the dining room saga.....

The original plan was just to open up the fireplace and have a woodburner installed. We spoke to a builder in June who said he could do it but not until the beginning of Sept......which we thought was OK. Then it started to be a case of 'well i'm quite busy'.....so I got my Dad to come along and knock out the old fireplace so the builder could just come in and do the installation.
BUT........he kept giving us the runaround. I was annoyed because i'd rather he'd just been honest and said he was tied up with a job and couldn't do it. It was the endless 'i'll call you' or 'i'll drop in tonight after work' and then doing neither that really got me mad.
So we ended up getting a different firm to look at the job (through a friend).......and suddenly the job got bigger. We decided to just get the whole room finished.
So we had a bricky in to tidy up the fireplace and put a hearth stone in. He was a right grumpy sod!
Then the plasterers came in. They knocked back one really messy wall and fresh plastered that and they plastered the chimney breast too. Plaster dust gets everywhere. I'm not a stranger the to the mess of building works but honestly that was just awful. Still finding layers of plaster dust on stuff now! (no comments about my housekeeping, if you don't mind). The plasterers were good guys. I liked them.
Then a joiner to fix the ceiling. He was a good lad too.
Then scaffold went up. The guys came to install the woodburner. They got up the scaffold. They came back down the scaffold.

'We can't do it'

'oh'

Chimneys not safe. So. More scaffold. More delays. Wait for bricklayer to come. More money.

An argument about the bricklayers pricing policy and our project manager not being entirely clear about that. We resolved it. Not entirely to my satisfaction but that's because i'm a miserly sod!

So on the 19th of November, considerably later in the year than we anticipated our woodburner was finally installed!

*big cheer*

I have to mention here that independently of this work we had a couple of other builders in to do some odd jobs and finishing off and they were a pleasure to have here. Well, mostly. Cos if Cookie reads this I don't want him getting all self-important.
Will post the photos in another entry because it will be easier.