Kitchen fit: Day 9

While the electricians busied themselves finding the source of yesterday's black, quiet fell on the works. The quiet of a solitary, painting man.

Priming and sanding yesterday, and a start on the first coat today. No photos for the time being. The colour we've chosen (Gardenia by name, but cream to you and me. A kind of creamy ivory, to be precise) is virtually indistinguishable from the colour of the primer that the units came with, so yesterday's, today's and even tomorrow's look remains largely unchanged apart from a subliminal increase in richness and lack of blemish.

The only change that impinges on the senses is the faint smell of paint, and as Blogger doesn't yet support smellyvision I can't convey that :o)

The lights are going out all over Britain

Well... all over the house anyway. Well, the ground floor.

Nat stepped into the hall around 9pm last night. Dusk had fallen and darkness lit the hall with a soul-sapping lack of light blacker than the black pit of the blackest black thing anyone ever went back to, when they were trying to go back to black. She turned the light on and it didn't. She did the only sensible thing.

"Dad? The lights aren't working."

The trip had tripped. I noticed in passing that it was now a blue trip, where before it had been... black. Black thoughts clouded my mind as I returned to the dark hall and tried the lights again. They did. But flicking a switch in the newly wired kitchen brought the black back. I tripped it twice more, just to prove I had the knack for a black attack in the shack.

Kitchen fitter phoned the sparky this morning. "What's the crack, Jack? We've got black, you'd better track back."

Sparky came. The problem was the blue trip. Rated at 30mA, it was no match for 5x78mA bulbs in the hall light (from cold), or six 12mA spots in the kitchen. "These RCD trips are the bane of any sparky's life."

So, rather spookily, the solution was to change the blue trip back to black.

Kitchen fit: Day 7

A very noisy day in the house today as the fitters were filling and sanding the joints in the cornice all day. Electricians returned to complete their installation, with a tail for the possible later addition of a kick space heater (after we've lived through a winter and decided whether a single radiator is enough), hob lights, connecting up the new ring main, cooker and hob feeds to the board and completing all tests.

So today I was able to set the time on the cooker. Never thought I'd be able to say I enjoyed THAT chore!

Kitchen fit: Day 6

Another leap forward in visible progress today as the electricians returned to start second fit.

All the lights went in (with the exception of the two over the hob space), light switches, socket covers (still not powered up) and power supplies to the appliances and appliance spaces (i.e. the hole for the fridge and freezer). A very full day's work.

On the "units" front, the kitchen fitters stayed out of the way of the sparkies and concentrated on cutting and fitting the plinths.

But the most obvious, and in many ways most exciting change, was the installation of the oven. The phrase dog's bollocks comes immediately to mind. The wiring still has to be tested so there's no power to the (double) oven as yet, but a kitchen never looks quite like a kitchen until there's an oven, and now there is.

Hare today

Having taxied back to Chesterfield from Friday's nuptials, yesterday morning was largely taken up with breakfasting and then heading off in one car to pick up the other two (the logistics of which are fairly simple compared to some of the stunts we've pulled in the Lakes).

Neither vehicle had come to any harm during their enforced stay in the pub car park, and duly retrieved, we set off for an afternoon's amble around Chatsworth gardens, taking in the general ambience and enjoying some of the unusual sculptures that adorn the gardens at the moment as part of their "Beyond Limits" exhibition.

I christened this one "Hare On My Bell End" - for obvious reasons. Never did find out what it's really called, and as it's not mentioned over here or on the "sculpture map" I'm still none the wiser. Maybe it's a permanent feature.

Anyway having indulged in more ice cream and pasties than were entirely good for us, we returned to P&V's place (via the Robin Hood for a quick quaff) to refresh before wandering over to the Market Pub for a couple of extra pints in advance of dinner at The Old Post. And WHAT a dinner. Superb.

All too soon the evening, and this morning's breakfast, with such charming and erudite companions was over and we returned home to examine what progress had been made, kitchen-wise in our absence on Friday afternoon, which was - as I'm sure you'll realise if you've been following - "Kitchen fit: Day 5".

The answer was "not a lot" - certainly nothing that would be visible in a photo. The guys had been concentrating on completing the essential and fiddly bits that aren't especially noticeable, while staying out of the way of the granite men. Expect more obvious progress tomorrow.

Wedding of the Year

Can't be many happier occasions than witnessing two of your best friends getting spliced, and that's exactly where we were yesterday afternoon, in the company of most of the rest of our best friends, their friends, family and a bunch of very energetic small people. The kind that make weddings... um... loud. No, fun. That's it. Fun.

Starting as we meant to go on with a glass of bubbly at Phil & Vicky's (excellent hosts as always), we wended our slightly circuitous way (on account of an overturned lorry on the A617) to Mansfield Registry office for the ceremony and then, with the day's official business out of the way, we settled down to the more important business of celebrating the nuptials with further champagne, and related (and unrelated) beverages, relieved on occasion by the odd sausage roll (really nice ones, as it happened) and dollop of coleslaw.

Called upon - owing to my acclaimed position as "resident wordsmith" - to pen something in the wedding book on behalf of the mates, I can't help feeling I disgraced myself somewhat, on account of the evening's overindulgences and the ebullient flavour of the day, but what's done is done, and whatever I wrote it was written from the heart, with feeling, and with relatively little time for reflection or composition, so f**k it. As long as it's not the last thing I write in a public place, I'll be alright. I think.

Anyway many, many congratulations to Ritchie & Helena (or Helena and Ritchie as they are in the above photo). May your days be long and your troubles few, your friendship strong and your love stay true, and if things go wrong and the air turns blue, just bite your tongue and have a damn good screw.

E.J.Thribb has got nothing on me.

Kitchen fit: Day 4

After the "excitement" of the previous night, the first order of business yesterday morning was to ask the fitters to shove some spare bubble wrap into the ducting hole to prevent a repeat visit from kitteh.

Luckily, one of them remembered just as they were leaving at 4pm!

The rest of the day was taken up with de-boxing and positioning three of the appliances - washing machine, drier and dishwasher - packing the bases and fitting the tops that will carry the granite worktops, in preparation for the granite "templating" that was scheduled for today.

Once this was done, the guys filled in their time with detailed work like filling the gaps at the sides of the cupboard with carefully scribed panel sections to match the carcases.

The "granite men" arrived today and for some reason I was expecting the templating procedure to be very hi-tech and involve laser measuring equipment and computerised drafting of the worktop areas.

No.

Strips of 4mm MDF, cut to size and glued together to form a kind of latticework representation of the surface area. I kid you not. I guess, although it LOOKS a bit Heath Robinson, it's actually the quickest, cheapest and most accurate way of representing a space, when that representation has to be millimetre-perfect to avoid a very expensive mistake.

Anyway, we didn't hang around to see the finished article as we had a wedding to get to, so here's how the kitchen looked at close of play yesterday (Day 4). You'll have to wait for Friday's progress until we're back from our keenly anticipated weekend in the company of friends.

The cat burglar

1.18am, and I become vaguely aware of a house alarm blaring away in the distance.

Nikki: "Is that our alarm?"
I listen more carefully, in my sleep-befuddled state.
Me: "Don't think so. It *is* close though."
I get out of bed and plod over to the window. When I pull back the curtain I can see our alarm box flashing its blue light angrily.
Me: "Fuck! It IS ours!"
As I open the bedroom door and the internal alarm becomes clearly audible, several thoughts crowd my still-not-fully-awake mind.
Should I go back and get my baseball bat?
Should I turn the alarm off BEFORE I check downstairs, alerting any intruder to the fact there's someone awake?
Has someone noticed the appliances being delivered and decided it's a good time to go on the rob, while they're all still in boxes?
I quickly decide plenty of light and an aggressive demeanour is the best approach to scare the intruder away. I cancel the alarm, turn the lights on and start downstairs.
Halfway down, I hear a noise in the kitchen. Bloody hell. How have they got in without making a noise?
I reach the hall, turn all the downstairs lights on and march boldly into the kitchen with a no-nonsense face on and the most don't-mess-with-me posture I can muster. I come face to face with the intruder.

A young tortie-and-white kitten, cowering at the other end of the kitchen.

She utters a frightened miaow and scuttles under the nearest cupboard unit.

Then I remember the fitters have just the day before completed coring out a 15cm hole in the wall for the ducting. A hole that presumably, from the outside, looks like a cat flap.

I retrieve the keys for the patio door, prop the kitchen door in the doorway to prevent the kitten escaping into the rest of the house, open the outside door and persuade her to go and burgle someone else, by which time Nikki has come down to check that I'm alright. With around 16 gallons of adrenaline pumping around inside me, I decide going back to bed isn't an option, so we set the coffee maker going and settle down in the lounge for some (very) early morning telly.

Kitchen fit: Day 3

Appliance day! Well, the delivery of them anyway. And suddenly once again the house became an obstacle course with boxes everywhere.

Dishwasher, double oven, hob, sink, taps and fixings in the hall; washing machine and tumble drier in the kitchen, and the downdraft extractor already unpacked and stood in place so the fitters could marry up the outflow fitting with the position of the ducting (coring for which was completed, with much cursing and swearing at the quality of Victorian stop brick, this morning).

The rest of the day was taken up with cutting the cupboard to fit around our wall-mounted combi boiler. The cupboard went up and down more times than a fairground pony, largely due to the shape of the wall, which kept distorting the carcase during fitting. In the end drastic measures were necessary, in the form of a diagonal cut across one corner of the cupboard to relieve the stress. This will be invisible after painting, but it did make me wonder how the joiner would have coped with the problem if we'd chosen solid wood cabinets.

Kitchen fit: Day 2

Today was mainly about positioning the remaining cupboards and starting to hang the wall units.

Even without doors, the wall units took the kitchen another huge leap towards "looking right" and their consequential absence from the dining room meant a step away from it being such an obstacle course, since they were no longer blocking access to the kettle station and the cutlery drawer.

Visible progress was somewhat hampered by having to core out two walls to take the ducting for the downdraft extractor, which proved a slow and noisy task. So slow that our fitters decided to abandon the second hole halfway through, to give the drill time to cool down! Even so by clocking off time the kitchen, although still full of tools, ladders and boxes of fittings, was definitely taking shape.

Kitchen fit: Day 1

And so finally, we come to the start of the actual fitting of the actual kitchen (actually). The project we started on July 9 and which has had more than its fair share of ups and downs already, is (hopefully) on its final up. Finally.

The two fitters - Mr Kitchen Guy himself and his mate - turned up at 9am as promised and got started right away. The units were delivered almost coincident with their arrival and pretty soon the kitchen was a storm of bubble wrap and tape as the wrappings came off and things started to move into place.

But it wasn't just the kitchen. Oh no. We had plastic-wrapped cupboards in the dining room, in the hall, and "cheeks" (the shaped side panels that fit alongside each cupboard) propped up against just about every wall.


Walking around the house suddenly became a bit of an obstacle course. Trip hazards, too, with coving and other long sections lying on the floor in front of the dining room door.

By close of play (4pm, without a lunch break - a solid day's work) we were beginning to get the merest hint of what the finished article will look like.

Insurers have a laugh

Coincidentally I've just received renewal notices for the buildings and contents insurance on our place AND on my Mum's house, which is currently in the process of being emptied ready for sale, but isn't quite empty yet (by several tons).

Our monthly premium has crept up by a few pounds every year, which I put down to inflation, and increased charges owing to the scrotes who regularly scam money off the insurers, but this time round I noticed that - compared to my Mum's quote - our people don't show an annual charge. So I worked it out, and had to pick my jaw off the desk. Suddenly 5 years after we've moved here, we're paying over a thousand pounds a year for combined buildings and contents insurance.

Hang on, that can't be right. The bill for Mum's place is less than 400. OK, it's a smaller place and Nottingham isn't *quite* so bad for crime as Manchester, but even so that looks a bit ridiculous. Let's do a quick check on confused.com. See if they can redress the balance of all those irritating adverts they've subjected me to over the years. Hey look! They can!!

Five minutes on the Internet and I've saved us about £600 a year. Love it.

I'm sure you'll be able to predict what the original insurers said when I phoned to cancel. "Well, we could look at the underwriting - I'm sure we'll be able to do it cheaper." Yeah. Thanks. Maybe you should have thought of that before assuming I'd carry on letting you rip us off.

A-building we will go

But first, a-shopping. To somewhere I didn't even know existed: the Northern Computer Markets held at Bowlers every Saturday. How, you might ask, can any self-respecting geek live in Manchester for ten years and not know that was there? And you might ask. I don't have an answer. But I know it's there now :o)

Wandering round trying to stop the drool from soaking into my beard was hard enough. Then we smelled the bacon and egg baps. Then we looked around a bit more, worked out a buying strategy and started spending. A Gigabyte 3DMars case, power supply, a 22" LG LED monitor (just the one for now), a 2TB hard drive (Western Digital of course) 8GB of Kingston memory, BD rewriter, Gigabyte motherboard, i5 processor, Nvidia graphics card, card reader, wireless card, new keyboard and mouse (why not?) and we were done.

Back home on the double to start assembling and by about 4pm the machine was assembled, booted first time, and I was busy reinstalling software. Bloody brilliant.

The old machine, stripped of its disks (the 1TB to keep, the 250GB installed just long enough to suck its data off) is over there, pretending to be a door stop.

No.1 Chinky Buffy

Diane's been in town unexpectedly this week, so tonight we headed into town for an almost ad-hoc get-together at Manchester's renowned No.1 Oriental Buffet. Or at least it was renowned last time I looked (2-3 years ago maybe). On this particular occasion, although the company was as usual excellent, the meal was a little under par. A bit predictable in choices and some of it not as hot as it could be. Maybe that's what gave me a gippy tummy the next day. Anyway fun was had, drink was quaffed and faces were stuffed.

Then later Annie came back with us and we sat for an hour or two speccing up a replacement for the deceased beased. The death of the old war horse was distinctly to be treated as an opportunity to be grasped, rather than a tragedy to be mourned. Truth be told there had been more grinding of teeth, muttering and swearing in its general direction in recent months (years) than praise and soft words. Slow, error-prone, noisy, slow, many of its application exhibiting less than normal behaviour, and slow.

So one requirement for its replacement stood out from the crowd: Not Slow.

I think an Intel Core i5 and 8GB of memory should be fast enough :o)

Wake up, time to die

The line, for those who don't recognise it (are there any? lol) is from my favourite movie: Blade Runner.

It's posted in honour of my dear old Fujitsu-Siemens PC, which I've had since December 2004 and which didn't wake up this morning. Since I've used it pretty much every day, apart from holidays spent away from home, in almost seven years, its "not waking up" had happened before.

Usually it means a crash has occurred overnight for some reason, prior to the sleep kicking in. This time a warm reboot didn't fix the problem, and neither did a cold reboot, which is usually enough to clear down any hardware registers that have got their knickers in a knot. No, this was more than just a "not waking up." This was the Big Sleep.

Fingers crossed it's just something like the video card, and not a hard disk crash and the loss of all that lovely data. That lovely, unbacked up, data. Who'd have thought I'm a 33-year computer industry veteran who doesn't back up? There must be thousands of us.

Corporate bollockspeak

A quiet week on the kitchen front (silent, actually), so I thought I'd share some examples of talking bollocks that I found buried in a comments thread on one of the sites I read regularly.

Phrases that those attempting to climb the greasy pole litter their conversations with, in an attempt to sound knowledgeable, when in fact all they achieve is a demonstration of their scroteworthiness.

"Quantum leap"
Bandied about to mean a fundamental, radical change, but in reality an inconceivably small distance.

"Critical mass"
Clever manager types use this to mean the gathering together of sufficient resources (er, people) to complete a task in the optimum time. It's original meaning is the minimum quantity of something that is guaranteed to make it fly apart catastrophically.

All for now. Feel free to contribute.

The New Floor

Well, it might be totally devoid of anything remotely resembling a kitchen unit, but the new floor received its last two coats of sealer yesterday, and now has a deep, rich, satin sheen and a colour that - remarkably - is an almost perfect match for the oak staircase we had fitted back in March, as you can see:

Now we wait for a week, while the kitchen manufacturer catches up with the order, and the kitchen echoes loudly with every small noise inside or outside the house. We just know it's going to feel a LOT smaller once the units are in. We've had the whole space to ourselves since the beginning of July, but it'll be good to finally move out of the dining room!

Down tools. Oh... they weren't up.

My inner planner (Yes, I do have one. Yes, he's well buried) has sat slightly on the irritated side of the fence throughout this kitchen refurbishment business. My estimates for how long things should take, and when (and in what order) they should happen, suggested an optimum elapsed time of between 6 and 7 weeks for the whole job.

This perfect, shiny, back-to-back plan was thrown off kilter as soon as we left the blocks when the builder offered July 9th as a date when he could come and alter the chimney breast. So effectively, we've been forced to live out of the dining room for a month longer than *absolutely necessary*. In an ideal world. But, as is often brought home to us, it's not an ideal world, and most of the tradespeople who have come and gone during the works have commented that the elapsed time we ARE achieving is still pretty good. All things considered.

But, you know, when "living out of the dining room" means this:

...and this...

Then it all gets a bit old after a few weeks. Still, it's not all bad. At least we still had a kitchen sink until the start of this week. The start of a week that had been even more carefully planned than usual so that it dovetailed perfectly with the start of actual kitchen fitting on Monday, thus keeping to an absolute minimum the time when regular living is even more of an obstacle course.

Plans, as we've proved over and over again with this project, can change with a single phone call.

In this case, the phone call from the kitchen unit makers, to say they were very (very) sorry, but they wouldn't be able to deliver the units for fitting on Monday. One of their main joiners had broken his leg in a motorbike accident and they'd tried everything but they just couldn't honour the date. We've been pushed back a week. The knowledge that this is much more of a disruption for the Actual Kitchen Guy, since he now has to twiddle his thumbs for a week and then explain to all the customers he has booked in that their fitting will be delayed a week too, is no consolation. It doesn't make us feel better to know that other people are affected too.

No, there's nothing to be done apart from suck it up, and live out of the understairs cloakroom for another week. So you'll understand why, having been slightly on the irritated side of the fence, I'm now well into the middle of the irritated garden.

Flooring: Day... um... 4

I've been studiously avoiding posting progress photos of the flooring because, well, I didn't take any. The last couple of days have looked pretty similar to the first except with gradually increasing floor area covered and decreasing piles of material and junk. So I thought I'd wait until it was all down.

So Day 2, Der Floormeister completed the laying of boards in the kitchen, and sheeted the hall. And put the doors back on.

Day 3, he floored the hall, fixed a minor problem with the hatch (the leading edge was standing a bit proud), and implemented the chosen hatch fixing method (secret screwing).

Today was sanding, and the first coat of sealer. Being a water based sealer the first coat inevitably raises the grain in the North American White Oak boards, so the final effect will be much smoother than this, but here's how it looked at the end of Day 4.

Wednesday meme, because I say so

Stolen from Diane, this headlines as a "time wasting meme for a Sunday morning." It just happens to be a Wednesday today. Am I bothered?

1. What kind of soap is in your bathtub right now?
We don't keep any kind of soap in the bathtub. None of us use it. (The bathtub that is)

2. Do you have any watermelon in your refrigerator?
No.

3. Is there anything moldy in your refrigerator?
No. And there's nothing mouldy either.

4. Are there any dirty dishes in your sink?
We don't have a sink at the moment. Kitchen refit in progress.

5. What would you change about your living room?
I would have sealed the floor before laying the carpet, to stop the dust lines blowing up between the boards. And I would fit that cable tidy we bought 8 years ago, to tidy up the TV, PVR, PS3 and AV amplifier cables.

6. Are the dishes in your dishwasher clean or dirty?
Dishwasher not fitted yet. See #4

7. Do you have a can of mushrooms in your pantry?
No. No pantry. See #4

8. White or wheat bread?
Multigrain.

9. What is on top of your refrigerator?
Spare shelves; large pyrex baking dish; large ice pack for the cold bag.

10. What color is your sofa?
Dark brown.

11. What color or design is on your shower curtain?
Don't have a shower curtain. The door to the shower enclosure is glass.

12. How many plants are in your home?
5

13. How many candles are in your home?
About a dozen (not counting tea-lights)

14. Is your bed made right now?
Yes.

15. If you have a coffee pot, what color is it?
Brushed stainless steel.

16. Electric or standard can opener?
Standard.

17. Comet or Soft Scrub?
I have no idea what you're talking about.

18. Is your closet organized?
I imagine so. I never go in there.

19. What color is the flashlight that you use the most?
Black and yellow.

20. What kinds of things are in your junk drawer?
Radiator and gas meter keys, bits of string, rubber bands, flyers from local takeaways, instruction books for kitchen appliances, popular recipes, unpopular recipes, recipes of unknown popularity, spare batteries, old pens, freezer clips, ...

21. Do you drink out of glass or plastic most of the time at home?
Glass.

22. Do you have iced tea made in a pitcher right now?
No.

23. If you have a garage, is it cluttered?
No garage.

24. Curtains or blinds?
Curtains.

25. How many pillows do you sleep with?
Two.

26. Do you sleep with any lights on at night?
No.

27. How many ceiling fans are in your home?
None.

28. How often do you vacuum?
When the dust/bits become noticeable.

29. Standard toothbrush or electric?
Standard.

30. What color is your toothbrush?
Blue & white.

31. Do you have a welcome mat on your front porch?
Yes.

32. What is in your oven right now?
Oven not yet fitted. See #4

33. Is your microwave clean or dirty?
Clean. And it's the only thing we have to cook on at the moment besides the slow cooker.

34. Is there anything under your bed?
No.

35. Chore you hate doing the most?
Ironing.

36. What retro items are in your home?
Wood burning stove in the study (never used), several items retrieved from Mum's in the process of being sorted/sold.

37. Do you have a separate room that you use as an office?
Yes.

38. If you have a yard, who mows it?
Me. And being British, it's a garden. With a lawn. Whoever heard of "mowing the yard"?

39. Is there anything on your kitchen floor right now?
A stack of new oak flooring, the flooring man's tools and fixings, a door, quite a lot of sawdust.

40. How many mirrors are in your home?
Two in bathrooms (third bathroom yet to be kitted out), two on the study floor waiting to be hung.

41. Do you have any hidden emergency money around your home?
No. Emergency money lives in the bank.

42. What color are your walls?
Which ones? We currently have walls in the following colours:
Plaster; Natural hessian; White; "Gentle" (a shade of lilac); "Armagnac" (a shade of aubergine); Peach; Brown (can't remember the name); Olde English Gold; Willow Tree (pale shade of sage green).

43. Which rooms in your house have wallpaper?
None.

44. Do you have a peephole in your front door?
No. Some stained glass though.

45. Do you keep any kind of protection weapons in your home?
A small baseball bat. Oh, and the old Kalashnikov, of course, but everyone has one of those.

46. What does your home smell like right now?
Fly spray.

47. Fave candle scent?
Sandalwood.

48. What kind of pickles (if any) are in your refrigerator right now?
Mango chutney; branston pickle. Might be some old lime pickle in there at the back.

49. Who are in the pictures you displayed?
On here? In the house? We have a "family wall" with pics of, you know, family.

50. What color is your favorite Bible?
Well this will totally amaze my regular readers, but I don't have a favourite Bible. Or an unfavourite one come to that.

51. Do you have plenty of cabinet space in your kitchen?
Not at the moment (see #4). Once the refit is complete there'll be LOADS.

52. Do you own a stereo?
Not any more. See this.

53. How many TVs do you have?
Two.

54. How many house phones?
Two.

55. Do you have a housekeeper?
LOL.

56. What style do you decorate in?
The style of the 17th century master Emulsio Emplastro.

57. Do you like solid colors in furniture or prints?
I prefer them to colours made of, say, plasma.

58. In case of fire, what are the items you would grab if you only could make one quick trip?
Wallet, keys, and anyone who was in the house. I don't think I could carry the aquarium, so I hope the end will be quick for the fish :o(

59. Do you know how to work your electrical box?
Of course.

60. What temperature in your home is most comfortable to you?
20° works for us.

Wasps

Three in the study again yesterday morning. One last week. Three the week before that. No sign of another nest around the house (such as memorably happened two years ago) as far as I can tell. But THIS morning we were inundated with the nasty buggers. I must have burned through a quarter of a can of fly spray, leaving 8 or 9 dead bodies littering the carpet, before I noticed that outside the windows dozens of them were crawling animatedly around, looking for a way in.

And finding it. By squeezing through the draft strip between the sashes. Time to start closing the curtains, and hope the consequent removal of the hypnotic lure of our electric lights burning into their dim hymenopteran brains will give us some respite from the daily invasion.

Flooring: Day 1

The penultimate process of kitchen refurbishment began today, as the kitchen (and hall) flooring began to be laid. First order of business: lay a wide enough strip to store all the remaining materials, thus ensuring they all only need to be moved and restacked once, and then prepare as much of the plywood sheeting that carries the oak boards as possible, to enable rapid floor laying on Day 2.

Progress was hampered by our desire to install a "hatch" - replacing the original - to allow access to the subfloor void without destroying sections of floor if and when new services need to be installed. And also by the scribing, removal, and cutting of any doors that happened to be in the way.

By the end of the afternoon, things were looking... um... different

Another side-effect of starting the floor laying process is, of course, the sudden lack of a kitchen sink. Yes, from now until the worktops are fitted in approximately two weeks' time and the sink can be installed and made waterproof, we'll be filling the kettle and the coffee maker from the understairs cloakroom sink, and washing up in the bath. What was that I was saying about things getting worse before they get better?

Stags and Hens

I thought my days of attending stag dos were long behind me, but then I also thought that pretty much everyone whose stag do I might attend was either already married, or unlikely to go that way in the foreseeable. How little I know. The weddings aren't over quite yet and neither, therefore, are the stag dos. Or the hen dos for that matter.

So last night, we enjoyed both. Stags for me, Hens for Nikki, and an amalgamation of both at the beginning and end of the night, since we all got together for pre-do drinkies at Ian and Gill's, and then met up again in time for last orders (just!) at the Test Match.

In between times it was another delightful curry for the lads at the Bombay Bridgford, which equalled its last effort (let's face it, it was never going to surpass it), followed by copious quantities of quaffage on the meandering path back to the TM, via the Larwood and the Pet Shop. Lovely.

Having sunk our last pints at the TM (after somehow managing to convince them to serve us even though the towels had been on the pumps for five minutes before we showed up - the benefits of being regulars :o)) we repaired back to Ian & Gill's to round the night off in similar style.

In fact the whole weekend, despite being Ritchie & Helena's respective dos, had a bit of an "Ian & Gill's" theme to it, as we were back there for breakfast this morning. Much appreciated. Next get together: The Actual Wedding.

The flooring cometh

The excitement mounts as we experience the Arrival Of The Materials For The New Floor.

OK, it doesn't look much right now. Just a pile of wood on t'floor. Which ironically is exactly what it will be once it's laid. Only by then it will be a pile of wood exactly one board thick and as wide and as long as the room.

Or rooms, to be entirely accurate, since we're having both kitchen and hall done at the same time.

Starting Monday.