Updates galore

I've not posted in nearly two weeks now as we've not got 'net access at the new house - how have we survived? So many updates, I keep on having to go back to see what I've already written about.


When you buy a repossession house, first thing you should do is change your telephone number! It's taken two weeks to get the number changed, and during that change over time most Internet Service Providers won't touch you with a barge pole. We've had to change the number as we're still getting phone calls from aggressive debt collection agencies for the previous owners, and we're just not interested! We don't have contact details for them, and frankly we don't want them either.


I've had two weeks off work to do all the DIY, but it's wrecked my hands. I can barely feel anything at the moment with either index finger, and the skin is so dry the industrial strength skill moisturiser I use at work just soaks in - which is unusual as I normally need to wipe a fine layer off my hands. Lesson learnt: Wear thicker gloves, not just the latex ones!


What else has been going on? Well:

• The ground level kitchen units are down. The doors and facials are on most of the kitchen units, although a little more work is needed on the cupboard that houses the dishwasher
• The work tops are on the kitchen units - which was nerve wracking (more below)
• The floor in the kitchen is mostly tiled. There's a couple of extra bits to do and then it needs grouting. It's mostly square, although there are a couple which are on the pi$$ a bit.
• We've discovered the walls aren't in anyway shape or form square. This is particularly difficult when you're trying to hang cupboards on them. Currently all none of the cupboards are level in both directs - there are big steps. We might have to take them off the wall again, bolt them together and then but them back. Hmmmm - not sure that's going to work either :(

Lessons learned:

When you buy waste pipes, and attempt to fit them using 'solvent welding', make sure you use pipes that are designed for it - it won't work otherwise! Solvent welding is a quick, cheap and easy way of getting waste pipes to fit. You apply a very smelly solvent to the surfaces that you need to join and then push them together. After a few minutes the solvent will have evaporated leaving a water tight seal (in theory). But only if you buy pipe which is compatible with solvent welding. Without realising the differences, I had bought the type of pipe you can't solvent weld, and then wondered why it wasn't working. Fortunately you can buy push fit joints as well, which are quite difficult to use - much harder than solvent welding. So if you can stand the smell of the solvent - buy the solvent, pipes and joints. You can also buy compression joints, which are very easy to use but cost 3 or 4 times as much.

Worktops

So when the £450 bill for your worktop arrives (or more - it's a very expensive piece of your kitchen), you think great - a major part of your kitchen arrives. Then it slowly dawns on you that you've got to cut great big chunks out of it. One corner of the kitchen has a support pillar running through it, and of course there's the kitchen sink to cut too. I did the corner cut first, and spent over 2 hours doing some templates to try and do the cut right. In the end, it came out ok, but it's lucky we're tiling and putting some sealant round that corner as the wall's crooked. (No surprise here).

Then there's the sink. The template that came with the sink didn't match the sink we'd bought. So it was kinda lucky my Father insisted we measure up the sink to make sure! And make sure you have enough play on the flexy hoses coming out of the water system to go into your nice new taps. I suspect we'd have had problems even if I had put enough copper pipe in, as I wouldn't have been able to reach up past the sink. I ended up adding an extra bit of flexy pipe onto the plumbing so we had enough maneuverability. All in all, not a terrible job, though a professional would have had it done twice as quick and probably wouldn't have such a large gap down the back of the worktop. Still, we can correct most of that when we tile the splashback - when we finally get round to it!

The bedroom is mostly sorted out - realistically we just need to put up the curtain pole and we're all done in there. YAY!

I've spent a few days putting floorboards in the loft. At approximately £5/square metre, they are not cheap. But it's all down now - just in time for Melody to shut her shop and move all the remaining stock up there.

More updates soon!