Easter Saturday

Hooray the sun is shining!  

I really need to make a start on the attic stairs and so, armed with two aerosols of paint, I have transformed the bright red metal supports into a more subtle taupe, to match the door and woodwork. 

The weather meant I could open all the doors and windows too as the fumes were pretty powerful.  The carpenter has sanded and varnished the old steps and they look really smart, worth every euro.  Sometimes you have to accept that the mess, inconvenience and space taken up by seven wooden steps whilst they dry etc etc. is just not worth it.

Hopefully this will also be the last bit of filling and sanding necessary; the final coat of paint will have to wait until after the holidays as moving the car and losing our parking space in order to drive to the paint factory is just too risky.  I think parking is maybe the most difficult thing about living here and it would be so much worse if we lived outside of town instead of having the luxury of being able to walk to most places from our home. 

Later in the day when I came to tidy up the tools I happened to notice a large damp patch on the wall in the attic and also in the bathroom.  When we went into the attic it was obvious: the main pipe to the water tank had a crack in it and the floor was soaking.  The roof is all concrete but the imminent leaking of an entire water tank into that space was pretty scary so we turned on all the taps to empty the tank, filled all the buckets and pots and called the plumber. 

He arrived straightaway, and replaced the broken pipe, panic over in under an hour. 

Maybe the damage could have happened during the cold weather as we only noticed when we saw the damp patches but more likely it was just one of those things. 

Time to open a bottle of prosecco, drink a toast to our plumber and a disaster averted.  We headed off to Bar Marconi to do just that but were disappointed to find we were too late to buy a ticket to win the gigantic chocolate Easter eggs in their raffle, although our teeth and waistlines will thank us for it, but they did look amazing.