EEEEEK!

Sometimes a little hysteria is not out of place, I think. I must admit I felt that a shriek would be a fitting reaction when we found this little bugger hopping around in the laundry room.

However, I constrained myself.

You see, this happened just as we had a visitor and were showing our guest around the house: “And this is our laundry room. We’re redecorating due to water damage, so it’s a bit chaotic, as you can see… What the HELL???!!!” A fat warty toad, scared by the sudden light, bounced off and landed with a noisy splash in the open drain.

We just stood there, the three of us, staring dumbfounded at the toad, our guest looking a bit discomforted. Not that I blame her. It’s not like it’s easy to find something nice to say in situations like this. “So, you’ve got a few things to grapple with, I see,” she finally ventured.

“Eh, yeah, you could put it that way”, said Hubby, who was thinking exactly the same as me: “Aha!”

This would explain why, a few days previously, a frog turned up in Hubby’s boot. When we were over in Skien last weekend to help my mother in the garden, there was a bit of commotion when Hubby put his boots on and found something large and alive in one of them. Out fell a very dry and shell-shocked frog that had obviously travelled across the mountains with us. We couldn’t understand how on earth it had ended up there. Yes, there seems to be plenty of hopping and bouncing going on out in the garden, but the boots had been inside in the laundry room all the time.

When I saw the connection I felt my skin crawl. The thought that there might be dozens of disgusting warty animals lurking around the house made me panic slightly. Fortunately I didn’t find any, despite a discreet but intense search behind sofas and under beds. (You can imagine what it feels like to show off your house whilst scanning the floor for amphibians.)

Anyway, the toad was immediately evicted and was thrown without mercy as far as we could out into the forest, where it can look for some other shelter for the winter. Then we covered up the drain very carefully until the plumber could come.

That blasted drain has been the cause of a lot of problems recently. We were supposed to get a new floor laid some weeks ago, but when the man came, he took one look at the drain and declared that this was utterly useless. It wasn’t possible to make the floor watertight with a drain like that.

We have to admit we doubted that ourselves when we saw the condition of the drain, so when the plumber came and said he had to break up the cement floor, we weren’t all that surprised.

THE NEW DRAIN over the sewage pipe and the newly leaking main water supply. 

It was finally done on Tuesday. Then the new cement had to dry for a few days before the floor layer could come again. But as you know, if it isn’t one thing then it’s another. He came yesterday and hummed and ha’d and complained about having too much to do since everybody else in his firm was away on holiday. Besides, this wasn’t as easy as all that. He thought the floor ought to be sanded, but since the stupid plumbers had done something he wasn’t happy with, he thought he would have to plaster instead. What’s more, he couldn’t figure out how to get under and around the main water supply pipe. We might have to box that in. In pure frustration he shook the pipe a little too roughly with the result that it started leaking slightly.

So here we go again. This could take time.

Today we have waited in vain for any workers to show up, but nobody came. We’re hoping they’ll come next week.

I thought the plumber was joking when he said the room would be finished “sometime before Christmas”. Now I’m not so sure....

FRESHLY PAINTED. Now we're just waiting for the new floor.

 PAINTING. The colour of the walls is called Cappucino. It is just the right shade of pale beige, I think. The mouldings are white gloss paint.

 VERY HAPPY WITH THIS ONE. The old door with the horrid red mouldings was as good as new after a few coats of white.

 SHELVING. In this nook we will put up shelves for soaps and detergents and such. 

We wish everybody a nice weekend. 

It is still possible to vote for us in Petunia's photo competition. Please go HERE and vote!
Hubby has numbers 81 and 84. 
Husfruen has numbers 73 and 75.
84 is my favourite.Thanks for your support. :-)