Our building site has been a bit crowded today.

With all the services in the ceiling space now fitted and/or fixed, our Builder Men have been fixing the plasterboard for the new ceiling (which will NOT have bloody Artex on it). The full sheets went up quite quickly but cutting and fitting the smaller fiddly bits, like those covering our steel beam, took a while. It’s beginning to look like a room again, though. I wasn’t expecting plasterboard over the stub walls – maybe that’s because it ties in with the beam, or maybe it’s because roughcast would take a while to dry before it could be plastered.

Meanwhile, down at floor level, our plumbers were chopping out bits of floor to expose existing pipework and run new pipework for our new radiators. ‘T was both a dusty and very noisy business, chiselling out concrete. Francine and I tried to move the smaller of the two sizes of radiator and it was bloody heavy. That’ll test the brickwork.

Builder Men had wanted to fix our new ceiling this morning. However, while the ceiling was down making all services readily accessible, I was keen to have our Plumber Men renew a few bath tub water supply joints. I had refitted the bathroom over 20 years ago and, out of necessity [lack of skill], had used a few push-fit connectors. Those connectors have a 20-year guarantee. They may have been fine but we don’t want them to let go and leak inside our nice new ceiling now, do we? So, proper compression joints it is, then. Our friendly Plumber Men helpfully shifted appointments so they could come and do it.

Our plumbers also delivered three fancy new radiators, worked out where they’d be fixed and began chasing channels in the floor to take the new supply pipes. ‘T was a noisy business.

Sparky was here for his day #3 at the same time. I’m not sure if he was still singing but if he was, we wouldn’t have heard him over the power tool chiselling up our kitchen floor.

His first focus was putting in two double sockets for our router, NAS, lamp and phone, whilst also moving the BT socket back to where it enters the house. With the kitchen door removed, that space was now usable for the first time since the house was built.

Internet back up and working, he shifted his attention to the garage where the state of power was unclear, to me, at least. He spent the afternoon fitting a swanky distribution board with two circuits, one for the lights and one for mains power. He also spotted that our powered garage door was running just on an extension lead. He wired that into the circuit properly, too. Much better. I like this guy.

Both Plumber Men and Sparky left for the day. At 16:00 we thought that was it. Then Builder Man #2 pitched up and started preparing some fancy hoist to help with fixing our plasterboard ceilings. ‘T was too late in the day to make a start but they should be ready for the off tomorrow.

New week, new tradesman.

Our electrician arrived at 08:45 on Monday to begin sorting out lights and power sockets. He’s a chirpy chappy. First he very sensibly revisited our requirements; the hiatus caused by lockdown dulls the memory, after all. As the boss, Francine, confirmed placements of power points and switches, he scribbled their positions on the walls in pencil.

Most workmen work to a radio and he was no exception. On it went, Radio 2, and he began singing away quite happily. Francine chuckled.

Electricians love it when the ceilings are down because they have unfettered access to remove the old cabling and rerun the new stuff. He soon had the old untidy stuff out and began running his supplies, and much more neatly than the original builders had, I might add.

He is a precise chappy too, which really impressed me. He was using a laser level to line things up between walls and I spotted him using a spirit level on every pattress box as he fixed it into the wall. He’s like me in that he likes accuracy and symmetry, spacing power points symmetrically above a future worktop.

We had a few planned power outages but no spasmodic unscheduled breaks so maybe that gremlin has been laid to rest. He will be changing us over to a new circuit breaker system instead of our archaic wire fuse box. We need a few extra circuits – there are 6 at at the moment – for two ovens and induction hob.

Francine is kicking me out of my office of many years standing and taking it over. The third bedroom is to become my office. My current situation is less than ideal because my new desktop has crappy wireless. My trusty old Dell desktop of 8 years had wonderful wireless fine but this one, 8 years younger, doesn’t “see” the router. So, I’ve been forced into using a powerline adapter between different power circuits which drops out occasionally, sometimes frequently. The new router position and my new office meant that sparky offered to run a Cat6 ethernet cable under the floor boards (while the ceiling was down) so I’m hoping things will get better.

A new photograph seemed a bit pointless because there really isn’t much to look at, we’ve simply swapped one dangling set of old cables for a partially dangling set of new cables.

Francine is still chuckling.

We’re having the weekend to ourselves in the building site.

Before our Men arrived last Monday to begin demolition, we needed to get our fridge to safety; somewhere it could still be used. Francine and I emptied it and managed to walk it the length of the house and over the door still into the conservatory. If/when the sun hits the conservatory the temperature climbs and the poor fridge sounds as if it’s struggling a little but it works.

The wall we were going to lose was the wall with our range cooker backing onto it, pretty much in the centre. The wall contained both the electricity supply [the oven is electric] and the gas supply pipe [the hob is gas] so the oven was the first major piece of kit that was lost irredeemably.

In planning for the project, we bought a single portable induction hotplate to supplement our collection of barbecues, to be used if the weather was suitable, and our bottled gas Cadac Carri Chef Grill, rehomed from Spain. Both the hotplate and the Cadac also fit the conservatory and could be used there if the weather proved inclement.

After Men had left on Friday, the weather was set fair and we declared the weekend to be here. I carried the Carri Chef out onto the patio and started on one of my favourite meals, a paella. [Just don’t call it a Paella Valencia ‘cos I love putting chorizo in it.]

After our initial shock and feeling unsettled by the sudden change on Monday, this was beginning to feel comfortable. My vegetable content was artichoke hearts – bottled rather than the beautiful fresh, small ones available in Spain – but we also had a handful of courgette flowers which I added near the end.

There was even room on the lower part of the patio, away from the construction zone, for our garden dining table. The not Paella Valenciana was very good, though I don’t think either of us noticed the courgette flowers.

After a bit of a hiatus for some of the weekend, since the sun has now returned, we’re finishing off the weekend with a hickory-smoked chicken on the charcoal Weber.

Subtitled: Return of the Gremlins.

Yesterday and the half of the preceding day had gone very smoothly. After Main Man had removed our cooker circuit fuse both we and they enjoyed uninterrupted service.

This morning Francine was up at her usual early hour making tea. She had just done so and brought it upstairs announcing that our power had once again gone on furlough. “Bother”, said Franco, crossly. What in tarnation was going on?

On Sunday I had fitted a new LED almost-flush ceiling light in our utility room. The cabling had been a bit of a squeeze so I feared that might be the culprit. I pulled the utility room fuse. Power settled down. I removed the light and checked all the cabling. I replaced the fuse.

Some little time later, blip – off went the power again. “Bother”, repeated Franco, crossly, and pulled the fuse to the 30 amp ring main on the kitchen side of the house. Power was restored but only briefly. I now had three out of six fuses out and still no stable supply.

Men arrived and I related the sad tale. I turned off the whole of the fuse box and Main Man went round the kitchen, where all the former lights and power points were hanging on their cables, checking for loose connections. He reckoned he’d found two dubious earth connections and corrected them.

Power back on. Thus far it has remained back on. Mind you, last time it lasted for about 36 hours. Fingers firmly crossed.

The main business of the day could now commence, the main business being a 3-metre steal beam which was carried in and somehow hoisted into place above the two reconstructed stub walls. What it is to have strength. It is sitting on engineering bricks with more compression strength, together with some special rigid material to shim it up to the precise height needed.

“Props away”, boys.

We also have a nice new window board as the sill to our new dining area window and Francine is spending yet more money ordering a new kitchen window to match the profile of the one in the dining area. Women!

So, end of round #1; Men have cleared up and we await the electrician for round #2. Meanwhile we have a weekend to relax in our building site.

I’m delighted to say that we seemed to have been glitch free today.

Our brave Men were out this morning in torrential rain mixing up mortar and bricking up our old side kitchen window on the outside, having done the inside block work yesterday. They very cleverly rigged up a tarpaulin supported by timbers propped on our fence under which to work. The resulting filled in bit of wall looks pretty good and, as the mortar dries out and lightens, it should look even better eventually.

Most of the bricks used to “lose” the old side kitchen window were reclaimed from the dining area part of our project. The Boss, a.k.a. Francine, wanted a deeper dining area window so that, as we sat at a dining table, we would be able to see down into the garden, being on something of a slope. Four courses of bricks were removed and a new, deeper window fitted. We’re very pleased with that, too. (A French door would’ve been pointless since our floor level is fully a metre above the patio level.)

Our friendly plumber came around, too, to make notes on what radiators we wanted. Francine, being firmly in spend mode, also re-planned the downstairs cloakroom: new radiator, new loo, new basin and taps.

What the hell?

Our day’s glitch was early coming.

No sooner had Man #1 arrived than my PC began suffering brief power interruptions. It went, came back, went away again, came back again, then went away and stayed away. No lights anywhere, no power on either mains circuit. This was clearly not a single fuse [there are six] – everything was on furlough but no circuit was giving us 80%. Our neighbour had power so this was limited to us. All our fuses were intact [they are still real wire fuses].

Having next discovered that our meter box key had disappeared, presumably in the sweeping up, main Man manged to open the electricity meter cupboard with pliers. A circuit breaker therein had tripped. No individual house circuit had blown but the supply cabinet had tripped. Odd. After resetting the trip switch, naturally it soon tripped again.

We have lighting suspended by wiring and 30amp ring main boxes dangling freely, too. The cooker circuit had been buried in the wall that we no longer have. Main Man planned to try circuits one by one and began by pulling the cooker circuit fuse. So far our restored power remained restored.

Our restored electricity began powering a pleasantly quiet cement mixer.

Today was a Block work day, rebuilding the one originally unstable stub wall, shortening the opposite too-long stub wall, filling in the now unwanted doorway into the original kitchen, then removing and filling in the side kitchen window.

We do need a slightly more inventive than usual solution to venting the eventual extractor hood. A steel cross beam (supporting an upstairs wall) sits directly above where the hood will be. Typical. Murphy’s Law strikes again.

On a higher note, our not-very-old Bosch dishwasher has found a new home, so that’s being re-used rather than recycled.

Our first evening meal sans kitchen had been very easy; we had cold barbecued lamb from Sunday with salad before destruction began.

This morning, men returned bright and early – that is to say a little before 08:30 – for day #2 of demolition.

First of all more plaster was stripped off the target dividing wall. Then I heard jacks being knocked into place to support the upper floors while the supporting wall was removed. Francine and I went for a 5-mile walk to leave them to it.

When we returned, sure enough our dividing wall was no more. Apparently it was a little more than no more at the rear end than had been anticipated. The Thermalite blocks in the wall were unstable and crumbling, so some of what should have been a 650mm stub wall had also gone. It was going to have to be rebuilt with new sound blocks.

At the opposite end, Francine noticed that the stub wall had the opposite problem: too much left rather than too little. It was more than what we’d planned, more like 700mm than 350mm. That meant the span and, therefore, the steel beam was going to be longer than had been ordered. Communication breakdown, clearly. Adjustment needed.

The kitchen door and frame disappeared.

Hiccough time: our wall wasn’t the only major thing that had gone, so too had our water supply. ¿QUE? No loos were flushing. There was no cold water in the upstairs taps, either. I clambered into the loft to check the cold storage tank. Empty. Was the ball valve stuck? No. Why was the cold tank not refilling? The garden tap, teed off the cold riser, still had water so the house supply was fine.

Think, Franco!

Ah, men had removed our water softener; I could now imagine what might’ve happened. The softener is connected to the cold flow into the house using three valves. The two outer valves divert water into and back out of the water softener. Between those two is a third valve to allow water to bypass the softener. They’d turned off the flow and return valves into and out of the softener but not opened the bypass valve so nothing had been going up the cold riser for the last 24hrs. I opened it; tanks began filling. Phew!

Had I not done that plumbing myself, I’d have been none the wiser.

You really wouldn’t want to go away and let this stuff happen in absentia, would you?

It seems an age ago that we we began planning a major change to our house. Having somewhat reluctantly sold up in Spain last year, we decided to invest in a project that Francine has wanted for years: knocking down the wall between the kitchen and dining room to create one large open-plan space. Repeat after me, “yes dear”.

Enter the dastardly Covid-19. A builder had been lined up for our knockdown and what we got was lockdown instead, on 23rd March. We’d seen this coming and mercifully no destruction had happened. We still had a functioning house and we pulled the plug.

Slow forward to early June. Even though the UK was still racking up 1500 or so new Covid-19 cases daily, the UK motto seemed to switch form “Protect the NHS” to “Protect the Economy”. A quick mental adjustment was necessary to gear up for all systems go.

Orders have been placed and deposits paid. Francine did a sterling job of emptying the cabinets while I amused myself [NOT!] stripping emulsioned lining paper from the dining room. I also found myself stripping emulsion itself from ouronly plasterboard wall, which was a world first for me; if soaked, I seemed to be able to peel it off in elastic chunks. Bizarre.

We managed to move our existing fridge into the conservatory to which we have essentially decamped, armed with a single induction ring and a gas BBQ/grill. Food will have to remain simple.

This morning our friendly builder turned up and swiftly began ripping out my beloved kitchen – beloved because I’d fitted the majority of it myself … twice over. It took our two hard-working guys about two hours to rip out what I had spent a month or so fitting. My units were out and the tiling was off the walls. My trusty old kitchen was stacked on the driveway.

Francine and I went out for some R&R and left them to it.

Returning at 15:00, my kitchen was still stacked on the driveway. A skip was supposed to have been delivered but hadn’t been. The ceilings in both rooms were now down. The flooring had gone.

Jacks arrived to support the ceiling so the load-bearing wall could be removed. Power tools fired up. We thought the wall was coming down but it was “just” plaster being stripped off. Spotlights hung down like eyeballs on optical nerves. Our fellows retired for the evening.

The sink and water supply remain, for the moment, though Darwin knows how we’ll use it.