House on Fire

We had a bit of a scare at the house last weekend, when we nearly set fire to the place.

Ok I nearly set fire to the place.

Jon was up in the attic and I was busy (read: faffing) in the upstairs bathroom, when he yells out that he can smell something burning. That was immediately followed by a shout of ’something’s on fire’ and his swift decent through the open ceiling. I could smell it by now and Jon’s panic was catching, but I was also nearly in tears as from downstairs he was shouting ‘you switched the fire on!’ Slowly my brain caught up with what was happening and it finally dawned on me...I must have accidentally switched on the fire heater when I had been switching on plugs to turn on Jon’s drill.

The electric fire heater is probably the most dangerous thing we have in the house and Jon had warned me about keeping an eye on it, but I hadn’t realised it was still plugged in. After being instructed to immediately unplug everything, I crept guiltily downstairs to see the damage - I was a teary, adrenalin-pumped wreck. The heater had been lent up against thermalined plaster board which had burnt and melted (explained the smell). Apparently they were expensive, but it could have been a lot worse...luckily we caught it before the flames had taken hold.

We have decided to get some help on the house. Not because of this incident, but because getting everything ready for the steels in the attic (to support the chimneys) and the bifold doors is super complicated and actually getting them in place is going to need muscle power, which I definitely do not have enough of.

This was demonstrated when I was helping Jon get the bath out of his van and into the house. It’s a huge bath! I could easily drown in it. And just this fact alone should have alerted me to the fact it was going to be heavy, but I didn’t anticipate it being quite so heavy. I was proud of myself for managing to move it at all. We got to the front door and I warned Jon that I would have to put it down soon or I would drop it. Not really listening (or believing) the fear in my bleating, Jon continued trying to manoeuvre it through the door and I realised that ‘soon’ meant immediately. My fingers gave out and the bath fell.

Neither of us can bring ourselves to unwrap it and see whether the crack sound as it made contact with the concrete does in fact equate to a crack in the bath, so that will be a wonderful surprise when we come to fitting it.

Later that day when I had gone off to meet some friends, Jon had some guys round to talk about the water supply. He asked them if, while they were there, they would mind helping him move the bath upstairs. It took all 3 of them half an hour to get that bath up the stairs! They couldn't believe it when Jon told them he had initially expected me to do it with him. 

That made me feel a little bit better, but it was clear that more help would be needed for the steels, which are extremely heavy. They're hopefully coming in a couple of weekends time, with Jon currently doing all the measurements and calculations. As an aside I have learnt that Jon, like many men (broad generalisation, but I speak from my own experience), cannot multitask. While he was up in the attic measuring, I would ask important questions like 'what do you want in your sandwich?, only to be met with ‘Jane. I can’t answer that at the moment!’

To be fair, it does look awfully complicated, and is obviously very important it’s all correct otherwise we could end up with the ceiling caving in!