Day: February 23, 2024

I’ve been working on my new cloaks cupboard. Progress has been quite a bit slower than usual because earlier this month I went down with a dose of ‘flu and even now I’m still getting over it. The cupboard will be permanently fitted into an alcove that I designed-in for it adjacent to the small separate toilet and close to the house’s front door. It will take up the full width of the alcove and have full height twin bi-fold doors to give easy access to its interior.

When I designed-in the alcove I had no idea what the dimensions of the doors would be and after much searching on the internet I was fortunate to find a supplier of just what I was looking for that would extend perfectly for the full height of the alcove from floor to ceiling and four panels of which would be just a tad narrower than its width. Because of the latter, I’m having to make up two wall extension ‘wings’ on either side to completely fill the gap with the doors in place.

Here’s a shot showing one set of bi-fold doors leaning against the wall and the frameworks for the two ‘wing’ extensions now permanently in place.

I’ve had to notch the bottoms of each extension to accept the floor plinths that were installed when the floor was tiled. I told the tiler that because I didn’t then know what form the cupboard would take just to fit plinth all around the walls, but that will be a good thing as the plinth will protect the lower edges of the cupboard’s internal walls.

The next step will be to attach plasterboard panels to the fronts, backs and exposed edges of the wall extensions. I’ve tried to measure dimensions as accurately as I could and I’m aiming to get the front panel of the cloaks cupboard to line up exactly with the wall of the alcove so when I eventually fit coving it runs across from one side to the other in a straight line. For that, the plasterboard on the right-hand wall extension will need to line up exactly with the edge of the alcove wall and I hope that I’ve got it just about right.

I’ll be cutting and fitting the plasterboard surfaces to the wall extensions tomorrow. Then I’ll have to fit metal plasterboard corner pieces to the exposed edges to protect the exposed corners and plaster them in. If all goes as planned I should end up with a cloaks cupboard that will fit exactly in the space provided for it and perfectly match the existing wall colours. That’s what I hope anyway.

Then I’ll be building in an internal shelving arrangement for general storage and a hanging rail for cloaks and when that’s done, all of the main construction work on and in my house will be complete. At that point I’ll at last be able to think about getting all my stuff out of storage and bringing it into the house. It’s been languishing in there since June/July 2021 and I can’t wait for that moment to arrive.

Well, I don’t know what yet, but something sure is on its way to me. I’ve been tracking the delivery of what I hope is my new e-bike for several days now, on its way to me from China. According to China Post, it arrived in French customs yesterday.

It showed up on the French postal service tracking site for the first time yesterday evening and it’s delivery status is trackable there this morning.

I’m still somewhat mesmerised by the whole thing. Bearing in mind that I only paid 373,93€ for it including delivery from China (by airfreight no less) this is what I found when I located and checked the manufacturer’s (Keteles) web site.

According to the web site, the price of my new bike is 1499,99€ and I’m not even sure if that includes the cost of delivery. All very bizarre. And there are also a couple of reviews on Youtube of the specific model I’ve ordered which also refer to the same sort of price level.

I have noticed one thing though. The manufacturer’s web site shown above doesn’t seem to work properly – links seem to be either broken or just ineffective. I’m wondering therefore if the company might have gone bust and its stock is just being sold off? I have no idea and this could be the completely wrong conclusion, but on the basis of the above it looks as though I can certainly expect something to be delivered to my doorstep in the next few days.