Drain pipes

My jobs are advised to me by text and this one said 'change light bulbs and paint drainpipes'. The job was for a regular customer - Caroline - who lives with her family in a large town house in Kensington. When I arrived the customer wasn't there but I was let in by the gardener; also in the house was a housekeeper and a cleaning woman.



I started on changing the light bulbs and after a while Caroline arrived home. After letting her know that there were not enough of a special light bulb that she needed, I asked about which drainpipes needed painting (having earlier looked around the outside of the house to see if any looked in in need of painting and not found any).

Caroline showed me some large black drainpipes poking out from under steps leading down to the under street level storage area at the front of the house. She said she wanted them painted, two in red and white stripes in a specific pattern, and two in brown - she explained that they were to be pony jump poles. When I said that I would go down to bring the poles up to take to the garage for the painting Caroline said 'I'll need to help you as they are very heavy'.


We went down the steps to the pipes and I then realised that the three metre long pipes, some 5 inches in diameter, were indeed very heavy as they were made of steel! Caroline then explained that she had lazy pony which she wanted to train to jump. With normal jump poles, the pony simply hit them and knocked them off rather than actually jumping a bit higher to clear them. The steel poles, being very much heavier, would 'encourage' the pony to make the extra effort! I was assured that the pony's legs would be suitably padded to ensure that it wasn't hurt during the training.


Two hours later for new jumping poles were painted and, when dry, ready to take to the stable (in Windsor) for the training to begin. I'm looking forward to an update of the training progress on my next visit.

Rats!

Job described as 'Change washing machine connection'; arrived at the customer's address, a converted church hall; customer took me through a labrynth to reach his laundry room, on the way describing how his cleaner thought rats had chewed through the outlet duct from the tumble drier. As we neared the laundry room the smell started to hit us - seemed like an animal smell, and very strong.

In the laundry room, the tumble drier was stacked on a washing machine and the extract duct - a flexible plastic pipe - led through a couple of partitions then along a one of three shelves about 3 metres long. The shelves were stacked mainly with laundered towels and sheets, all in plastic bags. On the duct shelf some of these packages showed signs of rat droppings and damage caused by rats chewing them.

The customer said that he wanted the duct replaced with a metal one, and the area cleared out.

So I started moving the laundry packages off the shelves and separating them into undamaged and damaged piles. Then - yuch, I found the body! A large rat, well decomposed, with maggots crawling over it, laying on the severely damaged duct under laundry packages. It had obviously been living in the area (I later found the nest in the wall cavity where the duct led outside) and had died from the poison put down by the customer. The rat's body joined the pile of damaged (and badly contaminated) laundry in a couple of rubbish bags which ended up in the bins outside. The customer's vacuum cleaner then had a work out cleaning the remaining debris from the shelves, wall cavity and floor, before a new aluminium duct could be installed.

End result - cleaned out laundry area; new rat-proof duct but...still a very strong smell! I wonder how long it will take to disperse?

Wow, MFI built-in wardrobe kits are BAD! In fact the structure is alright but the instructions are really bad, and ambiguous. Question is, are they deliberately designed to be inadequate so as to force customers to use the, expensive, fitting service offered by MFI?

In the end, we got the main structure up in spite of a key component being missing - had to improvise to overcome this omission. I had to leave for a date after seven hours, leaving the owner of the wardrobe to install the wardrobe 'innards' and do further flat pack assembly. Glad to say she was happy with what we did achieve.

First post

This is my first post. Not doing real work today as it's Saturday but have agreed to help a friend with her built-in wardrobes in exchange for her helping to decorate my living room on another day. I wonder who has the best bargain!