We thought we’d go along and check progress, as we’re due to give notice to our landlord that we’ll be moving out in a month’s time. The builder is confident that we’ll be able to get in here before then. A lot has been done, but you’d have to say that there are one or two rough edges to be smoothed-off yet. The plumber is coming Monday apparently, which is good news – there’ll be radiators and a new water tank and cylinder then. The main thing is to get the electricity back on, which will happen after second fix. Electricity will get us well water (hopefully), and the means to run a dehumidifier.
Author: silicon
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AddressPal works!
I got an email this morning letting me know that the parcel I’d had sent to St. Albans in the UK (which arrived there on Monday) had made it to my nearest post office in Ireland. I collected it after work and paid €3.50 for the service – very happy! I now have this plinth heater (electric/central heating switchable) and it cost a lot less than it would have any other way. Barring minor details like my An Post ID not having made it onto the address label (despite having entered it when I ordered), things went very smoothly. The consequence of not having the ID on the parcel was that someone stuck a label on it threatening that things might not go so well in future if I didn’t buck my ideas up (in slightly less aggressive phrasing).
The featured photo attached to this post is of the box concerned. Note how I’ve carefully shot it to remove any visual cues to help you see how big a parcel can make it through. The answer is “quite big”.
I’m trying to motivate myself to blog more frequently again. Things are moving at a reasonable pace on the cottage renovation now – I spoke with the builder again today and apparently the wiring is done. I’ve got lots of photos still on my camera covering house renovation work but have been very pushed for time recently, which has resulted in their upload being put on the long finger. See, I’m like a native now.
As a not-in-any-way seamless link, I’ve added a new “glossary of terms” section to the blog to cover stuff I’ve heard in Ireland and what I think it means. Please let me know if I’ve got it all wrong.
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New year’s resolution clearly wasn’t to keep my blog up to date
Progress continued on the bog house. The last time I saw it before Christmas, it was full of rubble and in an utter state. It reminded me of when we first met the builder and he told us to bear in mind that we were seeing it in the worst condition it would ever be in. That wasn’t actually true, as with the ceilings all pulled down it looked significantly less homely.
Anyway, a week or so ago we met the builder on-site, and they’d removed all the rubble from inside the house, and had also demolished the (correct) wall between the two bedrooms to make one big space.
We talked through where we wanted sockets, radiators, etc. and he spray painted their locations onto the walls. The main push now is to get all the fittings for the bathroom, a special plinth radiator for the kitchen, and the new stove ordered.
As of 17th January, all this is pretty much done. I’ve ordered the plinth radiator thing from the UK, which will make it here via An Post’s “AddressPal” forwarding service. You sign up with them, get given a special code to use as the first line of your address for UK deliveries, then get stuff sent to their place in St. Albans. An Post then pop it onto a plane and it arrives at the nearest post office in Ireland and they let you know. It should cost €3.50 when I pick it up.
I went to look at a heavily-discounted solid fuel stove today, and will be buying it tomorrow (their card machine didn’t work properly and despite their request for me to fix it, I thought better of meddling). The stove is really heavy, as it has a lot of metalwork in it for water pipes, etc. (it’ll be our boiler for hot water and central heating). Last main item to buy now is a bath…
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And I will try-y-y-y to fix you…
The Bongo has been repaired. It was as simple as paying an extortionate amount of money for a second-hand fuel pump, having it shipped over to Ireland to a mechanic, then paying them an only-slightly-less upsetting wodge of cash to rip out the old and install the new. So far, so good…
We went to visit the house yesterday evening to check on the renovation progress. I was warned by someone I’ve been working with that you can’t trust Irish builders, but the roofs have both been replaced, and work has really moved on in general. I would reference the second (and easily worst IMHO) episode of Fawlty Towers at this point, but don’t want to tempt fate as they’ve got an internal wall to knock down and a doorway to seal up yet.
Anyway, overall I’m very impressed, and they even put up some tinsel on the scaffolding 🙂
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“New” kitchen arrival
Earlier in the week we looked at a kitchen that someone was selling via DoneDeal (it’s a classified advert website that’s very popular in Ireland).
The sellers were a really nice couple from Gdansk and it was very informative talking to them about their experience over here as fellow immigrants (or immigrant-elect in my case).
The main gripe was the weather, which is fair enough for many, but in their home town it hits -20 in the winter so they probably can’t complain too much.
The other issue they had was with those claiming benefits and not wanting to work. There’s been plenty of bad press about people from other countries being dole scroungers, but it’s well worth remembering that the vast majority of people motivated enough to leave their own countries to seek a better life do expect to put in the hours to achieve that – they just want the opportunity. The native population perhaps less so at times – very similar to the UK in that respect.
They ended up delivering the kitchen to us, as getting a van was impossible. So the place we’re renting now has a kitchen in one of the sitting rooms. I think it’ll freak out the landlord if he comes in at any point!
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The Bongo is sick
Following a week of it not wanting to set off first thing in the morning (I’d assumed it was in sympathy with me, or down to the cold weather), the Bongo became progressively more ill. I’m no mechanic, so I took it to one. They tried it out for a couple of days but couldn’t find anything wrong, so I went to pick it up.
Seconds after I’d started it to go home, the juddering commenced, followed by coughing, shivering, then a funereal silence. Feeling perversely pleased that I’d demonstrated that I wasn’t making it up, I left the Bongo with them to be further examined.
The next day I got a call saying that the reason it’d been misbehaving was that the fuel pump had a big leak. Apparently this causes issues with fuel not getting into the engine, which seems perfectly logical. The mechanic slightly scared me when he said that it’d been squirting cold diesel onto the outside of the hot engine for some time. I got confirmation that it would be dangerous to drive it, so it’s stranded now.
At least the diagnosis tallies with the increased smell of diesel I’d noticed a while ago. On reflection, my purchase of one of those “magic tree” car air fresheners probably wasn’t the best response to that warning sign.
Now to source a working fuel pump for a 20 year old Japanese import vehicle, and then coax the mechanic into having a go at fitting it…
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Further evidence of proof by assertion’s flaws…
“It’s not a cold house”. Yes, my crazed landlord, it is. Or rather, when it’s cold outside, it’s also cold inside. I know it’s been one of those years that has shown a callous disregard for logic and truth, but as a Nobel prize winner once sang, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. The answer is “through the poorly-sealed double glazing and all around the house, as almost none of the internal doors shut properly”.
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Revenge of the Treaty City
Limerick is known as the Treaty City due to stuff that happened a long time ago that was no one’s fault really. That said, I do think that some payback may have occurred today at the hands of an Irish barber. I’m pretty sure I just asked for my hair to be made tidier, and didn’t say “please can you make it look exactly like Hitler’s”? Anyway, with suitable use of gel, the always-wise refusal to sport a moustache, and taking care not to mention the war, I might just get away with it.
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Stop press: builder thinking about starting work sometime next week maybe
Hopefully a more accurate headline than many we’ve seen of late, but not holding our breath on that one.
We’ve whittled down our list of things for the builder to do:
- Main roof replacement.
- Kitchen flat roof replacement.
- Electricity – complete re-wiring.
- Plumbing – fitting of new back boiler stove, new cold and hot water tanks, etc.
- Knock two of the bedrooms into one, seal off one of the doorways, make flooring nice and insulated.
- Replace all ceilings, plaster and insulate.
That’s pretty much the whole budget used up, so the oil boiler I wanted is going on the long finger, as they say around here.
The featured photo in this post is one I took the weekend before last when we did a day trip over to County Clare on the Tarbert ferry. The view is of the dock on the Clare side as the sun was going down while we were waiting for the return ferry. It’s a really decent (if not particularly cheap) service – you can take your car/van/whatever over with passengers for under €30 return and it takes about 30 minutes to cross.
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Wow – over a month since my last post…
…. since then, things have been pretty busy.
The best event was my mum and dad coming over to visit for a week – their first trip to Ireland and the sun mostly shone. Since I wasn’t working at the time I was able to go around the area with them, not that I’m much of a tour guide being just a blow-in here.
I also got a contract at long last – I’m now working on cloud computing stuff for a multinational manufacturer. It’s quite interesting, and a substantial departure from previous office environments set within a factory – this one has sunlight and no buckets collecting rainwater in the roof (to the best of my knowledge).
Probably the oddest thing to happen within the last month (geopolitical events notwithstanding) was the other weekend when we were out on the bog measuring up for curtains, etc. V heard a car coming down the drive (which is very much a dirt track still).
We went around to the front of the house to greet the visitors, assuming they’d be neighbours having a nose around. Imagine our surprise when we discovered a car full of people looking up at us expectantly. What are the chances that we’d get doorstepped by some Jehovah’s Witnesses in the middle of nowhere on a Saturday afternoon?
It was quite worrying watching their car trying to turn around to leave with the wheels sliding in the mud. Unfortunately for them, they left full-handed (of Watchtowers). At least they didn’t try the “science has no answers to global warming, so God will sort it out” approach employed by the last lot I spoke with in England… maybe it doesn’t work so well if you’re visiting people who are happy to cut and burn peatland with wild abandon until there’s nothing left. See this site for more info on that.