Soil Pipe Treasure Hunt

Managed to get a fair amount done at the house this weekend and am feeling satisfactorily achy today as a result.

Biggest change was that we knocked down most of the outhouse, leaving just the coal store and the outside toilet (well, it’s outside now anyway). It already makes the garden feel much larger. I’m slightly concerned though as we do really need to knock down the rest of it, but then what do we do for a toilet?! There have been mutterings about using my Dad’s old toilet tent, which we found in the garage a few weeks ago. I keep laughing it off, but I think it’s actually going to happen.

Jon was on the hunt for the mains waste pipe, as he’s going to need to plug the drains for our downstairs toilet into this. He first hacked through the concrete which covers our entire back garden with my Dad’s pick-axe, then dug out 3 foot of soil – sweaty, tiring work. Luckily he eventually found it, but it’s not in the most accessible location (underneath the neighbour’s dividing wall), so it’s going to take some thinking about.

The power!

I got to use my first power tool! The SDS Makita drill. I couldn’t quite believe it when Jon handed it over to me. The responsibility! Ok, I was only chipping off the floor tiles from the outhouse, but it was something. Now I want to use more power dills – bigger and faster.

By the end of the day on Sunday we were both super tired. Of course I decided that was the perfect time to pick an argument. It was Jon’s last tip run and I was helping him load all the bags into my car. They were really heavy and emptying them into the boot I suddenly felt irrationally worried that my little car wouldn’t be able to handle it and that Jon was pushing the limits of its capabilities. I told him in no uncertain terms that he ‘wasn’t respecting the car’ and if it broke down and I couldn’t get to work, it would be his fault!

Just a slight over-exaggeration and paranoia because of course my car was fine, and Jon and I made up. No matter what I say about him in these posts, there’s no one else I could do this project with. He’s amazing and I can’t wait until we are actually in this place together…with a cat (he bought me a cat-flap for my birthday with the promise that he would install it when we move in. That’s love!)