Another long day

With mixed results, as I’ll explain. I was up by 6.30 am and back working in the kitchen by 7.30 am as I’d received a message that my new fridge could be delivered any time from 7.00 am. It didn’t arrive until late morning, of course, but by then I’d managed to get well on the way to installing one of the swing out storage units in one of the corner cabinets. It didn’t help, though, that due to the instructions being unclear as to which unit was which (left and right) I’d begun installing the wrong one.

It was more frustrating than anything else as no great harm was done but not as frustrating as the events that transpired following the fridge delivery which I’ll go into a bit later on. I had to go back to the caravan and as I’d got up early and it was approaching midday I thought I might as well grab a bite to eat. Afterwards I could hear a strange noise and only when I exited the caravan did I realise that it was coming from the house.

The noise was mechanical and I thought for a moment that it was the tiler back grinding the bad tiles off in the bathroom, but it wasn’t. It turned out that the insulation men had arrived and were installing the insulation in the roof and the noise was the special truck-mounted pump that they were using to pump the fibre through a tube up into the roof space where a man was distributing it all around.

The fibre looks just like cotton wool and I was worried that it might come spraying out of the gaps around the LED lights, which are still awaiting installation, and be piling up on the floor. As it was I needn’t have worried as they knew what they were doing and although a small amount did come through it only amounted to very little.

Here are some shots of the finished corner storage unit. Each one is quite expensive at around 250€ but they are the only way to make effective use of the space in the corner cupboard, not that there’s still a lot left spare as the next (closed) shot shows. The cabinet door isn’t fitted yet, of course.

I learnt an unfortunate lesson from installing this storage unit, though. The cabinet on the other side is where the services for the dishwasher are located and as if it’s not bad enough that I have to cut holes in the cabinet back to accommodate them, I also found that quite by chance the plumber had installed the dishwasher shut-off valve at exactly the same height as the main frame of the storage unit.

I can’t wait for the plumber to return and lower it for me as that would mean that in the meantime my kitchen installation would come to a complete halt. I have to do the job myself which wouldn’t be a big problem in the normal run of things if copper tubing had been used. But it hasn’t. The plumber has used ‘multicouche’ tubing which is more or less a central band of aluminium sandwiched between an inner and an outer layer of PTFE.

It’s relatively inexpensive and quick and easy to install if you have the right tools, which is why they use it. But I don’t so I did a quick search on the internet to see if there’s any way around it. And there is, because as well as using fittings that crimp to the tube using a special (expensive) tool, you can also buy compression ‘multicouche’ fittings for small jobs – like this one.

I managed to get this information in time for me to get over to Leroy Merlin before they closed at 8.00 pm and was delighted to be able to get exactly what I needed in the form of a special tube cutting tool and a wall bracket that will accept a direct compression connection to the ‘multicouche’ tubing. And while I was at it, I also got hold of a sheet of hardboard with one white face to replace the cabinet back that I cut a large hole in for the dishwasher shut-off valve that will now be in totally the wrong position.

That means I’ll be able to cut the vertical tube to lower the height of the shut-off valve and reattach it to the wall using the new wall fitting. The latter will be a big improvement on the one the plumber fitted as it’s more compact and also silver rather than bare brass. More on this tomorrow.

So what about the fridge? Two youngish men dropped it off without any delivery paperwork and high-tailed it after dropping it inside the house before I had a chance to check it. And naturally when I did (immediately) it had a dent in the door.

I informed the supplier of this within 20 minutes of them dropping it off but they have already tried to quote some regulation or other to me to the effect that as I signed the delivery paperwork and accepted it they can do nothing about it. If they think they can get away with that they’ve got another think coming. There was no delivery paperwork and I therefore didn’t sign for and accept it so a new battle starts tomorrow. It’s something that I just don’t need right now but sadly this is how French ‘client service’ works. All they want is your money.