Rain, Rain, Rain

It began raining sometime in the night and, according to the 5-day forecast for Crieff (the closest we can get to Comrie's online forecast) it's going to go on raining all week, heavily at times.

Ally, shortly followed by the Carmichael's van at 8 brought joiners to work for the day. Neil and another fellow who is not part of the regular crew have been working on erecting the two support poles for the verandah roof (see photo). They are now preparing to build square covers for the bottom of each pole to hide the metal bottom pieces which are bolted into both the pole and the concrete slab. I don't think these posts will be going anywhere anytime soon. The photo was taken from the kitchen window.

Scotty and Crawford are on leave. Crawford because he tore ligaments in his foot at the weekend, playing football, and Scotty because his wife just gave birth to their first child last night so he's quite otherly engaged.

Ally has been installing the bulkhead and is currently in the process of putting some leftover bits from our shower enclosure wetwall on top of the bulkhead so we'll have a waterproof surface for a soap dish, toothbrush holder, and guests' toiletries. Perhaps he'll even have enough for a backsplash.

I kept looking for the painters but, at 8:30, Raymond Cramb phoned to say the painting crew wouldn't be coming this morning as they had other things to do in Crieff. He said they might come later today but would be here tomorrow for sure.

Sometime around 10 the brickies (except Mr Jack) showed up and, shortly thereafter, so did the Stewart's Building Supply lorry to deliver more building sand. (I didn't see whether anything else was dropped off.) One of the brickies is laying some slabs from our back stoop to the paved drive near the garage so that we-- finally--won't have to track through the mud to get into the house. With all this rain, that would surely have been the case. The other brickies are digging a hole of epic proportions where we used to have a big concrete planter filled with ivy. Two sizeable planters have stood for many years at the end of the paved area just inside our gate (room for one car). One had a profusion of ivy sprouting from and around it and the other had a pernicious and twisted shrub of some sort. They have been the brickies' bane and so were thrilled when we said they could get rid of both of them. I'm not sure why they need to dig such a deep hole but I'm certain they're not looking for buried treasure, trying to get to China, or just larking about. (They take turns digging with a shovel and, the last I looked, they were waist-deep in the hole. You can just see the mound of dirt they've taken out of the hole in the background of the verandah photo.)

Raymond Cramb phoned again to say he was in the process of ordering our sitting room wallpaper and learned it wouldn't be in until May 31st and did we still want it? I'm thinking we do because it seemed to be the perfect choice, but when Don gets home from golf (which should be any minute now), we'll confer and let Raymond know. He said they can go ahead and do all the trim so that when the paper comes in, they'll just have to come put it up and that'll be us finished. I had so hoped we'd have that all taken care of by the end of the month, but there always seem to be glitches.

The latest glitch we discovered this morning is that rainwater is seeping under the front door frame and into the entry area because the door set (it came as a one-piece frame with the side window panel and the door) hasn't been sealed at the bottom yet. Fortunately the rain isn't blowing in and there is no floor covering yet to be ruined.

I've been doing some tidying up in anticipation of our guests this afternoon and early evening. After lunch I'll start work on chopping and doing other preparations for our evening meal. I sure do look forward to getting back into some sort of routine around the house, not to mention getting back into my studio. Right now it's very hit-and-miss because I am still having to stay out of the way of tradesmen. Even worse, until the carpentry is finished, some of the painting can't be done (except in a couple of places where the painting or papering must happen first and then the carpentry). Until those two things get done the flooring can't go down. And until the flooring goes down, the furniture can't be placed back where it belongs and the boxes can't be unpacked and studio things brought home and put back on shelves. I keep waiting to exhale.