House warming - literally.

I live in a pre-war semi. They are not renowned for their warmth.

The weather has turned distinctly autumnal and chilly this week and boy, are we feeling it. It’s not as bad as when we first moved in, twenty years ago. I can remember being so cold, I used to sit in the lounge and cry, wondering whether we had done the right thing in buying the house.

Since then, we’ve ‘Taken Steps’. Every set of curtains now has a thermal lining…we have replaced the steel window frames with double-glazed wooden ones…we have a more efficient boiler…I have draught-excluders for every door… I wear two pairs of socks routinely, three jumpers, a scarf and fingerless mitts if I’m sitting typing. Or, like Garfield, I sit in the sun by the French windows, moving with the patch of warmth as it crosses the room.

It’s not helped at the moment by the fact that some of our draught-proofing measures need to be replaced. I have to find another pillow to stuff up one of our chimneys for example, as the last one went a bit rank thanks to the dead pigeon.

The current project is underfloor insulation. I did offer to go under the floorboards for Mr. Squidge (I’m 5’0” – he’s 6’3”) but he declined to accept. We thought it would be a fairly easy job; measure the distance between the joists, cut the boards to the right length, whack it in and bingo!

What we hadn’t reckoned on was joists that are most definitely NOT parallel, the various pipeworks that are under the floor AND the fact that the trapdoor isn’t wide enough for some of the pieces we’ve cut so they’ve had to be cut again.

It has taken the best part of two days so far and we’ve not even finished the first room; we still have the back room and the hall to do.

This isn't Mr Squidge, by the way!

Ah well, at least once it’s finished, I might be able to take off a layer or two.