by Fogdog » Tue Mar 9th, 2010 2:47 pm
We bought a delapidated London terraced house in 1976 for less than a tenth of its 'normal' price...... no, it wasn't that much of a bargain! It had half a roof, 4 out of 5 windows were broken, more than 50% of the floorboards were rotten, it had an outside loo.... a Cypriot ice-cream salesman and his wife and two daughters occupied half of it and there had been nine tenants!!!
We removed 11 gas meters, 14 electricity meters, and most of the wooden parts. We treated the dry rot, and cut out the wet rot.
We re-roofed it. We built a three-storey extension for our bathroom and kitchen, and a kitchen to the upper maisonette. We couldn't afford to own the whole thing so we divided it into two maisonettes, lived in the lower one and sold a 99-yr. lease on the upper one. We did nearly all the work ourselves, at night after a full day in the office and every weekend for three years.
I get really angry with people who think we're well off because it just happened. We're financially secure because we nearly killed ourselves fixing up that first house! I did the majority of the wiring [supervised by a trained electrician from a company I'd worked for] and I am proud to say I installed the boiler!! I was younger then.
But came the day when the breeder rang and said "can you take him now? I know it's a week or two earlier than usual but he's SO big, and his mum doesn't like him. He could turn into a bully if he remains with siblings who are so much smaller than him" and so
We moved in to a single room in the basement, overlooking the rear patio, with the concrete steps to the garden at ground floor level barely set. We had two mattresses on the floor, my grandmother's 1930's gramophone as a "sideboard", two T-chests on their sides with clothes and some food, a borrowed fridge, no cooker and a cardboard box for Gulliver!
He slept in our arms when he learned to tip the cardboard box over and fall out. He ate his puppy food and any part of our takeaways he could get, and we both took a fortnight off "work" and worked flat out to make more rooms habitable.
Took us very little time indeed to learn to put everything up high - shelves either side of the fireplace in that one room were the first thing we put up. It was early August and hot weather so that was a blessing.
We'd dug out the basement and totally renewed the floors on top of new foundations, newly underpinned party walls, etc. with concrete and we'd sealed the concrete with "Bourneseal" - which is what the Gents public loos are normally floored with - it looks like brown glass and withstands acid, pee, poo, etc. so that was brilliant for housetraining.
Gully was six months old when our first carpets were laid on Christmas Eve that year - the nice carpetlayer said he couldn't come till the New Year 'cos he was running late and had all his kids' pressies to wrap. So I chatted him up (I was a slim 32 yr. old then!) and I wrapped the pressies while he laid the carpets. Gully rolled over and over and over like a kid in the snow with delight at the wall-to-wall 'bed'!!
Who forgot to put the cornflakes away? BH of course [I don't like them]..... and he went without brekkie for a week as a result 'cos our budget was too tight to simply replace them!!!
And by the time of his first birthday, Gulliver could [and sometimes did] open any door he wanted. He could even turn a china ball-shaped handle with his teeth. He was way too intelligent for his own good and we were stupid, proud, newbie Weim fans. I actually taught him to turn his head 90 degrees to one side before taking the doorhandle in his teeth and turning his head, and once he'd mastered one, he worked others out for himself.
Fortunately he also learned the meaning of the word "No!" and would stop any activity if asked. He was my steep learning curve and there's not much I'd do differently today if it was with a dog like him.... a gentle giant.
Fogdog & The Woozle ©
Life is a learning curve - Weimaraners just make it a bit steeper!
I have to admit this is difficult if the item is a beloved Barbie 'n Ken belonging to visiting child! ![:-]](./images/smilies/4.gif "LOL")
Julies!
Mines also will thief if given the opportunity the good thing is it makes me extremely tidy they only time they have done anything wrong is when ive been careless enough to leave edibles on the worksurfaces. The worst was a bag of sugar 
Zola 
Belle 
