Week Nineteen

Week beginning 10th October.

We are up and at it late this morning, a few too many glasses of wine last night! We’ve just got ourselves together and are about to start work on the attic space in the shed but we have to stop because another timber and OSB delivery has arrived and we have to manage where it is unloaded. The delivery driver is very nice and friendly and skillfully manages to squeeze the pallets in nicely.

We are going to have our usual 10’clock(ish) coffee break and then go and see if we can get our covid and flu booster jags at the community centre. Pete joined the badminton group last night and it was there that he heard that the NHS was going to be vaccinating in the hall.

We are in luck because they let us get our jags no problem. After the jags, while waiting the statuatory 5 minutes, we got chatting with some of the locals which was nice.

We have decided that we need to deal with this delivery right away because the rain just keeps coming and soaking everything that isn’t under cover. Another move and stack session, cheaper than the gym, as we put some muscle into adding the timber to our horde under the tarpaulin.

Now that the timber is safely under cover we are moving 50 odd sheets of OSB onto the pile in the shed. Luckily we have our trusted trolley to take the strain and we can shift three sheets at a time to the shed entrance, this is saving us a lot of time and effort.

The rain has been so relentless that most of the area around our caravan has become a quagmire and we need to do something about it so Pete has found a bit of drainage pipe to try and divert the water coming down the hill. We’ll see how that works.

Our first building task is to put insulation between the studs in the toilet and cover them with OSB, ready for Des to connect the cistern and install the sink and hook the whole lot up to the water main. Des was one of the people Pete chatted to in the hall, part of their conversation was about getting the toilet up and running.

We have time to start sheeting the ceiling under the attic space before it gets too dark so we are getting on with it because we would like to get the shed ready for roofing and cladding by the end of the week, weather permitting.

Another rainy night and morning and we are checking to see if Pete’s attempt at diverting the water has worked. Sadly not, the drainage pipe is a French drain which has slits in it and should be buried for it to work. Pete has it above ground so the water just leaks out of the slits. A bit of scavenging and ingenuity might give us the solution with our second attempt. We have a bit of left over waste water pipe and a bit of guttering that is long enough to lead the water towards the slope above our land drainage.

We can get on with the ceiling under the attic space now and best of all it will be dry in here.

One of the badminton guys, Gary, popped by to see how we are getting on and very generously said we could call on him if we need help with the build. It’s really nice how people are making us feel welcome and are generous in offering to help.

We are quite enthusiastic this morning because we can get the attic flooring done ready for our grandchildren’s visit next week.

Before we can start putting down the attic floor we need to put the insulation between the trusses. We are doing this so that if we have a lot of visitors we can improvise a nice warm sleeping area here and at other times it can be a den for our grandchildren.

It’s still a quagmire round the caravan but we are hopeful that things will improve soon.