E-Day + 71

At some point, I counted 12 men in my house, and Brendan wasn't even home. The day started slowly, with Stephen the electrician in around 8:20 this morning. Stephen the carpenter arrived a bit later with 2 extra carpenters, to start work on the decking.

At that stage, there was still no sign of Ray the plumber, who was supposed to be here at 8 to clear the bathroom of the loo and sink to make way for the tiler. Ray's van had broken down (do I believe this? of course I do - what choice do I have?) and he didn't arrive until after lunch, with one or two junior plumbers. Despite the delay, there was a lot done in the plumbing department today: outside tap in the shed, radiators back up, downstairs loo back in operation, taking out loo and sink in my bathroom and, most importantly from my perspective, connecting the kitchen tap for our brand new kitchen sink!

Kevin (Kevin McGrath, our builder) also arrived around lunchtime, with Stan, and worked on a number of things - checking out the roof, bringing the AJs up so they can be accessed from the decking, and generally coordinating everybody's work.

Then, around 3 pm, Mark from Craftstone arrived to install the granite, with 2 juniors, and set up the granite, which is looking beautiful I have to say (pictures later when everybody is gone). So I was wrong about the delivery of the granite, but isn't it so much nicer to be pleasantly surprised. Mark will be back in a few days with splashbacks for the counter. And Alan the fitter will be in tomorrow to set up the grey splashback behind the cooker.

Then, later in the day, when Stephen the carpenter had finished laying out plywood on the bathroom floor, Kevin the tiler arrived, and tiled my bathroom That's a separate job from the original plan, but my bathroom floor looked quite miserable so we decided to retile both bathrooms, and to replace the yellowed plastic bath sides by plywood and mosaic tiles.

It was a hot day, and I was glad of the 12-packs of Sprite when it came to handing over drinks to everybody.

Brendan had to spend most of the day dealing with the various trades, while I kept things going in the PC Medic department, answering the phone and working on a few machines. We're both tired, but it's all worth it!