WELL WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?

It's not often that I borrow anything from Richard's (of Richards Bass Bag*) blog other than the spelling of practice vs. practise, license vs. licence or Penderecki but today, an image he posted on his latest (read most recent old) post appropriately fits our situation.

The image

I've had the builders here all day replacing some weatherboards that were rotting. Because of the age of the original house, (1910) the original weatherboards are all outsize compared to what's available 'off-the-shelf' so the builder had to make arrangements with a wood turner to calibrate his settings to the larger requirements of width and length to match ours. I asked for extra weatherboard lengths to be produced for possible future renovations because the set-up costs are so high. The result is great and the two builders did an 11 hour stint installing the boards and fixing other little problems like missing flashings and 'studs' that the renovators in the 1980s 'forgot' to put in.

All good.

But ..... as they were leaving, the head honcho alerted me to a problem with a retaining wall beneath the front deck. This is known to me and the remedy is on my 'fix-it' list - down at about number 12. The deck replacement was number 1, the attic ladder was number 2 and the weatherboard replacement was number 3. All of these have now been done but the retaining wall now is becoming serious. Basically the retaining wall holds back ground-fill at the front of the house below the deck. It's been messy ever since we've lived here for 11 years with some crappy concrete steps going up to the 'front' door. As we live in a house that was repositioned back to front when placed here 40 years ago the 'front' entrance is really the back entrance and vice-versa. Anyway - it was always on the soon-to-do' list but the news today kind of makes this job a bit more of a priority. The builder said that the slippage was distorting the deck above and would need to be addressed. Here is a reminder of what could happen.

I reported this to The Old Girl on our daily Facetime call and she agreed that fixing this would be the next priority.


So far so good.

Unfortunately I didn't have a piece of cellophane to crinkle next to the phone while I was talking, in order to blame telecommunications faults, so my arguments of getting the job done simply, efficiently (and cheaply) was countermanded by "I want it to look nice and classy Matey). Bugger!

It looks like those Tarras Airport start up shares will have to be on hold or, as Robert suggests, an off-the-wall investment in deep sea mushroom farming ventures will just have to wait.

"A real investor would seek out ideas from people on the fringe.
As a friend of Turing said "Sometimes it is people that no one imagines anything of that do the things they imagine". "  - commented Robert on another post of mine.

* My apologies for the obscure reference.