A job well done

Apologies for the few days of silence again, but as you will appreciate, having the house rewired means that electricity supply is intermittent which means that broadband is too. (Yes, more withdrawal symptoms!)

Zurab came to look over the house and then sent us a quote. He was going to be able to start the job on 31st August but first he had a short holiday with his family. "They will kill me if I don't go," he explained.  We agreed that would probably be a step too far but even so, he still called in on the afternoon of 29th to check a couple of things. 

Coming from Georgia, it was fascinating to hear Zurab and his team, consisting of his son and his brother, shouting to each other in Georgian and then switching to English to say something to us. (Zurab also mentioned that he had been educated in Russian from year 11.) Time and time again, mainland Europeans put us Brits to shame with a command of different languages that is taken for granted. There is the added advantage that if you speak two or more languages, you are less likely to suffer from dementia in later life, but I never got round to mentioning that to them. 

So for the first couple of days, we took ourselves off to Claire's house but then Keith began to get restless so we stayed put, which allowed him to potter about in his office and garage, as long as he kept out of the way of the workers. During the course of the week, there were of course, sighs, groans and sharp intakes of breath as various idiosyncrasies were discovered - the house had, after all, been running 90% on extension leads - and tracking down the sources of various cables and leads would probably have kept Sherlock Holmes busy for a few days. We may need to set up a stall at a car boot sale to get rid of all the extensions!

And so the work continued and each day more holes in walls appeared but so too did more electric sockets - what joy! Somewhere to charge laptop, mobile, iPad, even somewhere to do the ironing without dragging the ironing board halfway through the house. Each evening, Keith and I would remind each other that that was another day done and it would all be worth it in the end, but what made the experience far less stressful than it could have been was the unfailing cheerfulness of Zurab and his team. He and Keith in particular really hit it off and could have talked for hours about electronics, IT, engineering - all the things they shared an interest in.

Now we have been able to tick that job off the list, the biggest and most invasive, but one that we couldn't have delayed and it feels so much better to have it done. So, all that is left now is:

finishing the kitchen, finishing  the downstairs toilet, updating  the bathroom, altering the en-suite shower room, insulating the conservatory roof, insulating the garage as a workshop ...

Well, Keith does like to be busy!