No Carpet Tuesday...

Last night I was super excited. Despite finally coming down with the illness that's been threatening everyone at work (seriously, I've never known so many staff and pupils to be sick before), I managed to keep sane long enough to clear the landing and the bedroom of furniture (with some help from the Engineer obviously).

Why? Because today, our new carpets were due to be fitted! Hooray! Goodbye old, sickly beige from the 1970s and hello fluffy, soft grey carpet! I was so so excited for this moment - the giant roll of carpet has been lying in front of our sofa since about November, which means it's a bit of an obstacle course if you ever want to sit down. But after spending last night on just a mattress (yup, the bed had to go too), I woke up this morning super excited to get to work, so I could come back from work and just lie on the carpet for hours on end. I was so excited, I even took a photo of the old carpets/landing so you could see the difference:

And here's the carpet when I got back from work tonight!

Yup, that's right - it's exactly the effing same.

Here's the story:

The Engineer worked from home today, as the carpet fitter asked for someone to be there when he arrived. Not too much of a problem - the Engineer can do stuff like that, whereas I'm not allowed time off work, due to the school holidays. That's all fine - so the carpet fitter arrives, takes a look...then decides he doesn't like our underlay ('it's too fluffy'), or our carpet ('it's a shitty carpet')...complains that he'll have to glue the underlay down instead of using grips....then leaves. Doesn't say he'll pop out and get this so-called glue then come back later...no. He just leaves. Which means the Engineer essentially wasted a day at home (although, when I asked him, he said he actually got more work done at home than he does in the office...but it's the principle of the thing, right ;)?) and I got all excited for nothing.

Seriously, when the Engineer texted me to tell me the news, I nearly cried. I was so looking forward to SOMETHING being finished in our house, instead of it just looking like building site, that I was crushed when I found it wasn't happening. Plus, I'm over-tired and work was particularly trying today, so all in all, not a great combination. I was so mad when I found out.

On the plus side, it was my soon to be mother-in-law who arranged for him to come (as a Christmas present for me and the Engineer), so when we told her, she said she'd give him a piece of her mind and tell him not to bother coming back. Hooray!

So, essentially, I still don't know when or if the carpets are going to get fitted. I feel calmer now that I'm home and I've had a cup of tea. I know it'll get done at some point, so there's no point stressing out - plus, I weirdly liked sleeping on the mattress last night - it felt like a sleepover. Although I'm sure that novelty will soon wear off!

Hope you're all having a great day - so excited to see you all again tomorrow when I'm helping to co-host this month's IWSG! Yay!

Have you got any 'terrible tradesmen' stories? How do you cope with building work? What have you been up to this week?