Soft Shoe

At the tail end of last week the build passes a significant milestone, but not a normal 'we built something' one. Sparks (Project Manager) declares that there is now too much new and finished wood in the house (the stairs, the upstairs floorboards) that to continue clomping around in rigger boots would be to risk damage to the surfaces. The boys must, instead, wear trainers or, in Dad's case, flat soled desert boots. They buy a rubber mat for the front door to wipe away any grit from their boots when they come in and spend the first 2 hours of Monday having a massive 2-hour 'square away' clearing up tools, picking up offcuts of plaster board and sweeping up dust and rubbish. Sparks even re-arranges his tools and materials stack. It's like a different house.

Deefer

Rhymes with Deefer

On Monday, Haggis has one of his off his food, looking miserable and sitting there shivering moments. Mum and Dad believe this might have something to do with me appearing a few minutes earlier with mud all round my face as if I might have dug up a long-buried bone or other skanky item which the H has had a chew on. Whatever, Dad has to grovel about under the caravan to coax him out from his misery-laden "death bed" and Mum decides she better call the vet. First vet we come across turns out to be one of the well known "large animal vets" - those guys who specialize in farm animals and for whom dogs are mere annoyance and distraction from proper work. He won't even show today and is tomorrow OK?

But at some point several weeks back when Dad was buying ear drops for me in a Vet Supplies place in Roscommon we were overheard by a bloke asking for them who then followed us out to the car-park. He sidled up to Mum and Dad and in what was almost a "Pssst" (looking over your shoulder to check no-one was listening) moment, asked if we were looking for a good vet. They got talking and he turned out to be really nice and genuine, anxious that we found for our dogs (he admired us in the car) a "small animal vet" and it so happened his daughter had just qualified and was starting in practice in the Castlebar area. Dad saved the lady's name down to his phone and the number and thanked the chap. We went on our way but nobody got sick so we never bothered to make contact. Mum toyed with the idea of phoning the lady, whose name is Aoife (rhymes with Deefer), just to make contact and get 'enrolled', but had not done anything about it.

So, Mum decided to try Aoife (Rhymes with Deefer) out and sure enough, Aoife (RwD) was in the area and available after a vet-call she was making in nearby village Lough Glynn. She duly turned up in the darkness of about 7pm in a big silver Audi with a chaperone for (sensible, given she's driving about in the middle of nowhere in the dark with a car load of no doubt drugs, expensive stuff and syringes and needles) protection. She was lovely. Young and pretty but also a lovely person and a very kind and caring vet. She checked over Haggis on the caravan table, even donning 'murderer gloves' to explore his... um.... fundament.

She pronounced him free from prostate cancer but badly constipated. She started suggesting antibiotics, drugs to free the constipation, pain killers because he was a bit tender and even worming tablets as well as dietary advice including cod liver oil etc. Mum was getting a bit concerned as Mum and Dad had very little cash on them and in England at least, a call out with all these drugs would start to cost you a pretty penny. Not to worry here though - Aoife (RwD) declares the cost all up to be only 30 Euro. Mum nearly had to go have a lie down.

We bid farewell to Aoife (RwD) thanking her profusely for being so brilliant and decided to keep her as our vet for when we need one. Hopefully not too soon.

Deefer (Rhymes with Aoife)

New Stairs

The second big story of the last week is the arrival of our bespoke flight of stairs from those genii of stair wrangling, Palace Joinery of Tubbercurry in County Sligo, not a million miles from the new house. Mick the Stairs joins our cast of characters as he comes out to measure us up, recommending this that and the other tweak to give us the best possible stairs in the space, giving onto the landing to the right and a step down again straight ahead into the bathroom.

The stairs are due to arrive Monday but we get a phone call apologizing for a 24 hour delay. Tuesday the boys rip out the old stairs. This proves worryingly easy and we wonder how we've been happily tramping up and down them, often heavily laden, since December without fear of them collapsing. Gulp.

The new flight arrives hermetically sealed in plastic wrapping and under several sheets of tarp on the back of a lorry and the boys soon have it indoors, along with all the associated banisters, hand rails, spindles and other bits and pieces. The new flight is wrangled into place and fixed there including having to chisel up a bit of the Midnight Joker's pristine floor to take a bottom post. Sparks fashions the bit of mini landing which gives onto the bathroom through the huge thick house wall. He is treating himself to a new toy, a bench saw which can be pre-set to work at angles for mitre-ing etc to cut the spindles.

In the evening the old stairs are carried round to the bonfire heap to be ceremonially burnt, possibly the last major wood-wormy component going on the fire.

Deefs

Slabbing nearly done

There are two main news stories on the house build for this week, good progress on the slabbing out and the arrival of the new stairs. Slabbing goes well with the top floor all but done and some good progress on the downstairs. Dining room and living room have their new ceilings as does the bathroom. Only the kitchen remains but we can't do that till we have sorted the shower and its waste pipes. The big ugly wall at the eastern end upstairs is now rendered and covered up with stud wall and slabbing. The living room has all its thermal panels and some have gone into the dining room.

Sparks has developed a neat way with paneling into the deep window reveals (the walls if this house are 50 cm thick!) which he has now shown to Dad and Dad is doing the last few on his own. Sparks the turned his hand to creating smooth cement beds in the window sills that will take the tiles. Mum has chosen some very nice sandy coloured 60cm square ceramic tiles for the ground floor and the same tiles will be used in window sills and the bathroom. Upstairs will be sanded and varnished floorboards.

As the slabbing starts to turn the place into a very believable house we are almost ready for the plasterer(s). Midnight Joker is booked to come and price up the job on Monday. We think he'll be impressed by the changes and the works. Last time he was here, to do the concrete floors we still had the old joists and stairs and not an insulated panel in sight!

Progress!
Deefer

More then usually chaotic

Just a short report from the front this weekend I'm afraid as the scene here in Silverwood is more than usually chaotic. We turned up Friday wondering if the 'hotel' was still able to receive guests as the floor appeared to be covered in stuff. Our bedroom door was part blocked by one huge doll's house and a smaller one was on the bed. Bed ends and frames, a shower panel and a bath panel obstructed the landing and the kitchen floor was knee deep (OK slight exaggeration) in laundry. Tommo the builder was hard at it rebuilding little R's room, with a fitted bed and drawers, new laminate floor and the wardrobe moved up off the floor onto a plinth he'd created over an annoying bit of 45 degree sloping wall let into the room to allow for stairs beneath.

On top of that the Silverwoods have now located a plumber (the last one took a look at the job and left saying "just need to ask me mate something - I'll be back in ten minutes" and was never seen again) to install the big new stove and he needed access to the airing cupboard ("hot press" in Irish) which is also in our room. To cap it all Mrs S decided to reclaim the 'back room'. It's a downstairs extension built originally to be a fine dining room overlooking the deck but never really used as such and lately a bit of a 'store' room for exercise bikes and other bikes, spare furniture, then the local dogs' night-time sleeping accommodation and the place where the rabbits lived in their hutch. Inevitably, as the clothes dryer is also in there, there are generally some bits of part-processed laundry hanging about too.

But Not Any More! The rabbits have long since been moved outdoors. Local dogs now sleep in a big crate. Now Mrs S got up early and went into fierce wrangling mode, gathering her small army of conscripts around her (Mr S, Mum, J-M and Em-J). Dad escaped to little R's room on the grounds that there was painting to do. In no time there was even more chaos as everything was dragged out to be sorted, decision made on it as to correct destination and keep-or-dump and the process of pushing the laundry through the system went into full swing. Clothes were sorted and folded and piled, children dispatched with stacks and instructions to put them away PROPERLY. There was no time to sit around updating computer blogs and for a while nowhere to sit anyway.

Now, though, it's Sunday morning and the house is transformed. For the most part the laundry is done. The back room is transformed back into a dining room. Table and chairs are now in there, various chest-of-drawers and dressers swapped around and two big easy chairs are now at the end of the suddenly huge kitchen. The huge stove is off its pallet and standing on its legs and the process of breaking through the chimney wall from the back has begun (all be it parked till Monday when the boys decided the drill they had was not really up to the job). Breathe.

Deefs

Nothing without Effort

I think we have mentioned before how fiercely parochial are the GAA (Gaelic Athletics Association) sports of Hurling and Irish Rules football. Living where we do in Co. Roscommon we are expected to support the (very) local team of Eire Og (translation is 'Young Ireland'; you pronounce it with a long 'O' as in Owe). Woe betide us if we are seen to support, say, the Western Gaels from 2 villages away. We thought we might be in trouble when Aerial Keith cleared our gutters and took down the aerial for the payment of some scrap metal which he was collecting because his sons play GA for Western Gaels, and they collect scrap to raise funds for the club. Fortunately for us Eire Og do not collect scrap, so we could all breathe a sigh of relief. You support your local team and then the County. Supporting far away counties just because they are winning is seriously frowned upon. There is none of this nonsense like we have in UK where school kids nominally "support" Man United but have never ever been there, nor yet spent any money on 'stuff' which funds the team.

There's more about Eire Og on

http://www.gaainfo.com/club.php?co=roscommon&club=eireog

Any UK readers may be interested in some of this. You'll know we don't 'do' soccer. Dad knows next to nothing about it and finds the prospect of watching 90 minutes of play in which very little happens and score lines rarely exceed 1-nil seriously dull and tedious. Sparks and Mr Silverwood tell me that GA is a bit of a different prospect. It's much faster for a start and score lines are higher. They also love another big difference in that the ethics of it are much more supporting of grass roots level, club play. In UK soccer, a village may have a team but they tend to pick their best 11 players and always field them. If you're not in the best 11 then, if you're lucky you might play for a 2nd team but if you're a newcomer and unproven, or you're rubbish (like Dad says he was!) you might never get a game. GA is set up deliberately to rotate the players. If you turn up then you'll get a game soon enough, says Mr S which is great for young lads trying to play. In the UK the first team get all the practice and all the attention so they stay the best. In GA everyone gets to improve. So they tell me, anyway.

Anyway. Mum bought Dad this little wrist-band to support Eire Og. It is in a pleasingly Guinness flavoured black and white and on the other side says "Tada gan iarracht" which Mrs S translated for us as "Nothing without Effort" which seems nicely appropriate for the house rebuild project, doesn't it?

Go Eire Og! Go County Roscommon!
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Sweetie time

In the first pic here, we dogs are clamouring for sweeties offered by Mrs Silverwood. She would like to point out that the only dog actually sitting obediently in the photo is here own 'baby' Maxwell. All the rest of us are milling around trying to be at the front of the queue. In the second Max is looking in through the kitchen window at Silverwood so either he's grown very long legs in the night and can now see in, or he's hopped onto the kennel roof to get a better view. Finally one of myself and Coco mooching around the doorway of one of the Roscommon outbuildings, the one we call the Tigin Beag (wee housey).

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