New Carpet and a Punctured Gas Pipe!

We had the new carpet fitted yesterday. All week we've been steadily moving furniture around the house, so yesterday morning we finally had all our furniture (except one bed and wardrobe) in our living and dining rooms. The carpet fitters arrived at 8.45am, which I thought was very early for a tradesman, and all seemed to be going swimmingly until about 10am when we heard 'Quick, turn the Gas off!' We ran through the house, in and out of furniture, and turned the gas off, to find out that the carpet fitter had managed to bang 2 nails into a gas pipe. Great! He was carpetting the gym (downstairs room) and was putting grippers around the outside of the room when it happened. The pipe was only about 1cm, if that, under the surface of the concrete, which was also remarkably crumbly. Apparently any gas pipe should be 2-3 inches under the surface of the concrete, to prevent that sort of thing from happening. So anyway, we weren't really sure what to do about it, because it didn't look like it was the carpet fitters fault really, but it certainly wasn't our fault! Anyway, he got one of his friends who works for British Gas to come and fix it, but he could only come at about 5ish. So they continued to fit the rest of the carpets in the house, and finished by about 1pm. The Gas man actually appeared at about 3.30, fixed the problem in about 10 minutes, and left, whithout charging us anything! The carpet man came back and filled in the hole, and fitted the rest of the carpet. We paid him, and then he had the cheek to say he was out of pocket because he'd paid his mate for the gas works. Firstly, he didn't seem to give the gas man any money, and anyway, £200 for half a days work doesn't seem to bad to me.

Anyway, the carpet looks lovely, you can all come round now, but leave your shoes outside the front door!