We managed to get the hot water working shortly after the last blog – and what a delight it was to have a beautifully deep bath again!

Which was really lucky, because we were permitted to open our rooms again from 13th July, providing we could offer room service for the breakfasts. Which we could – and even provide hot0 water too! It was a terrible shock to find we had got really rusty in the meantime – trying to remember what to do to get breakfasts ready, or change rooms, after months of building work was surprisingly tricky. We have got it sorted now, but earlier this week was a different story.

So the only building work this week was Mike installing an outdoor light.

It wasn’t even ours! Mike had promised some neighbours a while ago that he would replace their dodgy back door light, but we kept being rained off. Today, Mike left here about 3pm to fit it, knowing we were already prepared for the one set of guests booked in, whilst I did some ironing.

When he got back a bit after 4pm, we suddenly found both other floors had been booked for tonight so it was all hands to the pumps to get ready. I guess this means we might not be doing much building work in August – but we never know…

Last Saturday morning, Mike went to have a shave but discovered the water was cold. A few moments thought reminded us we had been running the oil down because we needed to move the tank which was balanced precariously against the building and which broke several planning and safety rules. As you may know we had already installed the new tank but hadn’t connected it up as there was too much junk in the way.

By junk, I mean lots of soil and building rubble up to 1.2 metres /4 feet thick along with assorted rubbish you can see sitting on top of it above, as well as Rocky, the remnants of which you can see below.

Whilst Mike drilled and worked on Rocky, I drained the last of the oil from the tank. We got about 60 litres of dark coloured sludgy watery yuck out of the tank which we will have to work out what to do with later. Once they were removed, we started sliding the tank out of position…

…running it out on ladders and moving it to the front of the building.

Once that was placed by the chalet, we could return to the old decking on which it had stood…

…and start breaking it up. After this was gone, we had to dig a channel near the wall to enable the new pipes to be laid in the correct position. This involved digging out enough rubble that we could release the metal sheeting which presumably had been trapped here to prevent the building getting damp.

Again, whilst I was digging out, Mike paid a little more attention to Rocky, which by now looked like…

…so it’s slowly but surely disintegrating. On the subject of slowly but surely…

…I finally managed to dig through a channel wide enough for us to work in, that was clear right up to the point where the external pipe can be joined to the internal pipework which can (just about) be seen immediately above my left knee.

We released the metal sheet and, amazingly, the scrap metal man called by the next day! What a timely coincidence – we were able to offer him that sheet, a filing cabinet that had been beside the tank, and all manner of other bits and bobs we had dug up.

Yowser, all in all, that had been a tricky and unpleasant couple of days – and I couldn’t even have a decent bath when it was finished! We will let you know what happened next in the next blog post…

The clock is now ticking. We are permitted to welcome guests from 13th July, which means we need to get a wiggle on to make sure the areas through which guests will pass are up to scratch again. So we thought we had better reinstate the fence, to stop people or cars plummeting over the edge.

You can see that the weather was a bit on the miserable side, but we managed to plough on regardless (despite the midges) to cut and fit the posts…

… which will continue the fence roughtly down to where the car is parked. There is a final third of fence still to be replaced, but it is currently inaccessible so we’ll leave that for another day…month….or perhaps year.

We then started fitting the cross rails…

…until they were all in, whereupon I got to take some photos whilst…

…Mike put in the rest of the screws. After this snap, we stained the fence, with me on the far side of the fence (trying hard not to fall downhill!) and Mike painting the car park side whilst also throwing the ball for Lola.

We also completed other work this week, but we are pretty confident that you wouldn’t wish to see photos of me spring cleaning the cafe and storing items we won’t need for a while. Or of me relocating the office. Of course, if you would like to see pictures, just let me know!

Tomorrow, we are back working on Rocky so hopefully next weeks work will be more photogenic.