Craters and Tarps

Hello. This report is being filed from the pit of renovation hell. Last Monday we had part of our roof removed, it being old, full of holes and cracks, with rat condominiums riddled through it. Yuk! From Monday night onwards it RAINED. And rained some more. Then, just when we thought it was over, it did it all over again. There are tarps up over the roof, and they are actually doing a better job of keeping the rain out than the roof was doing, so that's one upside. Hopefully roof replacement will happen in the next 2 days before rain is forecast again! There is also a large hole under our house. This is the Hole. Of. Which. We. Do. Not. Speak. It is the hole that was dug by Himself instead of taking the family camping over the summer holidays. It is the hole that he has paid people to dig since January. It is now mid-April, and the hole has progressed through a one-man phase, to a 2 blokes with shovels affair, through the, "We'd better hire a digger to get this done quicker" idea, into the oh-shit-oh-shit my wife's getting snarky downward spiral and into the Ok, Now We Need a Builder moneysink. The hole was originally in aid of just leveling the ground under the house, between the stumps, to make headroom so that when we wanted to stow junk under there, there was less swearing about hitting our heads on the crossbeams. So a large amount of dirt removal later, he had his hole. Then, our part of the world got much rain. Biblical amounts of rain - we didn't flood; we're on a hill, so technically can't - but the subsoil washed out from UNDERNEATH the stumps. The foundations of half our house were hanging in mid-air! This is what precipitated (!pun nowhere near intended!) the need for building props, a detailed plan for a retaining wall, and a whacking great slab to be poured under there. Oh, and did i forget to mention that the house stumps were then all deemed in need of replacing? Oh Yes! All of them! So that got done, too. Many gazillions of $$$$ later, we are in proud possession of a house that only has half a roof, and a crater under it. That we were possibly thinking of selling sometime soon. If I wasn't so sure that nothing else could render this more spectacular, I'd be crying...!