So, so slow

I’d hoped to get all of the drawer and door fronts onto the kitchen floor units today so I could move on and start thinking about other things. But it didn’t happen.

I have two units with a drawer over a reduced height door, one is 60cm wide and the other 40cm. I got cracking on the 60cm one first and got the drawer assembled and fitted fairly quickly, taking trouble not to rush and make any mistakes. One thing that’s different this time around is that there’s no template for the handles – I’ve had to choose how to position them on each type of front then measure and drill for them myself.

The 60cm unit came out OK – the only reservation I do have is that I’d have liked the handles to be a bit smaller but these were the only ones of this type that Brico Depot had and although I don’t love them, they’re OK.

Then I moved on to the 40cm unit and that’s when the problems started. The first thing was that the drawer pack contained only one drawer slider, not two as shown in the next pic. So that meant yet another unscheduled trip to Brico Depot – and the best part of two hours of worktime lost.

The nice lady at Brico Depot, who I’m getting to know quite well, took a drawer slider from another drawer pack but I had to wait around for quite a while as she had a queue of kitchen customers waiting for her to deal with them. I then dashed for home so I could get going again on the smaller floor unit.

And my troubles didn’t end with the drawer slider. All of this kind of kitchen unit are computer designed and pre-drilled in multiple places for hinges, drawer sliders, shelves etc, you name it. Except my one wasn’t. I thought it was weird because usually the shelf heights of all floor units are the same, but my one was different.

When I looked more closely I could see that it hadn’t been pre-drilled for drawer-sliders and also the drillings for one door hinge are in the wrong place and I’ll have to measure and drill myself. I didn’t have time to get the door on – just getting the drawer slider positions and drillings right took long enough – so the door will be the first job tomorrow. Here’s the unit with its drawer in place.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a job like this one before. All these little errors and cock-ups are taking so much time going backwards and forwards to either Leroy Merlin or Brico Depot and they’re making the job so, so slow 🙁