This week was just a case of getting on with things and getting the brick and block work up to height by the end of the week ready for us to put in the bloody great lintels that had to go in.  Monday and Tuesday was good weather wise and things progressed nicely.  Stu was mixing up the muck or now as he likes to be called, a Cement Technician! while I was laying the bricks and blocks.  Stu was also doubling up as one of Willy Wonkas Umpa Lumpas again.  That’s what he looked like after he did all the cuts of the engineering bricks I needed as I ran the brick courses in, that or he has been over doing it with the fake tan!

Wednesday we were on site for 8am as usual. The sky was looking a bit dark and grey and Stu and I were not sure what the weather was going to do, but the Cement Technician put a mix in as we took a chance that the weather would be on our side.  Wrong!  Come 08.30 and it was lashing down with rain, again.  I checked the weather forecast on my phone, and it was reporting that the rain was set in for most of the day.  So once again, another day lost, we packed our tools up and called it day.

On Thursday the weather was blue sky and sunshine, the complete opposite to the day before.  Just before coffee break we had the lintels arrive.  One was a bloody great C section lintel, 4.5 metres in length; the other was 2.4 metres long and a smaller version of its big brother.  The lorry had no lifting gear, so it had to be hand balled off.  At this point, knowing the weight of these lintels, the lorry driver gave some story of a dodgy back, and then conveniently spent the rest of his time on his mobile phone and doing everything he could to hide out the way.  Don’t you just love good customer service!  Stu and I managed to slide the lintel off the back of the lorry and drop it to the side of the drive.  The driver suddenly appeared surprise surprise to get his paper work signed and sheepishly went on his way.  Mr M the client offered his help to move the lintel to the rear of the property where the extension was, and also called in his son and some extra hands.  It took six of us to lift the big lintel, and even with six it was still extremely heavy.  So much so that both Stu and I came to work the next day with bruised shoulders where the lintel had been resting.  By Friday lunch time we had the brick and block work to the height we needed. It had the weekend to go off, ready for lifting the lintels into position on the Monday.  Oh what fun that will be!