At a grinding halt

Progress on my kitchen has been irritatingly slow over the past few days. I’ve had to go out most mornings before starting work either to buy materials or do other errands and whenever I do that, I can bank on losing at least half a day. That means having to work late into the evening to get things finished but that can also mean that I end up making mistakes because I’m so tired. Luckily, although I’ve made a couple, it fortunately hasn’t resulted in any disasters, though.

After making good around where I’d taken out my old sink, I just splashed a little bit of emulsion onto the bits that would be exposed (called ‘toshing over’ in the trade 🙂 ) and installed the pipework that I prefabricated a few days ago for the new hot and cold water supplies.

I was then ready to go on to install the remaining base units, starting with the cooker unit that will hold an electric oven and the new gas hob that I bought a few weeks ago. To be successful as a plumber, you have to be good at forming a mental picture of things in 3D and then converting that into reality. I’ve always been pretty good at that but my skills were sorely tested when I came to run the connecting pipework for the gas hob, and will be so again when I come to connect up the new sink waste. But first, back to the hob. I had very little choice about where I could bring the gas pipe through the wall from the outside but it just so happened that the hob connection was also in about the same place. So it was quite challenging to say the least, to get the two to mate up, especially as I wanted to do it all in solid copper as well as have it ready just to connect up when I’ve fitted the worktop. So the first challenge was positioning the hob where it will finally be, sitting on top of a worktop of thickness 38mm.

Then the fun began, because I not only had to get the pipe supplying the gas to turn back on itself, I also had to get it onto the correct angle to smoothly slip into the hob connection, and all in a space that was extremely restricted! It literally took me several hours to get right but I think I got away with it, although I’ll only know for sure when I come to connect it up after I’ve fitted the worktop for real.

Here’s a shot taken down the back of the unit.

And this is how the cabinet itself finally came out after it had been secured to the kitchen wall.

Installing the last two base units has been very tricky and time-consuming, not least because with a gap having to be left for my washing machine, they had to line up accurately in two dimensions with the other units. Plus they also needed to incorporate a pipe for my washing machine waste and be secured top and bottom to the wall to give a permanently rigid final job. Here’s how they came out.

So what’s all this about coming to grinding halt, you may be asking yourself. Well, I had plenty of time this evening to fit at least the smaller of my two worktops, if not both, actually. But I couldn’t, due to a combination of circumstances. First, I was very annoyed to find that both of my worktops had sustained damage on their front left hand corners that I needed for the smaller of the two, UNDER their protective packaging, which I thought was both unprofessional and very sneaky by Leroy Merlin. As I’d bought a new British brand Titan jigsaw, that I’d been using just for a bit of light cutting of plywood and thin MDF only a few weeks before from Brico Depot especially for cutting my worktops, although I was miffed about this, I thought it wouldn’t be much of a problem just to skim down the edge with a nice new blade and take a centimetre or so off, leaving a new, clean edge. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The jigsaw turned out to be completely useless because despite have a laser beam and goodness knows what other technology, I found that it was impossible to cut a straight line with vertical sides. There was enough ‘play’ in the blade mechanism for it to keep veering off line even though you were dead on it on the surface, giving an unwanted curve plus an increasingly sloping side to the cut. I wasted about 10cm of worktop before deciding that there was no way that I could risk attempting using it to cut my worktops to precise dimensions, so as it came with a 24 month warranty, it’ll be going back tomorrow in exchange for something probably more expensive but hopefully more effective as well. But once again, I’ll be subject to yet another delay while I try and sort it out 🙁