Heya,

You need any boxes? Big ones, little ones, cube ones, cuboid ones and even a few very strange shapes as they have adapted to the contents that have been forced to reside inside them. The whole house is now neatly packed away in these once inoffensive but now thoroughly irritating containers.

The original instruction months and months ago was that we would get two weeks notice and needed to empty the kitchen and bathroom and they would kindly supply us with boxes for that purpose. A plan was formed. No kitchen for about two weeks meant simple food prepared using a microwave, a kettle and a toaster. This could be done with little effort so no issues were foreseen. We would buy disposable plates and cups and we already had a supply of plastic cutlery so lack of washing up facilities would be no cause for concern.

Briefing from liason officer one week before start date revealed life would never be as simple as expected and no plan would ever be good enough. Complete renewal of kitchen and bathroom, no surprise there. But they are also going to rewire the whole house! This will involve removing carpets in every room, lifting floorboards upstairs,oh, and emptying the loft completely! We have one week to box up all breakables and clear loft, including removing all loft boarding as the workmen are incapable of just moving the boards they need to.

Much discussion using words unfamiliar in our normal day to day lives ensued. Stress was anticipated and we even tried out a few stressful moments just to get used to the idea. OK, no option but to get on with it. Start date delayed by a week as apparently that would make a difference to the fact that none of us were actually in a fit state to remove 6'x2' sheets of chipboard from the loft. We did manage to empty the loft contents in two days with 7 people working for several hours on each day. Then followed sorting the ex-loft contents. 17 years worth of 'ut it in the loft and we'll sort it out later' took another two days to rummage through. Decisions were made along the lines of 'if it's been in the loft for x amount of years then we possibly don't really need it'. A large pile of discarded items grew in the back garden.

Just in case there was not enough going on, scaffolding was errected around the entire outside of the house to allow repair works to any number of possible undisclosed exterior features. The discarded items pile was moved a little further from the house.

Many items from the loft were suitable for use just not needed by us. We decided to put them in a pile with the objective of taking them to a charity shop. It was eventually necessary to phone a charity that could arrange a van to collect the stuff as there was enough stuff to furnish a small village. We did, of course, place it all in boxes to make transportatation easier. Lots of boxes. And a few days later, even more boxes and another charity van to collect.

Advised to box up all breakables to prevent damage by electricians, we started by phoning for a few more boxes. This became a regular occurrence and we are now quite friendly with the box delivery man, who actually visits more often than family members. All breakable objects in all rooms were securely boxed and taped up with the tape supplied with the first box delivery. The tape looks remarkably like normal gaffer tape but has an extra feature, about an hour after a box is sealed with it the tape releases itself from the box and just hangs around uselessly.

Start of kitchen/bathroom scheduled for Thursday. Electrics delayed till Friday. A five day job, not including weekends, and they want to start on a Friday? The word moronic springs to mind. Man in charge of refit visited on the Monday. Kitchen preparation not commented on. Bathroom access however was apparently an issue. I believe that all items going in or out of the bathroom would need to go through the standard sized doorway. Therefore I was a little confused to be told that access to the bathroom was insufficient when the access route was wider than the doorway itself. Again, teeth gritted, we moved all the supposedly offending items. That should mean everything is OK now.

Of course it was never going to be that simple. Re-wiring due to start on the Friday so a visit from the chief electrician on the Wednesday was not anticipated. The liason officer arrived with an arrogant little man that I didn't dislike at all for almost a minute. He stated that the house was not ready for the work to start. I queried why it would be expected to be as there were still two days to the start date. He said he couldn't allow his men to work in the house because of health and safety and pointed to a small tin on the floor saying, 'If one of my men steps backwards and falls over that...' I replied that the offending item was clearly part of what was waiting to be packed during the two days we had left and that it would not be there on Friday. He didn't seem convinced. He marched into my bedroom and said that there wasn't enough space for the men to work. I said I knew that but the things in the room would be put on the bed while the work was being done. He repeated that the room was not ready. I said I couldn't put the things on the bed too soon before the work started as I actually needed a place to sleep at night!

I could feel a relationship building between myself and the nasty little man. Built on his qualities of arrogance, rudeness and insulting behaviour which were a perfect match for my intense dislike of his arrogance, rudeness and insulting behaviour.

He verbally demanded a space a metre wide for his men to work in whilst physically indicating a space of at least two metres. He said that the rooms had too much in them and more would have to be boxed. I said we would be happy to box more stuff if they supplied more boxes but I didn't see how it would help as there would then be a lot more boxes but no more space to put them in. As the work needs to be done in every room it is impossible to put them somewhere out of the way. As we were now getting along so well I suggested he might like to magically produce an extra room at the back of the house that we could store all the boxes in. Finally agreeing that I had a point, the suggestion was made that a large number of the boxes could be put into storage for the duration of the work. Liason officer and arrogant electrician left to look into the possibility, leaving us with the new instructions that we should box up EVERYTHING!

More phone calls, more visits from the nice box man. More days when fewer boxes than requested were delivered, more days where no boxes turned up at all and we began to worry about the welfare of our most regular visitor. A day without a visit from the boxman is cause for concern.

Phone call from liason officer on Wednesday afternoon revealed that the boxes could indeed be put in storage. However the answer to the question, 'When?' was not forthcoming. Phone call Thursday produced more boxes but no new answers. Friday was a repeat of Thursday.

So now it is Sunday. Two weeks after the original start date (not quite original as this was supposed to have happened last August when we were first told) and we now live in a house almost entirely furnished by cardboard boxes. They make an interesting maze around the house that needs to be negotiated in order to move from room to room. We are no closer to knowing when the work will start but we have no freezer and are already using plastic cutlery as we have packed all the normal kitchenware... in a BOX!!


Arrrggghhhhh!


PS Adam was woken up a few ays ago by a scraping noise. It sounded like a cat in a box. He looked around and saw Fraggle on a box. Fraggle wasn't moving but the noise continued. The reason? Buttons had climbed into a box and somehow Fraggle had closed it and then lay down on top of it preventing her from getting out!
xxx