Almost shipshape

Most of the rooms are now looking a little less like a refugee camp.

The mayhem lasted a few days, but, by close of day Sunday, we had our bedrooms, bathrooms, snug, kitchen and HUGE living room reasonably functional. Even the infamous Bastelraum and Weinkeller are roughly as they'll be, although we have a long way to go. The guest bedroom'll be done this evening on a just-in-time basis; it's Claudia's birthday tomorrow, so her mother's coming to babysit while we go out scoffing fine food and quaffing wine.

Ooerr, I still haven't thought of anything to buy her.

The main Keller's still a disaster area of regional importance. As we're short of a garden shed, there're all sorts of outdoorsy stuff here and there, including our garden furniture. Plus two adulthood's worth of 'valuable' but unused-for-donkey's-years crap that we really should either sell or scrap. Box after box after box of it.

Now what really gets me is the way that removals people the world over think. Or don't think. Or maybe they do, but their sadistic sides get the better of 'em.

Imagine four or five removal blokes walking into our Keller, all bearing identically sized boxes. Identical in every respect, with the logo of their company on the sides. Stack 'em good, right? Well, the first seems incapable of placing his box against a wall, and the rest are equally incapable of putting their boxes upon a box that's already there and waiting for them. Result? They drop their boxes all over the place according to some random dispersion pattern that'd baffle a Chaos theoretician. The next batch of boxes then arrives, and are likewise scattered about the place... but wait! Wait! Look over there, that bloke's actually putting a box upon another one... oh... oh no... no no no.

He has of course placed the box rotated roughly 50 degrees to the previous box, and offset enough that it's centre-of-gravity's somewhere over the edge. As the bloke turns his back, it slowly tilts and then slides off until one corner touches the floor. It's progress is then halted by a garden rake that's lying on the Keller floor, a perfect setting for a slapstick routine. The rake's about three feet from a corner that even the most idiotic person I've ever met (you wouldn't know who you are) would recognise as a prime location for gardening tools.

Hmm, another chap's getting very close to the rake. Will he? Will he? Heh heh heh... go on, it's only divine justice... Oh bugger, he's dropped his box directly onto the rake's tines (crunch at they break through the cardboard, hopefully nothing broken inside). Booby-trap safely deactivated by a mixture of apathy, incompetence and Mister Magoo levels of good fortune.

Disaster avoided, the chucking in of boxes and stuff continues, and the colour of the Keller floor becomes a distant memory. It's now looking like a squatter's township as almost nothing's higher than a single storey. Progress slows as it takes quite some fancy footwork to navigate across the Keller...

(sigh)

Onto happier subjects...

The lights situation? I put a couple more up in the kitchen this weekend, so that's a total of... oh lordy I've lost count. A good few dozen done with my own fair hands. No further electrocutions, so I think I'm getting the hang of it.

There're two more utility lights to go up in the Kellers, but the nice Huf Haus people don't bring those until Thursday. And we've finally found a decent design to be nailed onto the outside walls of the house, so we'll be ordering five of 'em. At least I think I counted five sets of cables out there. Must check later today. Oh, and we've decided on bathroom mirror's with integrated lights, so I think they sort of count, so two more.

The light's at the end of the tunnel (sad pun intentional).

The kitchen's 99% finished. We're waiting on a piece of glass for the splash back that couldn't be ordered until the last moment. Accurate measurements, dontchaknow.

What else?

The shower cabinet arrives by Huf Haus on Thursday, so we'll be able to bring our main bathroom up to scratch. The blinds are likewise up on that side of the house, we'll be able to use the main bathroom without a show. I'll be able to chuck Claudia's bathroom stuff out of my downstairs bathroom and then it'll be mine, all mine. Mine! Hah hah hah...

Curtain rails are up throughout, but out of action 'cos the curtains guy needs to come back and cut notches here and there so we can thread on the slidey things. For now we're surviving with the blinds on the upstairs side that faces the neighbours. T'other side's uncurtained for now, but then there's nothing out there but rolling hills and the odd farmhouse in the distance. Downstairs we have the outside electric shutters. It'll all look better when we've got proper curtains, but for now we're functional.

And why no photos?

'Cos we're waiting for the electrician to come and conect up the phone and TV cables. Until then, no internet access from home. And that means no way of posting up photos for a little longer. Should be up and going by next weekend, but we'll see.

Needless to say, we're ecstatic about our house.