A bevy of tradespeople

Sidekick and Doors and Windows Ulf hard at work

You wait for ages for quotes and availability, and then they all turn up on the same morning.

To be fair, my Lady Gardener's date was well established, and she's no trouble at all. She generates a few bags of green waste in a couple of hours, and this time I'd booked a slot at the tip the following day so I could get rid of it straight away, as well as a few other things I'm getting rid of. (I'm still trying to empty all unnecessary stuff out of the house, and took a big bag of books to the Oxfam book shop, but neglected to phone ahead as I should have. Thankfully they took the bag anyway, because it was pretty heavy and I wouldn't have fancied taking it home again.)

The others to arrive at the same time were Doors and Windows Ulf and Sidekick to replace the front door, and Damp Man Dlf 3 to treat the walls in the wet room and the porch. I'd put the order in for the front door a week before lockdown, and then manufacture immediately stopped in the place abroad where the doors are made. When the door was finally available we struggled to find a suitable date when I would be at home. The damp treatment was needed before work could continue in the wet room and it was just one of those things that the date we arranged clashed with the work on the front door.

Dlf 1 was the damp estimator who lives round the corner, Dlf 2 was the damp man I called to make the arrangements for the work to be done, and he sent damp man Dlf 3 to do the first stage of the work, which is to remove plaster up to 1 metre from the floor and then inject some sort of gel into drilled holes along a mortar line just above floor level. Except that the quote had stipulated that the wet room plumbers would remove the plaster in the wet room, and they hadn't removed quite enough of it, and Dlf 3 said if it wasn't in the quote he couldn't do it. I gave him some cash to do it, so he did it. The next stage is to add a membrane and then replace the plaster, and I checked with Dlf 2 who said that damp man Dlf 4 would be coming to do that part next week.

Meanwhile Doors and Windows Ulf and Sidekick were getting on with the front door, ripping out the old door and frame, fitting the glazed panel at the top, putting the new door in and adding architraves and generally making it nice. It's actually a very dark blue, although it looks black in the picture. They didn't do the final sealant because Dlf 3 was about to generate a whole load of dust which would stick to the lovely fresh sealant and make it look bad, and they have to come back anyway because they need to fit the spy hole. We agreed that it was a good thing the spy hole hadn't been factory fitted because it would definitely have been too high for me to look through. 

I have also ordered a new door number which they offered to fix to the wall for me as part of the job. The only thing that was forgotten was the doorbell, and the sound of knuckles rapping at the door can't be heard beyond the hall. Luckily I happened to be in the hall this morning when there was a parcel for me, which was a very lucky coincidence. If I do happen to have any visitors they will have to phone me for the time being.

I had stocked up with biscuits and even remembered to buy some instant coffee (so in a couple of years it will turn into a solid black mass and I'll throw it out like the last jar). D&W Ulf's Sidekick made good headway with the biscuits, though. I'll be taking any of those that are left over to work.

Dlf 3