It has been a week of coming and going this week at Project Money Pit, as the pond and scaffolding finally left us and a few new additions to the project made an appearance!
First the departures… the scaffolding came down on Thursday and the house now looks like a proper house again! RTC and Fred have done an amazing job and after last weeks little paint-a-thon, the place looks better than ever. With the scaffolding disappearing at long last though, this also meant the last appearance from RTC (to collect his cash) however not before he took away the gigantic breeding pond from the back of the garden. In order to get it out, they had to remove the back fence and then Mr P, RTC, Fred and myself could slowly lever it out and into Ross’ van. Alas the measurement were not quite right and we ended up having to fetch a trailer and all sorts of other tom-foolery before we got rid of it once and for all!
Once that had gone, it was time to concentrate on our new arrivals. Now, maybe I’ve been watching too many episodes of Kirsty’s Home Made Home, but I was determined that if we bought a fireplace that it should have a story behind it, and today I finally got my wish! Bright and early Feiday morning Miss P paid a visit to the centre of the mighty Bridge of Trow and while perusing a second hand shop called The White Elephant, she spotted 3 rather fantastic fireplaces. So she returned home, waited for Mr P to arrive and we embarked into town. After a bit of umming and ahhin, we decide to try a bit of haggling and low and behold the lady in the shop let us have them for a bargain! This means we can now have a lovely fireplace with tiles in the living room, but also some lovely ones upstairs in the bedroom. And all this without having to fork out £400 like the ones we saw in Cardiff last week!!
Inevitably, with demolition work to be done, Mr P was soon taking apart the wall of the living room - well it had to be done before we could decorate after all – and I thought you should see our new fireplace in all it’s glory!
*UPDATE: After saying that everything must have a story, well we managed to develop the tale of the fireplace a little further this weekend by buying a surround from an auction in Devon. We really are living the middle-class, house renovation dream now!!
Work outside is also progressing nicely, with RTC finally finishing off the quoine stones and also staking a claim to the big pond at the back of the garden, so it looks like that could be leaving us soon as well! Speaking of things leaving, with the quoine stones being completed that means the scaffolding will be taken down next week and we will finally have the house looking like it is supposed to – well, almost! Before we do that though, the quoines need painting and what better way to do that than recruit yet more cheap labour, in the form of Daver and Piran. So, with the promise of a barbecue and bash at the pond with a sledgehammer, I sent them shinning up the scaffold like a pair of Victorian urchins, while I ’supervised’ from ground level. As expected, they couldn’t resist putting some graffiti on the house in their own inimitable style, but hopefully that won’t show through now the final coat of paint is up!
This meant we were all clear for Operation Transfer, which would see the arrival of Timothy Passmore to the mighty Bridge of Trow and with a bed set up he had somewhere ready prepared to hide under! Fortunately with Miss P returning from work, the transfer went without a hitch and so this now means the whole of Team TPT are resident at 14 Frome Road and 18 Kensington Court is just a dim and distant memory (until we go back and clean it on Monday that is!) As you can see, young Tim is settling in well, however he appears to be most perplexed by all the strange new smells and is determined to explore as much of the house as he can - no matter how much we try and stop him!
For those wondering about RTC, we thought we should post a picture of him to give you an idea of just who we’re going on about. Here is, with dad Fred, taking a break from his usual shenanigans to pose for a photo. Although we have been a bit cheeky about him on here, he has done an amazing job and if you ever need any damp prooding done in the Trowbidge area, then 
After many a long discussion with Malc the carpet man last week, we have had a bit of a change of heart when it comes to the bedroom flooring and a lot of that is down to yours truly. Having removed the laminate flooring and the disgusting carpet in the two big bedrooms, we have actually uncovered some rather splendid floorboards and so we have decided to get them sanded. The Passmores were both very reticent at the thought of doing this on another house (having done it on 2 of Miss P’s houses already), however I boldly declared that I was up for the job and was duly dispatched to the Trowbridge Tool Hire centre in order to get a floor sander for the weekend. Returning with it on Friday night, I soon discovered why the Passmore’s were so reluctant to do this particular job again, as it is dusty, noisy and back breaking work. Gradually moving my way through the course-ness of the belts, while filling my lungs with sawdust (despite wearing the necessary protective face mask!) it soon became clear that this was much more than a ‘couple of hours’ work and I could see my weekend vanishing before me! Not even the breaking of McDonalds embargo (chicken nuggets and strawberry milkshakes taste so good but so morally bad!!) could help cheer my mood at the prospect of a very long weekend ahead of me.
As you can see, the girls did a fantastic job and soon had the bedrooms looking ready for painting – albeit with a few holes in the wall which weren’t their fault. Meanwhile outside, Mr and Mrs T did a great job clearing the back of the garden, revealing the back wall and making the garden feel open and much more spacious in the process. I was upstairs sanding.
With the workmen hard at work inside, we decided to have a bit of a day in the garden once mr and Mrs T had bid their farewells. As the afternoon progressed Mr P and Auntie Fifi began attacking the remainder of the virginia creeper on the roof of the house and the sheds and soon you could actually see the brickwork on the house and roof of the sheds. However the question of where to put it, soon began to fear it’s head as there was miles and miles of the dreaded stuff. At this point, we decided, why not turn the pond into a giant compost bin and in order to do that, we’d have to don the waders and cut the lining to finish the draining.So, with Miss P collected from work, it was time for me to don the comedy trousers and climb into the frog pond! I think the pictures speak for themselves, however needless to say it was a pretty darn disgusting job, as was trying to catch all the little hoppers who used to call the pond their home!
