We popped along to the Fleadh Cheoil in Ennis this afternoon. The Fleadh is “the world’s largest annual celebration of Irish music, language, song and dance”, according to various promotional websites, and it’s quite believable having experienced the throngs today.
We’re only half-way through turf-stacking still – it’s hard work, unfortunately. We’re getting better at it, but at the moment it’s unlikely that either of us would be up for participating in the destruction of this vital habitat further next year. Purely on environmental grounds, obviously.
Nothing else particularly exciting to report – we’re looking to get some plastering done very soon, after which we’ll hopefully get some flooring in. At the moment the main bedroom has the laminate we put down ourselves, which is fine. The office room has legacy laminate which is ok-ish. The rest of the house has this black cardboard-like stuff I put down to keep the dust at bay – it’s called Antinox and can be bought for €5 per big sheet. It’s waterproof and quite nice to walk on, but definitely isn’t a permanent solution.
The builder is “too busy” to finish the work he abandoned many weeks ago now, so not sure how that’s going to work out. If he’s not careful, we’ll get other people to do the work and knock the cost off his final bill… hopefully it won’t come to that, though.
Otherwise, I chased a hare down the road in my car the other day (not deliberately) – it just wouldn’t run into the hedge for ages. It was a massive one, so would have kept the crows busy for the whole morning if it hadn’t finally taken evasive action.
Looking to buy a nice big shed very soon, but we need groundwork done first… yet more money, but worth it to get a lot of the junk out of the house, and to have somewhere to put all the turf we’ve worked so hard (intermittently) to dry. I’ve found a nice 5m x 3m steel one, so that’s high on the shopping list right now.
We worked hard on the house again today, then went for a walk in the ‘garden’. It’s so undulating that it’s like a workout on a stepper (probably, not that I’ve ever tried that to be honest).
This time next week we should have moved in properly. V has cleaned the spare room for storing all our junk, and also cleaned all of the bathroom. I’ve been chipping away at the main bedroom still – “scrape and fill” is my mantra. One of the walls still isn’t dry – I’ve burnt two bags of logs and getting on for 10kg of coal making the heating work well, but the dampness is taking a long time to shift. The dehumidifier is still taking its 7 litres a day out of the air… it’s clear that years of neglect can’t be turned around in a few weeks.
Anyway, here are some pictures of part of the land we don’t normally visit – straight down the track to the far corner. It’s a brilliant time of year to be walking – the gorse is out in bloom, skylarks shoot out of the grass when disturbed, and the cow pats are starting to harden.
The photos of cars are from what transpires to be a vintage car rally that went past the road at the end of our drive – I thought the traffic was unusually heavy!
No updates for a while as I was waiting to see how the house renovation played out. It turns out that the builder leaving everything until the last minute has resulted in nothing being done in time.
I’ve dealt with quite a few project managers in my time, and certain among them seemed to deliberately put projects in peril in order to pull off a triumph at the last minute (as they were quite good in a crisis). That’s not the case now – the builder has been distracted by participating in the local version of Strictly Come Dancing, and seems pretty indifferent to our end of the month deadline.
Everything’s apparently out of his hands – the electrician completed his work (last week, after many weeks of doing nothing on it) and the ESB need the wiring documentation before they’ll come and move the meter. Once they’ve got that, it’ll take up to 10 days to do the job. I phoned the ESB and they don’t have the documentation yet.
The plumber is unkeen to finish his work until the water is available. From the well. That needs electricity to operate the pump.
What the electrician has done isn’t entirely what we asked for, in that he’s placed sockets where they’ll be in the way of the dresser, a switch for the bathroom that won’t be possible to activate, and my favourite: the sockets where the curtain rail used to be in the sitting room. The photo attached shows the offending articles, and where the curtain rail used to be fixed. I wonder how he thinks we’ll be hanging the curtains – perhaps from a cable?
Hoping to get another two weeks renting where we are now, but unsure how that’ll pan out. The beatings will start soon…