Another oh shit moment...

A few weeks ago I had a Rayburn service booked and a sweep booked for the following week.. When they arrived they started poking around and making the Dreaded noises no one wants to hear.. Sucking in of air and tutting...after more poking and frowning they decided they couldn't touch it and it was classed as ID....  As in immediately dangerous!!

The whole of the stove pipe was blocked and at an illegal 90deg and Ray needed some new fire bricks. They also said they couldn't be sure what else might be needed until they took the pipe down... I could honestly have cried it all sounded so expensive.

They suggested that if the pipe work was to be moved around you may as well move Ray over to the chimney wall.

We had always thought that day was in a weird kind of place so it's kind of fated and forced out hand to jiggle it about a bit (although it's about 5 years earlier that our bank account would have wanted!)

Here is ray's original spot..

(The angle of the death-pipe just out of shot!)

Day One

Day Two

You can see the original arch of the fireplace from when the downstairs would have been one room... It huge!

This is now the third week of Ray being off and I don't like it! We're lucky I didn't book the service in January I couldn't have coped giving birth at home without the warmth of Ray! We have the back up boiler but the water doesn't get that hot and we wouldn't have managed to fill the pool.

Backstory 1

I kind of wish I'd started keeping this blog back in November before we moved and documented the whole story but to be honest those last few months of 2014 were pretty tear filled and raged and would have made no sense! 

I was very very pregnant and was moving from my beloved Bristol to the very unknown pontypool...so many unknowns made it pretty stress filled.

We moved here on December 22nd a day before the solicitors and everything else besides tesco were due to shut for Christmas! Luckily we had help from a dream team of friends and family so the actual move itself went really well very well for me as being preggo I didnt have to lift a single box! (Every cloud and that...)

Muka shutting the van on the last load!

That first week is a bit of a blur really.. We had a lovely Christmas considering, spent Christmas Day breakfast at my brothers and we hosted Boxing Day breakfast we had our first (of many)'oh shit!' Moment when wilco pressed the panic button alarm we had just found in the bedroom this resulted in Muka wearing just his pants stood on a stool above my fathers head (hilarious image for me.. Not so cool for my dad or Muka) trying to find the right wore to rip out of the right alarm box... We had no code for either alarm. 3 wires severed later we had no alarm system and a severe ringing in our ears.

This also meant my first meeting of my new neighbour involved  a very egg like me wearing just a long vest sans underwater...great.