Old before my Time!!!

I think the stress of the building work has aged me!!!!!  ;-)))

So, after much anticipation and excitement at the prospect of getting the through floor lift fitted this week, it looks like it's not going ahead!

The company's joiner was coming this afternoon to measure up before cutting the hole in the floor tomorrow.  Johnny the foreman on our building project and Alan the electrician went up to our bedroom early afternoon to pull the carpet back and re-route cables that were running where the aperture would be cut, and after a while Johnny came down looking rather grim.   Turns out they managed to re-route the cables without any problem but also running across the floor where the hole will be are some water / heating pipes and a fire hearth that is original to the house and from a fireplace that is long gone, that we didn't even know existed.

The lift company's joiner arrived, a jolly chap called Paul, but he soon lost his smile when he saw what awaited him upstairs.  

He came back down saying he'd had no idea we lived in Victorian property and that he'd be dealing with ash deadening, lathe and plaster ceiling and thick joists.  And that was before the issue of the pipes and the hearth!  I pointed out that we'd had an engineer from the company visit, a surveyor and an architect who was here for over two hours, so I would have thought one of their reports would have mentioned the age of the house!

He phoned his boss and I spoke to him and he suggested that since we had builders on site, maybe they could re-route the pipes and remove the hearth.  I pointed out to him that our builders are here to do a specific job and they are working very hard to make sure their work is finished by the end date in two weeks time, so may not have the capacity or the inclination to take on this extra work.  Plus it would incur a cost that I don't intend to pay and would expect the lift company to absorb.

We agreed he would come to meet with us on Wednesday and Paul went on his merry way.

Now knowing how wonderful out builders are, I knew they would do what they could to help (they'd already gone beyond what they had to do in preparing the space for the lift joiner coming) and Johnny the foreman told me he'd already phoned his boss to update him and suggested that the easiest and best solution would be for them to remove the ash deadening and the hearth as they would do it as tidily and carefully as possible.

David phoned the boss man and he came out at 6pm and had a look.   He is so lovely and was so angry our behalf.   He says it's not a problem to get Johnny and one of the other guys to remove the hearth tomorrow and make sure the ash deadening is carefully removed and properly stored while the work gets done.  We have agreed to this and David sent a polite but strongly worded email to the lift company this evening, expressing our disappointment at the delay and annoyance at all this just coming to light now.   It will be an interesting meeting on Wednesday!

I knew I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up for being in my own bed on Thursday night.