All About Me

I have lots to say and many people have asked - who is behind China's Secret Teas? So this seems like a good way of marrying the two. Enjoy!

Sunday, November 26, 2006

House woes I

You may have noticed a marked lack of activity on this blog for the past few months....let me tell you the tale of my household woes.

First our flat top 3*3 m roof in the extension started leaking water, then major chunks of the plasterboard fell away and DH started moaning about how much work it would take to replace/repair it. However, he did take the project of finding reputable builders/roofers onboard. Note, the project involved calling around, getting them in to give a quote and get a shortlist done, references, etc.

Did not require DH to physically replace said rood himself ;-)

Basically I would have to eat all the food I had stockpiled (noodles, rice, etc.) there as well as empty the freezer of similarly stockpiled meat.

Now if you know me even in the slightest, you will know that I like having a surplus of foodstuff in my (non-existent) larder. Will post next about my thoughts post-Katrina.

Anyway, back to the leaking roof. 6 weeks later.....no action had been taken other than a big bucket placed under the offending leak.

Granted we had a whole heap of other problems occuring around the same time, but 6 weeks is a long time to have to empty the bucket of water each time it rained heavily (whilst sloshing through the overflow to do so).

Took action into one's own hands. Who would have known the number of different types of roofs there are and the no. of charlatans out there! Even those listed on a trade association website... I think that I must have called/emailed 20 roofers. We have about 8 different quotes. Well, the husband insisted on 3 quotes and since 2 of those were for some fibre-glass material (£1300 + VAT) which were summarily dismissed due to the disparity in price.

Of course at the time that it was a rather ludicrous price to pay for replacing a felt-top roof. I mean what in the world is a felt-top anyway??!!!

Knowing next to nothing about DIY (hey, I've always been a city gal) or roof replacements, I sought out online forums to ask if £1300 was a reasonable amount to pay for a roof replacement. Some of the comments/feedback were less than complimentary about my lack of commonsense....

Well, you will be glad to know that the roof is no longer leaking but has not been repaired or replaced. So how did I do it? Read on.....

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