Chaos.

Blame Clever Bird for Creative Clara not blogging yesterday bloggees! After all the hard work at the weekend Baggy decided that she would take it easy yesterday - just get The Domestic Goddess to do a little bit of cleaning and tidying. That was until Clever Bird suddenly realised that the chap was coming at 8.00am this morning to fit the new electric heaters in the soon-to-be holiday cottage! Now that should be a simple enough operation, as long as he could get to the locations where they were going. But this is a) Baggy's house and b) The Domestic Goddess we're talking about.

Quite! So instead of having a nice relaxing day, The Domestic Goddess spent pretty much the whole day trying to clear the way to the four places the new radiators were going. It's fascinating what seven year's worth of dust and cobwebs look like - or perhaps that should read "scary". Well at least it's nearly Halloween.

This morning Baggy was dragged out of bed at 6.30am by Clever Bird so that she wasn't panicking about men turning up at 8.00. Just as well really as the first chap arrived at 7.15am! Much debate was had over the wonky walls - the joys of living in a fifteenth-century house - and the total lack of power to a key point in the bathroom.

The bathroom radiator hasn't worked for over two years, after an electrician "Sorted out some wires". Apparently there was absolutely no power going to it. After much thinking and scrabbling about in cupboards Clever Bird realised there was a plug socket in the airing cupboard. The plug in it said "Rad". "Could that be it?" she asked. Electrician did some scrabbling. "Yep, sorted". "Ah good, what was wrong?" "The plug wasn't in properly". Yep, well done Baggy, freezing in the bathroom for the last two winters because there was no heating! Mind you, it never had much effect anyway and ate electricity.

As if to prove to Baggy that it was a good decision to get these heaters, it is very cold in little old Suffolk today! The Goddess had the fire going all night and this morning, but with the front door open for people to run in and out, it was freezing. The first heater installed was the bathroom one.

Hormonal Hannah will take a while to accept it because she doesn't like change and it's much more in-your-face than the old one. However, she'll get over it, because for the first time ever, the bathroom is warm! It stopped working after five minutes because (after much figuring out), the fuse in the plug blew. Sigh.

The next one fitted was in the sitting room. This took twice as long as it should have done to fit, due to the totally wonky timber-framed walls!

 

Ugly old broken, totally useless, very expensive to run, night-storage heater.

Very wonky fifteenth-century, timber-framed wall.

 

 

Lovely new, much slimmer, cheaper to run, instant heat, radiator.

 

 

Minty Mutt's instant new favourite place to sleep and warm his arthritic hips!

 

The next debate was where to put the kitchen radiator. The original plan to put a tall one on a wall was dismissed when it became clear that wattle-and-daub is not great for fixing heavy radiators to. Fortunately the chap had thought ahead and brought a Plan B one with him. After more debate it was decided to put it where the old night storage heater was. The one that hasn't worked for three years!

 





Kitchen radiator.

 

The last one to be fitted was upstairs. Again there was a change of plan and it went on a partition wall instead of the wattle-and-daub one. There has never been any heating upstairs since Baggy and Calum moved in seven years ago, so it's novel having some warmth up there.

 

 

Upstairs heat.

 

Over ninety-minutes after he should have left, the lovely chap from the heating company was finally able to head off and leave Baggy and the furries to soak up the heat.

 

 

What should be happening now is The Goddess should be carrying on clearing up and packing stuff, but Creative Clara has taken over.........