disjointed roof yesterday, and then (out of frustration?) recommended that we get a heatpump instead. So that's where we're at with that --the solar panels are standing on the balcony and we are waiting for a quote for a heatpump.

One of the Manitoka trees had to be removed to make way for the new boundary wall. They managed to pull the last bit out with the truck, leaving a strange abstract tree sculpture standing next to the public walkway. It wouldn't fit on the truck with all the other stuff, so maybe someone will take it home.

The foundation for the wall were dug yesterday and were poured today. We were at a homeschooling get-together all day so it's a bit difficult to tell exactly what everyone did today. It rained from time to time so I guess that also slowed things down. There's a lot of bits and pieces happening at the same time, so hopefully a lot of things will finish at the same time too. Here's hoping.