Hospital job

When my mother in law died, the undertaker, a family friend, asked what we planned to do with her house. We said we intended to do it up and rent it out. He commented that it would make a good hospital job. Not an expression I had heard before but apparently in the trade it is the term used for a job that can be picked up and put down as suits and the renovation of the house has turned out to be just that.

My husband runs a small family building company. He is the third generation under the present company's name, although masonry as a trade goes back to the early 1800s. In early summer when work was quiet they worked on gutting the house - removing the bathrooms and kitchen and taking some of the old walls back to the stonework, shifting others. Since then it has been left, until this week when the weather turned wet and there were no indoor jobs on the books.

Work on the house has now started again. Work on the top floor can go ahead without waiting for the architect ( coming tomorrow) to draw up the plans and planning permission to be given (or not ) . So today we bought the shower tray and disagreed over the style of the remaining suite and the floor and wall tiling. There's an awful long way to go before completion, maybe the term hospital job is appropriate !!


( Photo: Of my husband's Great Grandfather ( standing by the cart in the bowler hat), Grandfather(sitting in the cart) and Great Uncle ( on the scaffolding, he was killed in the first world war) rebuilding the cottages destroyed by fire at the end of the terrace to the house we are now renovating )