New plumbing

The central heating in the basement has been shot ever since we moved in.  We originally had a firm of plumbers in to look at fixing it, but this proved to be impossible, because neither the boiler nor the pipes had been looked at in many years (possibly since 1977 which was when the flat was separated from the rest of the house) and they were so full of filth and rust that they could not be salvaged.  So this week our plumbing team (both female which is unusual and great to see) have been completely replacing it.  This is the pile of stuff being removed – the round red thing is the old boiler believe it or not!

This has obviously been pretty disruptive for J, so he has taken himself off to visit some friends in Morpeth.  While he was doing it, I did some gardening with a bit of assistance from Saphy.

Then I made a start on decorating J’s office.  I said to him “Getting this right is quite a big job – I need to fill in a load of holes, put a new piece of skirting in, paint some cupboards nicely (using masking tape to get straight lines), sand down a set of shelves and then varnish them etc.  So if  I do that, it will take me about a week until you can be back in there.  Or if I just paint the walls I will be finished tomorrow”.  Guess which option he went for.  Hint, the picture is the wall I just painted.

This actually ties in with a theory R has about men, which is that no straight man enjoys going to John Lewis to shop for decorative towels to put on a blanket ladder.  No straight man cares about whether his shelves are sanded either.