After the brief spell of beautiful weather which is now hard to remember. It is now mostly cold and wet with a bit of wind thrown in here and there.
We splashed out and treated ourselves to a new gas oven, the one in the kitchen is well past its sell by date and leaks gas. Not sure if I've mentioned it before but you have to be very careful when you light it as it's easy to set fire to the front control panel. I managed it not long after we moved in, luckily it blew out quite easily. The new oven arrived on quite a windy day but we were very fortunate. The delivery guys rang us about an hour before arrival and we managed to sail across and arrive at the jetty just as they got there. By the time we'd got out the boat and tied it up they'd carried the oven down the jetty and put it on the boat for us. This was such a relief as it meant all we had to do was get back in and sail back over. We managed to get it out the boat without too much trouble and it travelled really well up to the house secured in the trailer. It came with an lpg conversion kit so we just had to wait for the new regulator to arrive.
In the meantime we continued our hunt for the missing Rayburn pieces, we realised we hadn't seen the instructions, a couple of brackets to hold the front bar in place and the spinwheel for some time if ever. Rich thought he'd seen them a while ago but I've no recollection. Anyway we searched everywhere and have been unable to locate them. Therefore when the new regulator arrived we were keen to get the new oven installed as the Rayburn might be further delayed. We worked together and although very fiddly did manage to convert the oven to lpg. We then tested it, 1 gas ring worked fine, one wouldn't work at all and the other 2 couldn't make their minds up. The main oven worked first time we lit it then refused after that, the grill wouldn't work at all and I'm not sure what happened with the top oven! I just wanted to move back to suburbia at this point. We reached the conclusion that the oven must be faulty as bits of it worked although most of it didn't. Rich then spent ages ringing the company, eventually it was decided they'll send another one and we'll return the one we've got. They also said they'll send an engineer to fit it. So hopefully that will sort it and it won't take too long. We're not looking forward to getting it back in the boat and across the loch and then having to bring another one over but there's not really a choice so we'll just have to get on with it.
So now we're back to trying to push forward with the Rayburn. Rich managed to salvage the spinwheel off the ancient Rayburn we threw out so all is not lost. We're going to see if the brackets will be ok to use also, then it's just the instructions we're missing which is no big deal. So Rich is now looking into buying copper fittings and of course a bath (we need somewhere for the hot water to go)
We've been across on the boat today to bring more concrete blocks over, it's been about a year since they were delivered and we've still not managed to get them all over here. We have Rich's daughter here at the moment which really helps so we did 2 runs today and did 18 each trip. There's about 40 more to do, if it's calm tomorrow we'll hopefully be able to finally get them all here. We're trying to clear space for our order of wood, roofing sheets, insulation, flooring sheets, sand and gravel that are due on Monday. We've made quite a bit of progress on the cabin, I'll put photos on next time. We're trying to get some extra accommodation ready for the arrival of family next month.
The garden is growing well, thanks to all the rain. Our onions, garlic and potatoes all look healthy and with extra help we've managed to get the weeds down significantly. I've been planting lupins and a few other things that I can't remember (I blame the menopause!) that Rich has sown from seed. Out of the 12 lupins I put in there's about 5 left, not sure if it's rabbits or slugs. Some have a few bedraggled leaves left, some are just sticks. But the marigolds have continued to thrive as have the geums, there's also some nasturtiums coming up which have seeded from last year.
So overall we are making progress and when we finally get the Rayburn installed it'll be fantastic. I can't wait to have a bath.
PS: I don't really want to move back to suburbia.
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