Glossing over

Having taken a few days off work and not gone away as planned, I set to painting the woodwork in the bathroom. It's a job that's been waiting to be done for two and a half years now. And it's finally done, except the paint ran a bit and needed touching up this morning and the whole house stinks of drying gloss paint, and I managed to get white spirit into a cut on my finger (youch), and we can't shower until the paint dries a bit more.

But at least when the whole house smells of paint it's not such a worry that you might be stinkin' it up as one of the great unwashed!

Plumb lucky

Before I start this story you should know about "the Lanes". The Lanes were the family who lived in our house before us and dad, Geoff, thought he knew what he was doing with the old DIY. Which is why our hall has artexing which attacks you, and our old fireplaces in the living room had stone cladding stuck on them.

We plumbed in a new washing machine today.

Twice.

I blame "the Lanes".

You see the new machine is a cold fill only, with dire warnings if the machine is connected to the hot infill tap. So when we eventually got the old (slightly corroded) hoses off the taps I was very careful to connect the cold tap to the new machine.

We left the machine running through it's initial programme while we took the old machine to the swanky new tip they've opened near our house (it's handy living in the less fashionable end of town - we're near soul-sucking, bank-holiday traffic generator IKEA too!). When we got back I thought "I'll just check that connection is dry," and reached down the back of the machine, whereupon I discovered the "cold" water pipe was very hot indeed.

One reinstallation later and I found myself still muttering about "the Lanes" who, it seems, couldn't put the blue and red taps on the right pipes. I reckon Geoff was half cut when he did most of his DIY. Or he was rushing to finish the job in time for the football. Muppet.