One step forward ...

Did I say we had a plumber waiting in the wings? Silly me. In the time honoured way of many, though not all,  of our tradesmen, this one apparently vanished into thin air. No promised quote was forthcoming, no answer to my subsequent text either. This was someone who had done three jobs for Claire and who we therefore thought would be a fairly safe bet, but it was not to be. I found another one, who came to case the joint one Saturday morning. I did have some slight misgivings about this one, mainly because he couldn't find the address, in spite of having the postcode and detailed directions which no-one else seemed to need and when I walked up the road to find him and told him to take the next turn on the left, he decided that left actually meant right and was on his way down the turning opposite ours before noticing me waving frantically behind him.

Once again, silence reigned after his visit and again, my follow up text went unanswered. Time for plumber number three.

"Can I just ask you," said Keith when the bathroom tour was finished, "If you don't want the job or can't fit it in, could you please let us know? We've had two other plumbers who said they would give us quotes and we haven't heard from them again."

Plumber number three assured us he would certainly send us a quote and made a careful note of my email address.

Fast forward two days and plumber number two decided to get in touch after all and send us his quote. It was not wonderful but then he had come armed with a glossy catalogue of bathroom suites and everything else you could need or want in a bathroom.

"I think we could do it ourselves, you know," said Keith. "It's pretty straightforward." 

He had already decided that he would be able to do the downstairs toilet himself and had bought the toilet, wash basin, tiles etc and as for the en suite, we had decided that we would just take out the toilet, move the wash basin and finish tiling and decorating in there rather than getting rid of it, so this could be the logical next step ... 

Anyway, before that, we have the re wiring, which will begin tomorrow morning. Now here, we have struck gold. We have a brilliant electrician and his team who will be on our doorstep tomorrow at 8am, but there will be more to tell on that next time.