Retail Therapy

As well as all the builder-ing, this project has been a bit about spending money to buy the materials in the first place. Saturday saw us headed for Dublin and IKEA where Mum and Dad had arranged to meet Sparks with his van (the haulier!) to buy the kitchen and then, from B+Q, the sink unit for the utility room and all the paint, varnish and decorating materials. Sparks had had to remove all the internal woodwork from the van (shelves and such) to fit all the flat packs in. The gang burn their way through the new "Laser" card at an alarming rate. As they say in the war films, we cannot tell you how many (euros) went on the raid but we counted them out and we counted them back. Rather nicely, IKEA were running a promo where for every 1000 euro spent you got a 100 euro gift card back! Result.

With the van not quite full but definitely well loaded down, the team adjourn to Sparks' house where they meet re-acquaint themselves with Mr Sparks and "Number 2 Apprentice" (4). N2A follows all the stories of his Dad on Facebook and on here and loves everything about building and tool-wrangling. He thinks his Dad is total hero. He sees a picture of his Dad doing, say, plumbing and proclaims "You can do EVERYthing, Daddy! You're like "Handy Manny"! (a character in a kids' cartoon). Every time Dad does anything round the house, N2A wants to help. Sparks tells us that this leads to scary moments where, when they are using crow bar and hammer to break up a fence, N2A suggests "You hold the crow bar, Daddy and I'll hit it with a hammer!" (Whimpers of fear from Daddy).

From there, the gang head for Steak Lady's house so that they can show all the pictures of the project to Steak Lady and Mr Steak Lady (who we are sure must have his own proper blog-name but we can't remember it). They are also invited to a roast chicken dinner.

Back in Silverwood they are all involved in dreaming up a 20-clue rhyming Easter Egg hunt for the children. More of that in another post.

Deefs