Serene amid the (controlled) chaos

Last night, while Ian was engaged in a 9pm phone-call to a tetchy-sounding colleague whose afternoon in The States he was evidently spoiling, I was making space in our bedroom for the ceiling props. While I thought of it, I stowed away my treasured Royal Dux figure well out of the way of potential falling ceiling... just in case. She fitted – just – beneath the dressing-table. Perfect! She was completely unperturbed by the sudden change in her surroundings, an attitude I endeavoured to emulate earlier today.  Her market value may not be great but she means a lot to me. 

Ian and I were on hand to spectate this morning, when a gang of eight turned up to get our steels in. I'll say one thing for these guys: they have never yet turned up late; if anything, they tend to arrive earlier than expected. So we were sort of prepared when the lorry with the steels pulled up shortly before 8.00am; Ian had only just moved our cars off the drive and parked them in the road, where they were shortly joined by the cars of our workforce. I wonder how much credit we have now used up with our neighbours?

Cups of tea all round while we waited for the crane-driver ...  

and a brief hiatus for me and Ian while the rest of them dashed about, opened up the hole in the roof (at the front – a change from the original plan and also from Plan B) and prepared for the next step. Then the crane-driver got to work, lifting the massive steels from the lorry parked in the road...

... and up and round to the area just in front of the house, avoiding the various overhead cables. I wish Andy hadn't mentioned that it was the crane-driver's first day. Not that anything went wrong; I'd just rather not have known till it was all over.  

Very soon, there was a neat stack of steels in the drive. The crane was turned around so that the driver now had a clear view of the stack and the hole in the roof, and in the steels went...

... followed by more wood than you could shake a stick at (for the joists).  

Many cups of tea later, with the steels all in place and the wood tidily stacked, they departed. Tomorrow, Andy hopes to work on the gable and give his back a bit of a rest before he breaks it on laying the joists.