Status Quo Ante
Our roofing crisis is near its end. Last weekend we had the last of seven payments from our neighbours for their share of the eight grand. We hadn’t known this last landlord’s contact details, until J. sent his letting agents a letter outlining the legal ramifications for him and for them. That worked. He said the letting agents had failed to pass on the previous messages. Whatever it was, he came by with an envelope full of cash, and so today we had the roofing company’s receipt for payment in full, just after their Second Final Reminder Invoice. It was a relief not to get sucked into the vortex of pursuing people through the courts and being pursued in turn by the roofers.
This week the electricians came and replaced the bathroom fittings that had water flowing through them every time it rained in January and February. On Monday and Tuesday the guys who repainted our loungeroom and hall last year will be repainting our bathroom and kitchen, after we spend Sunday evening clearing out both rooms. And then it will be done. We aren’t bothering to get the ceilings replastered, because they’ve dried out thoroughly and seem solid enough to everyone who’s looked at them.
And we’ll be a bit better off for all the effort, even if we would rather not have gone through it all. The new paint will freshen things up, and some of the new electrical fittings are better than what they replaced. We learned that the metal-face-plated light switches in both rooms weren’t properly earthed, which is just what you want when you’re switching the lights off with wet hands from the bathroom sink. Thanks, Big and Questionable hardware chain who fitted the bathroom and kitchen for the previous owners. (We’ll really have cause to curse them if we ever have to replace the boiler, which they enclosed behind a kitchen bench and cupboard that would have to be ripped out to get at it.)
Moral: None, really. You can’t do anything much about storms like those unless your address is Valhalla.
27 April 2012