Skylight Part 3

It's been a while since the last episode in the ongoing saga of incompetence and grief that is Snupe Douggie Doug's attempts to save a few sheckles by Doing it Himself.

I'm sure that you will be amused to hear that during my two weeks off I found that the fucking skylight I installed only went and bastard leaked didn't it! But that wasn't the only problem I was facing with water on that particular day! It was the second Saturday of my two weeks off and it pissed it down with rain like it only can in England. By this, I mean it wasn't just coming down in drops hard and vertically, it was coming down in sideways sheets like a well aimed bucket of water at your neighbours when they're massed outside your house near rioting cos you've had a couple of measly out of control garden fires (well excuuuuuse me). I mean, this was serious sodding rain man - I was searching for left over nails so I could use the wood from the demolished shed to build an ark...

I thought, well if that window was ever going to leak it will be doing so now, so I went upin the loft to check - and sure enough, water was actually getting in - not that much, but enough to want to stop it dripping on the electric cables in the loft... All that bloody work and the smugness afterwards - gone to pot. Luckily it wasn't leaking badly, I found that it was due to the rain blowing up a join in the flashing which we'd missed. So, half a tube of mastick, some dodgy wet roof clinging antics and much doubting of half of the windows true parentage later and the problem was solved. I climbed back in and thought I'd make a nice coffee and watch some telly... I threw my trainers on the porch, which I'd decorated the previous day with some nice wood tongue and groove boarding and instead of hearing the normal trainer on hard surface noise I heard a load splash :-O !!!! I might as well have run a cold bath and thrown them in that, as the porch was swimming with water! Turns out my front door leaks and is the source of dodgy wet patches in more unexpected places then grandpa at christmas when he's been at the Sherry.

Not only that, but there was that much water building up outside that water was penetrating a few strategic places in the crumbled mortar between the bricks and under the bloody windowsills. So I opened the front door to go and have a look from the outside and nearly had a heart attack - there was a massive rising pool of water right outside my front door and it had got to under an inch of coming in over the top of my raised porch step!!!! I couldn't get out of the house without calling the coastguard!

Actually, I didn't have a choice - I realised that even with my expert woodwork skills(!) I was going to be flooded before I could knock up a raft so I had to get out there and find out why the hell water was rising outside my door so fast (it did occur to me at this point that it would be just my luck if in-fact it was my house that was sinking, not the water rising). It turns out there is a flaw with our road. While practical from a security point of view and aesthetically pleasing to the eye, our gravel road is not so practical when it comes to having the equivalent of the atlantic dropped on it from the heavens in one go, as those little gravel stones block the bloody drains. So I had to stand ankle deep in the enormous puddle that used to be my road and drive and remove those bloody little stones from the drain covers quicker then the water could block them up again. Luckily, with the aid of some sandbags our kidd dropped, I was able to avert disaster but hence since the puddle plunging I've got (and have had all week) the flu :(

You're going to love my next job though - I'm going to remove the wall between the kitchen and staircase before the sparky comes in to rewire the place... First of all though I have to inspect the supporting beam apparently because it's holding up a brick wall above it. It's only a small wall so I can't see it being a problem.

The other housy thing that happened (and I'm sure the jinx was pissed and meant to do it to my house but missed) was that with all this rain and stuff the sewers/waste pipes backed up after getting blocked and exploded the weakest cover plate which happened to be two doors down and literally covered their back garden in shit. It took him half a day to clear it up and he weighed the cover down with some hefty weighty garden items but the second night, exactly the same thing happened and that night all our turds once again ended up in his back garden. I spoke to him in the morning and he said he "gives up, my garden is officially the streets toilet".

Now as you know, I'm all for efficency, directness, taking the racing line etc. and so it was with some suprise that my neighbour went absolutely ballistic went he found me sat on his back fence swinging one in. He was totally like "what the hell are you doing" and I was all like "well it's going to end up here anyway" but he just failed to get it.

Ok, I made the last bit up - but I told him I might as well do it to save time and he said he'd leave some paper on the post for me!