As it turned out, it ended up being a half week of work for one reason and another.  On the Monday we took the day off as the materials we needed could not be delivered until Tuesday, so we had nothing to work with.  07.45 And our delivery arrived on site Tuesday morning, 50 odd sheets of 70mm floor insulation and 80 bags of cement.  The cement will not be needed for a week or so until John and J the plasterers can get out to us to do the screeded floor.  So we covered all the ground floor with a layer of Damp Proof Membrane and then started to lay the sheets of floor insulation on top.  Once we had all the sheets down we then did all the cuts and filled in all the remaining gaps so we had all the floor space covered.  Once that was done, Stu and I went round and taped up all the joints.

Wednesday morning and we made a start on laying the water based under floor heating pipe work.  This is a new product to us, so it was case of taking things slowly and learning as we went.  Doing the smaller office area first and things were going ok.  We got ourselves in a routine, with Stu laying and shaping the pipe while I followed behind clipping the pipe into the insulation.  We then moved onto the other ‘zones’.  On one of the zones we had to drill through one of the block walls and then pass the run of pipe work through.  This was the first time we did this and unfortunately we ended up putting quite a bad kink into the pipe.  The pipe work is supposed to run in one complete length with no joints, but we now had an un-wanted kink just where we didn’t want it, which could have ruined the 100 metre length of pipe we working with!  But Stu stepped in to save the day.  He worked out that if we cut the kink out of the pipe and using a little bit of artistic licence with the zone layouts, we could use this roll of pipe on one of the smaller zones and use a fresh length of pipe to re-do the zone we had just made a mistake on.  It put us back a bit time wise, but we got everything sorted and back on track, taking more care next time when feeding the pipe work through block walls!

Stu turned up onto site Thursday looking the worse for wear, and it was nothing self inflicted!  He had been feeling un-well across the week but had continued to work on.  But Thursday was when the illness came to the fore and he looked like he had seen better days.  We were expecting the floor board delivery Thursday morning, so we agreed to take the delivery in when it arrived and then take the rest of the day off, plus take Friday off so hopefully he could get back to full health after a long weekend.  We noticed on the floor board packaging that the pallet of floor board weighed nearly two tonnes.  Two tonnes of floor board that we have to hand carry into the property and get passed up onto the first floor and fixed into position, oh joy.  I defiantly hope Stu is feeling better next week!

It was a busy week, but a week filled with lots of bits and pieces work wise.  Monday and Tuesday we were in Peterborough re-building a garden wall for some friends of mine.  On Wednesday it was a case of clearing up things in Peterborough, and taking our tools and materials back to the new build.  After lunch we took a ride into Huntingdon to pick up various materials so we could get the last of the exterior jobs all taken care of before moving inside.

Thursday I stained the front porch while Stu was doing a few little finishing jobs around the back.  In the afternoon Stu pointed up the gable tile work on the porch while I went round cleaning down the ground floor windows and doors.  Friday morning we slurried the internal floor space.

Next week circumstances allowing we hope to get the under floor heating, insulation and cement screed down on the ground floor, and make a start on the first floor under floor heating and laying the floor boards.  That’s the plan anyway!

Things didn’t get off to the best of starts for the week, mainly due to the scaffold, again.  After the poor service the previous week and them not turning up when they said they would, it was the same old result come Monday.  I was told they would be out on Monday to take down the scaffold, come 07.45 after I had phoned them up, that wasn’t going to be the case.  Apparently I was miss-informed about them coming out Monday, although the girl in the office said Monday was free for them and she would high light it in their diary!  So as there was little we could really get on with until the scaffold came down, Stu and I did a few little jobs and then called it a day at lunch.  Tuesday, still no scaffolders.  We decided to clean all the first floor exterior windows as the scaffold was still up, as something to do.  Then out of the blue I received a phone call to say a couple of blokes would be out within the hour to take the scaffold down, at last!  Two men turned up at lunch and made a start on taking down the scaffold.  We were going to be in their way so decided to take another half day.  It’s not all as good as it sounds on the half day front, half day, no pay.

We turned up on site Wednesday and the scaffold was finally down, layed out all over the site ready for collection.  We could now crack on with getting the last of the single storey roof and porch tiles on and the lead dressed so everything was officially water tight for the two roof areas.  We also got the last of the down pipes all fixed into position, well, all but one.  We could have had them all done if I had ordered enough bend sockets!  We put in a temporary fix knowing we could get things finished off next week.

On Thursday and Friday we were back in Yaxley laying some paving slabs for Mr M.  Everything went to plan and everyone was happy with the finish.  They looked really good next to the new fence we put in a week ago and provided the finishing touches to the extension we had built their only a few months back.

And the scaffold?  That was finally picked up Saturday morning.  Maybe I should have charged for storage!

What was a well planned week turned into a mess, mainly due to the fact that other people can’t do their jobs properly.  Stu and I are the ones who suffer and I am going to have a good moan about it!

On Monday morning Stu painted the last wall of the new build with the under coat while I went to get the top coat paint.  The client had chosen a colour over the weekend from three tester colours we painted onto the wall, with the tester colours mixed by a merchants in Peterborough.  I took the colour code and got six tins mixed up by the same company of merchants, but in Huntingdon as the Peterborough merchants didn’t have enough base paint to do the colour mixing with.  Looking at the colour in the tins I knew something wasn’t quite right, the colour seemed slightly different from the chosen tester colour.  I was reassured by the sales assistant that the paint computer could not make a mistake as all the branches worked using the same Dulux Trade colour codes.  I got the paint to site and Stu made a start roiling it onto the wall.  After about two rolls, Stu called me over to take a look.  The new paint colour was different to the chosen tester colour.  Huntingdon said they had done nothing wrong and could not help.  I now had six tins of paint that I couldn’t use.  Both Huntingdon and Peterborough merchants didn’t have enough base paint to mix up more colours even if something could be resolved.  So Stu and I travelled over to Dulux Trade in Peterborough.  They had enough base paint and hopefully could resolve our problem.  They mixed up another tester sample with the code I had, which matched the colour I had received from Huntingdon, so we now knew the issue was with Peterborough.  Dulux tried their best but could not match the chosen tester paint.  It seems Peterborough’s paint machine is worked by hand, while Dulux and Huntingdon have totally computerised paint mixing machines, so they held their hands up and confessed they probably made a mistake in the mixing process and produced a totally unique paint colour that could not be matched again.  Nice!

After several phone calls and racing across the country side in the van most of the morning it was now lunch time.  We had a colour the client wanted, but we couldn’t get the colour mixed, and we had six tins of paint of another colour that we didn’t think we could use.  We contacted the client, explained the situation and they were going to pop out to look at the paint colours once more, including the new colour we had from the morning.  After some deliberation, they were disappointed they had to choose another colour but they decided that they liked the paint we had purchased from the morning the best, so that’s the colour that was going to go onto the walls.  The issue was finally resolved but we had lost a day to all the chaos, through no fault of my own.

Tuesday we got the all the exterior painted.  Wednesday we took delivery of a balustrade for the first floor exterior bedroom French doors, so we got that fixed onto the wall and into position.  I had phoned the scaffolders the previous week and booked in for the scaffold to be dismantled on the Thursday.  So with this in mind Stu and I cleaned down all the first floor windows before they arrived.

Thursday morning we were pottering about waiting for the scaffolders to arrive.  There wasn’t much we could do as we didn’t want to get in their way, but by 10.30am there was no sign of them.  I phoned them up to find out the latest.  The latest was they wouldn’t be out this week!  The lorry had been off the road for two days earlier in the week and they were behind schedule, and they had decided not to let me know this minor little fact.  I had planned our whole week around the scaffold coming down on Thursday only to find out mid morning on the Thursday they wouldn’t be coming out.  The best they could do was the following Monday.  I did explain my situation to them and asked why they couldn’t have let me know what was going on.  I basically got the phone version of a ‘shrug of the shoulders’, but they weren’t bothered.  Maybe they will be bothered when I use a different company next time.  At this moment it looked like Stu and I were on for a long weekend.  I made some phone calls, and Mr M at Yaxley was ok for us to bring his fence panel job forward to the Friday which I had originally planned for the following week.  So I then had to re-schedule the whole of next week’s work to fit in around the scaffolders, again!  Friday we were in Yaxley and got Mr M’s new fence posts and fence panels in, so he was happy.

What a week.  The only two companies/services that I used this week and both of them made a mess of things.  I was the one who had to pick up the pieces and re-schedule our work plans.  I was the one who lost the time and money due to their inefficiencies.  I was the one running around trying to get everything sorted.  Obviously they won’t want my business in the future.

WHY CAN’T PEOPLE DO WHAT THEY SAY THEY ARE GOING TO DO?  IT’S VERY SIMPLE, IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE!!