A week of accidents!

The workshop all painted.  The bikestore is the box bit
on the left.

Now that M&S have taken on lots of temporary staff in readiness for Christmas, I am not doing anywhere near so many extra hours . . . . in fact, no extra hours.  This is good from the point of view of getting things done here, but I'm not sure how it'll be come payday!  So, I had last week off as holiday and then had to go in for my normal Sunday and Monday and have then been off for the rest of the week and back in this afternoon.  So, we have made good progress on the workshop in that time and I think we are just about ready for Dave, the electrician, to come on Tuesday.  How exciting that'll be.  It gets dark so early now we have to have builders lights on plugged into an extension, but then when you go to tidy up you can't see a thing once the extension is reeled in.  We are putting a couple of outside lights on the workshop with a motion sensor.  This will make it much easier when we go up in the evening to tuck the chickens up as well as when I have to take Bob's tea up to him in the workshop so he doesn't have to stop working!

The bike store - it'll never look this tidy again!

The bike store is now boxed in and everything is boarded, insulated and painted (just a couple of bits need a second coat of paint which I can do tomorrow).  Bob needs to go round and mark where all the sockets and lights are going which won't take two ticks, then a bit of a tidy up, make a cake and we're ready for sparky.  Everything is being surface-mounted with the cables running through trunking which makes it much easier and quicker and so he should get it all done in one day.  It'll also mean that it's easier to add or change things later on and there's no worries about hitting a cable when putting up shelves, etc.

While he's here, Dave is also going to put a heater in the bathroom.  We weren't sure if we'd need one, but got him to put the cables in for it when he wired the house anyway.  Most of the time we don't need any extra heat in there, but the chances are that when you really want a hot bath it's because you're feeling cold and achy and a warm bathroom is needed too.  So, on Thursday we cut a hole in the wall and managed to fish out the cable.  I electrocuted myself in the process!!!  I got the cable and managed to pull the clip off it, but we were surprised that the end wasn't taped over as it should be live.  So with Bob's electrician's screwdriver I touched one wire and it glowed a bit . . . I then accidentally moved it slightly and it must have bridged the two wires resulting in a bang and a flash and a melted screwdriver!  Ooops!  Apart from a bit of a shock of the non-electrical type (it did certainly make me jump!) I was fine and at least we now know it is definitely live and which trip switch to flick on Tuesday!  Bob has made a really good job of making good round the hole and you wouldn't know it wasn't done with the original stuff.

My other accident of the week was yesterday while we were plasterboarding the ceiling of the bike store.  Once again we were trying to put up whole 8' x 4' sheets and I was holding it up while Bob ran round putting some screws in - we thought there were enough in to hold it so I could let go and help put screws in, but as I turned away and stepped down from the ladder a sheet of plasterboard landed on my head!  It must have looked quite funny I suppose . . . . I'd have laughed if it'd been someone else I'm sure.

Oh, and my other accident (just a little one this time) was to slip on the mud by the front door while carrying a full washing basket meaning that half the washing had to go straight back in the machine!  Apart from that, the week's been fine!  I did need that hot bath last night though with my jarred back from the slip, cricked neck from the plasterboard and aching shoulder from all the painting - it worked wonders!

On Wednesday we had a day off and went to an auction at Montgomery.  We ended up being there most of the day because there were a couple of things we were interested in but which were hours apart in the listing.  In between we went to the wool shop to get a pattern and then back to the auction and then to Bishops Castle for lunch and back.  On one of the trips we got lost and couldn't work out where we were on the map, but knew we needed to turn left and cross the river so we turned down a little lane and came to a ford.  Wow, it was a real raging torrent and about three times wider than it should be - needless to say, we didn't drive through it!  Quite dramatic though.