Kitchen Doors
Posted: Thu 19 February, 2009 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, House Work 2 Comments »You’d think we’d have learned after the last farce with B&Q about kitchen doors, but no – Herself found the ones we liked, and ordered them from Ballsup and Quit. And the delivery was due today…
Oh dear, oh lord, oh what a to-do. I don’t know quite how to break it to you, gentle reader – so brace yourself.
B&Q delivered everything. On time. And it all appears to be correct – even the kitchen worktops. My gob has never been so smacked.
It looks like (in fairness to them) B&Q have sorted themselves out in the intervening time, and now everything is bar-coded, and checked in a hand-held terminal before it comes off the truck. If there’s stuff missing, the terminal won’t let them make the delivery.
It makes the delivery a lot slower – they were sodding about on the truck for a good twenty minutes before anything came off it at all – but it means we’ve got everything, and it’s all ready to go.
So fair’s fair. In this case, B&Q has definitely improved, and upped it’s game. Despite myself, I’m impressed.
Fatclap
Posted: Mon 16 February, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work Leave a comment »When we got the new back door last week, one of the reasons was to enable us to have a cat-flap again. We had one back in Bracknell, but since moving to Norfolk we haven’t had a catflap at all.
This has meant that Psycho Cat sees us more as skivvies or slaves, who will get up at any time of the night in order to let the little sod out. In fairness, this usually means somewhere around 6 – 6.30 am, which isn’t too bad. However, it’s not been unknown for it to be 3am, or 4am. Which is too bad.
When he’s wanted to go out, the cat has scratched on a chair in the bedroom, which is a woven-willow thing. It’s a noise that is just about guaranteed to wake me up, and he bloody well knows it.
Now, though, we’re finally back to having a catflap. Hindsight says that if we were to ever do this again, replacing the back door with one that’s cat-flap equipped would be a priority task, but well, it wasn’t. Those are, as they say, the breaks. Of course, in the two and a half years we’ve been up here now, Psycho Cat is feigning amnesia about how to operate a catflap.
He’ll learn. He’s not got any other options. We’re not letting him out the front door, or opening the back door for him. He will go through the sodding catflap, if it’s the last thing we do.
In fairness, he’s learning. When he was puking, he went out (and came back in) through it fine. I still had to push him out the first time (and got bitten for my troubles) but after that he seemed to be better about the entire thing.
Femtocells
Posted: Thu 12 February, 2009 Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, House Work, Own Business, Thoughts Leave a comment »Is it really geeky to be interested in getting one of these as and when they’re released in the UK?
Basically, it’s an extension of the cellular (mobile) network, connected through broadband, and allowing improved mobile access in phone blackspots. Like – well – our entire house/street.
Yes, geeky as all hell, but still I can see plenty of use for it just where we live…
Building Work – Phase 2
Posted: Fri 6 February, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work Leave a comment »The main dollop of building work in the kitchen is now completed – the weird wall and archway are gone, the two semi-rooms are merged together, the ceiling is replastered, and the pipes and wires are all boxed in.
Along the way, we’ve also had to get a new extractor fan/cooker hood thing – the old one had never worked since we moved in, and it turned out to have a bird’s nest in the flue pipe, at which point it all got condemned. We’ve also been able to replace the exterior PIR lights with ones that actually work, and don’t occasionally stay on all night. Oh, and the electrician has sworn (again) at the previous owner’s DIY “skills”. (in the loosest possible sense of the word)
The ropy old sliding back door is yet to be replaced, due to the fact the guy doing the work has developed a dollop of gastroenteritis, which means that sometime next week (probably) we’ll be having the builders back over for a day to take out the old door and put in a bit of replacement wall, and then we’ll have the replacement window and door installed the next day.
Herself was busy yesterday taking the old tiles off the walls in preparation for putting new ones up over the weekend. We’re leaving the floor tiles until next weekend, as (I think) the builders were scared of breaking new floor tiles when they take out the door and put in the replacement wall.
So it’s all going ahead, and we’re getting there. The kitchen looks one hell of a lot bigger now, and it’s all pretty promising really.
Building Work
Posted: Mon 2 February, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work Leave a comment »At home this week, we’ve got the builders in again. This time last year it was the bathroom getting knocked apart and now it’s the turn of the kitchen to get some replanning.
We’ve got a small (useless, space-taking) wall to be knocked down, a tiled floor to come up, a ceiling to be replastered, some pipes to be moved and/or boxed in, a new outside light to be installed, and the poxy horrid sliding backdoor (think sliding patio door, but also one that tips back from the top in order to come out) is being replaced by a window and single door. I think that’s it, but there’s probably other stuff going on as well.
All told, it means that this week is going to be slightly chaotic – and pretty dusty.
Then in a couple of weeks time we’ve got a delivery of new kitchen doors coming, along with worktop (sound familiar?) which will then get fitted and done the following week. (with luck, and assuming that the order comes through a) on time and b) correct. I’m placing no bets on either of those occurrences, let alone both)
So by the end of March we should have a redone kitchen – we’re not doing the full extension in the end, so this will be a replan that makes the place work better, but for about 1/15th of the cost…
Blik Transfers
Posted: Thu 20 November, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, House Work Leave a comment »Once we’d completed the bathroom work a while ago we had a new blank wall, and were wondering what to do with it. Via some now-unremembered person, I came across Blik wall transfers, and in particular the ones that have been done from designs on Threadless, some of which we loved.
Herself bought two Blik transfers for my birthday, one for the bathroom wall and one for the office.
So the bathroom now has Ambition Killed The Cat on that big blank wall, where it looks fantastic. (And I really must take a photo of it at some point)
The office will have Stone Jungle in black, which I absolutely love – we just haven’t got round to putting it up yet.
We’ve been really impressed with the service from Blik, and the quality of the decals. A couple of the bird decals have taken off some of the paint when they got moved, but that’s more down to the ropy quality of the walls than the fault of the decals themselves. (Plus we didn’t follow the instructions to heat the decal up slightly before moving it, so it’s also more our fault than that of the decals)
Even better, it’s a far easier way of finding something fairly individual for decoration when you don’t have the necessary artistic talent/flair yourself – which certainly applies to me, if not Herself…
Done Tiling
Posted: Mon 17 November, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work Leave a comment »I forgot to mention it over the weekend, but Herself completed all the tiling and grouting on Friday morning, and we moved our stuff back into the bedroom on Friday evening.
It all looks fantastic, and it’s great to have another job off the list of things to do. Of course, I’m sure it’ll soon be replaced with other stuff.
Next on the list is to sand down and re-varnish/seal the teak parquet flooring in the hallway. When that’s done (probably before the Festering Season is upon us – or at worst, done in early January) then that’ll be pretty much all the major inside jobs completed – with the exception of the kitchen, which we’re currently thinking about, and debating options.
Oh, and we managed to get the tile-cutter for half-price in the end, because of the blunt cutting wheel. In fairness to HSS, when we do have a complaint, they fix it as soon as possible.