Day Fifteen - Doors, Drawers and a Carousel

It was a steady progress day. The plan was to screw in the worktops, get the doors on all of the base unit cupboards, build and install the drawer unit and the carousel in the corner cupboard.

Screwing in the worktops was bloody hard work, even with the electric screwdriver – that wood is so tough! Then the sink unit door went on no problem, and that’s when I started having to think.

The adjacent door at right angles to the sink is not as wide as the aperture so I needed a filler piece so I put on the door, (after twatting my head on one of the shelves in that cupboard when putting the awkward sods in!), to see how big the gap would be. It was only about 35mm but the filler couldn’t go to the left of the door because that would stop the sink door from opening. I built out the edges for the hinges on the opposite side to get the door adjacent to the sink unit. This took me ages and I still can’t say why.

I got it nicely straight and about 1mm away from the corner and then realised that the sink door still wouldn’t open. Then the penny dropped! I should have installed the sink unit a few millimetres away from the back units to allow for the cupboard doors and it is far too late to move it now! Looking back on the paper plan I have from Ikea the filler piece looks like it is shown on the back unit but it is a bit ambiguous with the perspective and could look like either. D’OH! D’OH! D’OH!

The sink unit door will open but only if the other door is opened first. It is such a shame but it will only be a little niggle in the kitchen when I am using it properly. Let’s face it, the cleaning products go under the sink and I’m not that obsessive with the housework that I’ll use that cupboard every hour. If there is a plumbing emergency and I need to work in that cupboard in the future, which I sincerely hope not to be doing, the doors are on ingenious clips so it is a matter of a couple of seconds to remove it completely.

Unbelievably, that little bit of work had taken until past lunchtime. I was putting the drawer unit together when my mum arrived to have a look at what has been done. I’m glad she was there when putting the bottom drawer on the rails. It was a sod because it has the whole cupboard door on the front so balancing it from the top while guiding the bottom on the moving rails. The front looks like a cupboard door but there are three drawers inside. It really is very clever design and all of the drawers have dampers to softly close them the last couple of centimetres – very posh!

After that it was the corner unit on the other side of the cooker with its double doors and carousel. The carousel was designed for corner units with the diagonal front like the one on the wall above but after a bit of trick measuring I got it into a suitable place and it does still leave loads of cupboard space.

After a quick dinner, (cooked in the new oven!), I felt absolutely knackered and went to bed at nine.

I am writing this first thing in the morning on Day Sixteen. I have decided to not do any more of the little jobs in the kitchen and put everything away in the cupboards so the kitchen is ready for proper use next week when I will be back at work. I can do the plinths, the other filler pieces and make a start on the plug sockets and under cupboard lights next weekend. In the meantime everything has to be cleaned before it is put back in the kitchen thanks to the tremendous amount of dust I have created over the past fortnight so it is on with the Marigolds!

Thanks for reading the blog. I hope you have enjoyed reading it over the past two weeks. It has certainly been an experience involving the proverbial blood, sweat and tears but at the end of the fortnight I am looking back and feeling pretty chuffed with everything I have achieved. And, yes, I would do it again because I have learned so much.

I will post photos of the kitchen as I progress part-time over the next few weeks but this will be the last of the daily updates.

Day Fourteen - A sink, a hob, an oven and finally a dinner

Different day, different attitude. The shoulder was still very sore but the pain in my thumb had gone completely.

I started with a proper tidy-up and tool sorting session. After the previous day’s disasters tools had tended to get put everywhere and there was loads of cardboard, polythene and polystyrene packaging everywhere. After clearing the detritus I can see that I am definitely going to have to hire a skip when this is all done. That’ll have to be a work from home day on a Friday, (Oh no! Hee Hee!), for the delivery then fill it over a weekend.

The leaking tap turned out to be where I had bent the sink slightly with the blunted arbour so the water was not coming from the pipe but from the top of the sink and running down the pipe underneath. I was so thankful not to have to go back to Ikea and buy another tap. A cheeky squirt of silicon sealant and it leaks no more! I also got the waste pipe to get rid of the water without leaking. Voila! I finally had a sink with running hot and cold water!

The gas hob was a lot easier than the sink to secure in position, especially using the clamps that Brian left behind for me which are a lot more useful than the three-inch g-clamps that I used for the wall cabinets.

Next up was the oven which took two goes to adjust to the right height, slid in on the rails and secured with just a couple of screws. It was the moment of truth once I had made the electrical connections for the hob and oven. I reset the fuse with my heart in my mouth. No loud bangs meant that I hadn’t shorted anything but would it work?

I tried the hob first and got that really satisfying ki-ki-ki-ki from the ignition. Then I tried the oven and it all worked perfectly. Phew!

So at this point I had a sink, an oven and a hob. A home cooked dinner was on the cards!

The worktops still needed securing to each other which was a bit of a messy job. On the first one I put the wood glue in before pulling them together with the special bolts and it rained down on me while I was on my back in the cupboard tightening the bolt! Yeuch! All of the sawdust in the bottom of the cabinet then stuck to the glue making me a human collage! I stuck a strip of masking tape under the counter for the other two joins and that saved me from further sticky nastiness.

There are discrepancies in the joins and by the time they all came together there is a huge gap on the right hand wall. The tiles will take a lot of that out but it is going to need some quadrant around the base to hide it completely. The good news is that because the counters are solid wood I can sand down and fill the small discrepancies to make them almost invisible. The important thing is that they are all in place and more or less level. I decided to let the wood glue and silicon sealant set before screwing the counters down to the cupboards. This is going to be a pretty academic exercise because they certainly don’t move now that they are all joined together.

While I was doing the joins I had taken the cutlery and some crockery from the boxes in the front room and had them in the dishwasher so when I finished I would be able to cook dinner. After a quick shower I bunged a pie in the oven and waited. Home cooked dinner with veggies on a proper plate with real cutlery – Magic!

On reflection I think I’ll save the contract on my soul. I’m glad I didn’t sell it to have the old kitchen back yesterday. What a difference a day makes :-))

Tomorrow is lots of fiddly finishing jobs before I can start cleaning everything and stocking the new kitchen.

Day Thirteen - That sink-ing feeling

It is now gone nine in the evening and I know I wouldn’t dare but for two pins now I’d sell my soul to get my old kitchen back after kicking the s**t out of what is there at the moment. I have got to say at this point that I’m never given to fits of pique like this so let me tell you how it all happened...

I got back from the hire shop with a router and a new blade for Brian’s circular saw which was struggling a bit yesterday although it was only for rough cuts. I was also a bit of a thank you for giving up his time as he had. The router was a heavy duty Makita one which should make short thrift of the worktops.

Brian took over as the router expert and then asked me where the boss was. Well I was there wasn’t I? What he meant was the collar that goes at the bottom of the router blade so it slid precisely against the jig. A call to HSS Hire and they said that it should have come with one and, really helpfully, said that they would get a driver to go to their Luton store to pick one up and deliver it to the door. We decided to cut out the hole in the counter for the sink while we waited for the arrival of the crucial bit. We were only halfway through doing that when there was a bang on the garage door. He had tried the door bell but over the sound of “duelling jigsaws” it stood no chance! Unfortunately what he had brought was a collet for the blade and not the boss that we needed. He had a look at what we were trying to do and explained that HSS also hire out the jig which has a built in boss for following the contours of the cutting blade. He was really helpful and said that as we hadn’t used the tool he would refund the hire in full. Top bloke! I’d like to plug HSS Hire Shops now for all your tool hire requirements!

So that left us in the same place as last night, except it was now eleven in the morning. We decided to persevere with Brian’s router and see what we could get done. It lasted less than an hour. Can you imagine how I felt when it sputtered and died? Not only has he come all the way from the far side of Essex to help me, he was due to go to North Wales this afternoon but was going to be very late, and now my solid wood counters had knackered his router! So off we went to B&Q again but they didn’t have a suitable one, but they did have the infamous cholesterol van outside so we had a bacon burger and a cup of tea each which did hit a spot! Screwfix is just around the corner so we went there and they had just the job for £70. Back home again we made the second of the cuts on the side counters and then realised that the long counter across the back wall was too short!

When I planned the kitchen they had allowed just about two centimetres play in the back counter but the female cuts were four or five centimetres deep so that left me well short. Thankfully we had the offcut from shortest side and had to make a fillet piece. It looks really obvious now in the photo because the colour is now the same but they all need oiling and once they are joined and prepared properly it shouldn’t look significantly different. I am disappointed with Ikea though.

Brian helped me cut the rest of the counters and at my insistence made him leave, at least two hours too late, to go for his weekend away in Wales. I sincerely hope that he has a good time and that his friend who was waiting for him at home wasn’t too pissed off with him.

That left me with the cooker hob hole to cut before Colm arrived. Of course, he turned up just as I was measuring it out! Luckily for me and not him rather than me he had left one of the vital fittings on his other van so he had to go home and pick it up. This did give me the time to cut the aperture and put the counter in place before he returned. It was relatively easy for him and, bless him, he did stay to give me a hand in cutting the tap hole in the new sink.

Unfortunately the arbour bit that I bought at B&Q that said it would cut through metal just made a lot of smoke and noise but didn’t actually cut through the steel. When Colm had gone I used a metal blade on the jigsaw and this finally made the hole I needed for the tap. I did want the tap in the worktop but the pipes from the boiler in the garage run well away from the wall so it had to be in the sink itself.

With the hole successfully cut, albeit with a bit of damage to the sink made by the ineffective arbor, which will be hidden by the tap itself, it was time to fit the taps before the sink was installed to save me from having to contort to tighten everything up. That went fine except when I removed the blade from the jigsaw, forgetting that it would be incredibly hot and now have a beautiful indented burn across the pad of my right thumb. Ouch!

I then removed the worktop and laid it between two chairs to fit the sink with the taps. The instructions say that you have to put a sticky gasket around the sink edge and then fit the straps that hold it to the worktop before slotting it in. Unfortunately I speed-read the instructions and slotted the sink in before fitting the straps to find out that they can’t be added with the worktop in the way. The sticky gasket also stopped me from removing the sink to fit the straps. It is stuck fast! I am now working on the basis that if it is stuck that well then it ain’t going to move about so the straps will remain in the box.

The counter went back and after a nifty bit of plumbing the tap was working with just the waste to add. It’s a funny old fitting but luckily I had some spare joints left over from fitting the waste pipes and worked out a way to connect the sink to the pipes.

The waste trap has two blanked off entries for the overflow on either side and you have to push through the one you are going to us with a screwdriver. Easy enough? Not today! I had to have a few stabs at the blanking plate, at one point missing the fitting and sticking the screwdriver into the base of my thumb, feeling it glance of something hard inside. It may have been bone or tendon, I don’t know, but I do know that it was bloody painful and I now have a perfect cross-head gouge in my right thumb! Dramas aside the rest of the waste was relatively easy and I got it all connected ready to test.

It leaked!

There was water coming from the bottom of the waste as it joined the waste pipes and a leak from the cold water supply as it met the tap. It looks as though the tap is knackered because I have over-tightened the cold supply pipe.

So at the end of the day I don’t have a sink, or a cooker, or a hob. I do have counters that don’t seem to fit and I have to go to Ikea in the morning to buy a new tap. I have spent well over £100 just to cut the worktops which would have been about the same amount to get a professional company to come in to do them, my right thumb has been burnt and stabbed and I’ve pulled something in my right shoulder.

Not willing or able to cook and sick of takeaway food, I am going to have a couple of Stellas, a long shower and a good night’s sleep. Hopefully things will be better in the morning...

Day Twelve - Dodgy ravioli and a knackered router

Disappointingly only one of my friends could come over to help and then he woke up with a bad case of food poisoning and was dubious whether he would make it at all. Brian did manage to get here all the way from Canvey Island in the afternoon.

While I waited I finished the wall cabinets with all of the doors and shelves and got the drawer at the bottom of the oven unit installed. I love the drawer! It has got a three stage runner so it sticks ever so slightly when closed, smoothly opens and is damped when closing so for the last inch it slows right down and slowly slides back into place, all completely silently. It is well posh! Brian told me that you can get the dampers for the cupboard doors from Ikea and they definitely have gone on the wish list.

When Brian got here we went shopping to B&Q. The road was still closed so we had to go through Luton at school kicking out time which held us up. I did manage to get away with a sub-fifty pound bill for the first time since the project began, except they didn’t have the “dog-bolts” or a router blade so we had to go to Wickes who had the dog bolts but no blade. Thankfully there is a hire shop just around the corner and they did have a blade.

Back home we did a test cut on the shortest counter. The circular saw did struggle through the wood. Beech is incredibly dense hardwood. We set the jig in place and went for the first joint cut but the router was really struggling and skipped in places. You have to cut counters using a router in small bites, going deeper every time but anything more than the shallowest of cuts caused the router to stall and the smell of a suffering electrical motor was intoxicating.

I wasn’t convinced that we were going to get a good result like this so we retreated, deciding to hire a more powerful router in the morning and grab a beer instead!

Brian wasn’t on form thanks to the dodgy ravioli he cooked the night before and nursed a single can while I sat and sank a few before we went out for a curry.

As I write he is still in bed but I have arranged the hire and am going to leave him there while I go and collect the router and associated bits. Fingers crossed for the counter cutting later.

Day Eleven - Wall units and an extractor - Oh the excitement!

The day started slowly with me wondering if I would be able to get the corner wall unit in place as this one is the key to the rest of the wall units. Lifting the box out of the garage made me wonder all the more. It was okay to lift when it was in a nice compact box but fully assembled; therefore bulky and stretching across the base units to hang it on the wall would be a different story.

I built it then measured where the screws would go into the wall, determined to give it a go at least, and then went for a test-hanging. I got one of the screws into the hole on the cabinet but the other screw, which is on a plasterboard stud wall, got knocked and disappeared into the cavity. I retreated but was sure that if I could get the cupboard onto the disappearing screw hole I would be able to get it on the wall. I tried again with the fixing this time on the shelf, hung it on the secure screw and held it against the wall with my chest while inserting and tightening the cavity screw. I was shaking and sweating by the end but I did manage to get the cupboard attached to both screws enough to tighten them and secure it to the wall. It did take a few goes of undoing and redoing the fixings to get it level but the walls aren’t at right angles so it stuck out a fair bit on the fridge wall.

Relieved I moved on to the wall cabinet on the cooker wall which was a lot easier as it is only a thin cupboard and I could clamp it in place on the corner unit before making the holes and fixing it to the wall.

It was at this stage that I thought that I would like to see the cupboard doors and shelves in place as well as the wall units because unlike the base units they would need no further work. I have got to say that I’m impressed. I like them a lot.

The narrow cupboard the other side of the corner unit went up easily enough even if it is about a centimetre further back on the wall than the corner unit because the walls aren’t at right angles. I should be able disguise that with subtle adjustment of the cupboard doors.

Moving on to the cabinet above the extractor fan and I made the unit up in record time – it is tiny compared to the others! I got that on the wall and thought I’d finish the day by installing the extractor itself. I have gone for a carbon filter rather than running ducting for a full exhaust system for reasons of cost, space and ease of installation. I got it out of the box and saw that it hangs on the wall by one of those “big hole at the bottom for the screw head to go in and then drop it onto the screw” affairs. This was all fine except that immediately above the extractor I had just installed the cabinet. D’oh! So I removed that cabinet, hung the extractor and plugged it in. All worked fine except I noticed that the hole in the back was drawing in air at the same time as the underneath so plonking the cabinet back on top would deny it the airflow. I had to cut a hole in the base of the cabinet anyway for the electric supply so then I drilled a series of holes into the base of the cabinet to give it the airflow. I now have to remember when I am putting stuff into the cupboard not to block those holes. Poor design.

I hope this will mean that I can cook fish in future without the house smelling fishy for a couple of days! The old extractor only worked when I first moved in but my dad tried to replace the filters one day and shorted the whole thing so I haven’t had an extractor since 2003. It will be nice to have a good one as the old one was just a grease trap.

One piece of bad news today was that I only one of the planned pair of friends can come over tomorrow to help. It’s a shame because I was really looking forward to the beer and curry afterwards but Brian will be here and it will be good to have another capable pair of hands to help with the worktops and the wall cabinets, which I’m sure, will take half the time with two people.

So at the end of today I have got four wall cabinets in place and the cooker extractor. I probably could have got the final three cabinets in place if I hadn’t affixed the doors and shelves but I’m glad I did because it is giving me a good idea of what the whole place will look like when it is finished and, although I say it myself, it’s going to look bloody good!

Given that tomorrow I will have company and am going to go out for beer and curry I doubt that I'll be blogging. Thursday will be blog day when I hope to report on worktops, sink, wall cupboards, oven and hob. It's a tall order, I know, but I hope to take Friday off completely. I don't mind fiddling about over the weekend but I have got to have all of these components in place by Monday when I am back at work and hopefully going shopping for fresh vegetables to cook on the new hob with something nice and home-made. Never thought I'd say it but I am getting pretty sick of takeaway food now and can't wait for some proper grub!

Day Ten - Something like a kitchen now

Check out the photos! Yes, what you can see is a fridge, a dishwasher and a microwave in the kitchen! Woo hoo! No more paper plates! And yes, that is a tea towel which is as dirty as it looks, but no I am not using it as a tea towel!

It wasn’t actually the most productive day at all but I did get a lot of what I wanted done. I wasted a couple of hours going to B&Q because the road from the village was closed by the water company, which was ironic because I wanted to buy the bits to put my waste water back into their drains. This did mean that the normal ten minute trip each way was doubled.

I went in the morning and got some 40mm waste pipe and fittings to get the waste in place for the sink and dishwasher. I got home, after a top bacon and egg sarnie from the van outside B&Q, and cut the pipe into the lengths I needed to completely replace the waste system but then couldn’t get the push-fit fittings onto the pipe. It definitely said 40mm on the barcode on the pipe so I was really confused. I tried filing the pipe but it took ages and I wasn’t convinced that the fittings would be secure and watertight.

So back down to B&Q to get the compression fittings that would fit the pipe I had. I was in the aisle with the fittings when I looked up and saw two separate sections for pipes. There was one for solvent fittings and a different one for compression and push-fit but both were 40mm. So it turns out that there’re two different 40mm pipes. Well of course!

So having dumped the contents of my basket and picked up the other type of pipe I bought that and headed home. I got about halfway before realising that I did actually need one of the bits I had jettisoned to connect the u-trap to a straight piece of pipe. Aaargh! So I turned around and went back to get that piece before finally going home to fit the waste sections.

With the right piece of pipe the rest of the job was pretty easy. I also took the opportunity to fix the dodgy feed to the dishwasher that Colm had installed to get it running next to the wall and held securely with a couple of clips. I am so pleased with the neat plumbing job I have done that it seems a shame now to cover it up with the cupboard and dishwasher, but at least I’ll know it’s there. It’s the same with the electrical work I’ve done. It’s all really neat and fully compliant with regulations – no short-cuts at all – that it’s a shame that it will never be truly appreciated except by me.

After the plumbing, which took most of the day with the extended journeys to B&Q, I refitted the sink base unit for the last time and secured it to the wall and the adjacent cupboard unit. In the process I found a better way of securing the cabinets to the wall instead of the plasterboard fittings. If I use five inch screws I can drill into the breezeblock behind the plasterboard and screw into that with a wallplug. I may be old fashioned about this but I do trust a fitting that is screwed into something substantial more than a plasterboard fitting. This is good news for fitting the wall cabinets.

After all of this I was finally able to install the dishwasher, fridge and microwave in the kitchen. The fridge and microwave have been at the bottom of the stairs while the work has been going on and it has been weird going over there for them. I am happy that they are back in their rightful places, but that is nothing compared to the joy of having properly clean mugs and teaspoons! I just couldn’t get things properly clean washing them up in the bathroom basin. I’m sure that the cats are happier with clean bowls now too.

I didn’t get the wall cabinets made up but that is not such a bother now as the chaps aren’t coming over until Wednesday now to help me do the counters and wall cabinets. Tomorrow I will attempt to put up a wall cabinet or two but will retreat if it is an impossible job for one.

It probably wasn’t the most progress made in a day that I have had but I am pleased to be where I am at this point. It looks like I will have a functioning kitchen by the weekend. I had hoped to have the tiling done by the time I went back to work but it is very unlikely now. It will keep me off the streets for a weekend or so after though ;-)

Day Nine - Progress at last

Hey! I said that the mojo was back!

It was solid progress today which started with the Chinese Grand Prix and a Hamilton win. I'm not really a McLaren fan but do want a British World Champion. It seems like another lifetime ago when I watched Damon Hill cross the line at Suzuka in 1996 and heard Murray Walker's voice crack with emotion. (I remember staying up all night at a friend’s house with a group of us and we were all so wired on Red Bull, (and Stella Artois and vodka as I nauseously remember!), by the time that the race finished at seven in the morning we all hung on and watched the repeat at eight!) All Hamilton has to do now is finish fifth in two weeks' time in Brazil and my fingers are firmly crossed, especially after last year's disappointment. It would also be pretty cool for Ferrari to get the Constructors' Championship because that's where the real passion in F1 lives.

Enough of that, onto the kitchen. I went to B&Q as they opened to get more supplies - trunking and an external plug socket this time to run and hide the cables that will provide some power to the corner where the dishwasher will go.

I routed the cable and installed the socket fairly easily and tested it with the radio which worked so I now have power where it is needed as well as the water supply. All that's needed now is the waste which I decided to leave until tomorrow to concentrate on building and installing the rest of the base units.

This turned out to be a good strategy and I cracked on with the drawer and cupboard units after finally securing the oven cabinet.

The cabinets all had to have cut-outs made to get around gas pipes, plug sockets, and all of the other necessary stuff that’s on the walls at that level. This meant building the cabinets, moving them into position, clamping them when they were precisely in place, marking out the obstructions, undoing the cabinets, cutting out the gaps, rebuilding them and then placing them in position, re-clamping them and finally securing them. One cabinet took three goes because my measurements were slightly out on the first attempt and then the back panel needed to be cut once the unit was in place. It is pretty tedious and repetitive work but they are going to be permanent fixtures so it worth the time spent to get them right.

Before the final cabinet on the back wall was installed I removed the old waste for the dishwasher and had a look at the new sink. My old waste pipes were 42mm diameter but the maximum size for the new sink will be 40mm so I had to strip out the whole lot and will be back down to B&Q in the morning!

By the end of the day I have got all the back wall cabinets built and secured, and the sink unit is built with all of the cut-outs made except for the dishwasher waste. I am finally happy with my achievements for the day’s work!

Tomorrow after the trip to B&Q I can build the waste, secure the sink cabinet and put the dishwasher and fridge back in place. Then I can concentrate on building all of the wall cabinets before help arrives on Tuesday to secure them to the wall as well as cut and secure the worktops.

This means for the first time in eight days I will have a dishwasher back in the kitchen. It doesn’t sound such a big deal but for me it will mean eating from proper plates, using proper cutlery and having properly clean mugs to drink the enormous amounts of tea that I seem to get through every day. I can’t wait!

Day Eight - Not much progress

Today was probably the least productive of all so far. The mojo went missing again and all I managed was the first load of Polyfilla in the gaps in the wall for the electrical work I did yesterday, terminating the bare wires and having another go at the cooker base unit.

Before I filled the gaps I terminated the ends with proper junction boxes so was able to test it. The red light came on when the power was resumed so I have taken this as good news and started covering it all up.

I have noticed that the double plug socket that was next to the cooker point will also be above the new cooker so that too will need to be moved but I have decided to concentrate on fitting the base units until Tuesday when the worktops will be cut and fixed. I have got friends coming over specially to do that so I really need to concentrate on making sure that it is all in place.

Apart from tidying the electrics I have joined the cooker base unit to the corner unit but still need to attach it securely to the wall. This will be the first job tomorrow - after the Grand Prix of course!

I downed tools early to scrub up to go out tonight and it was a lovely evening but coming home to a house that can only be described as a Bad Day in Beirut was a bit disspiriting. This has given me the boost I need to get those base units in place tomorrow and Monday come what may. I think the mojo has returned!

Day Seven - Water, Gas and Electrics

Again it was a slow day in terms of progress. I did get the corner cabinet attached to the wall with the spring toggles which means it is not coming off again – ever!

Moving the cooker power switch was straightforward enough if very time consuming. I’m not that experienced with electrics but I know enough to know that fifty amps can hurt if you get it wrong so I took my time with moving the socket. After dismantling the old socket it was back to B&Q for a junction box – D’OH!

I got as far as running the new cables to the new switch and to the two points that actually feed the cooker when Colm the plumber turned up.

Now Colm is a lovely bloke and I really enjoy his company but he is the most disorganised man I know. He was coming to fit a flexible gas fitting for the hob which will allow me to just plug it in when the worktops are fitted. I made the tea and was watching him sitting in the back of his van surrounded by pipes, tools and general plumbing detritus. Ten minutes later he was still sitting there without apparently moving. Worried that something was wrong with him I went out to see him when he explained that he had forgotten the gas fittings!

He could fit the converter on the top of the copper gas pipe though so he set about that when I said the fatal words, “While you are here.....”

My water main comes into the house in a stupid position a couple of feet away from the wall and in the old kitchen it came up about a foot at the front of the cupboard under the sink and the pipes went back to a real mish-mash of pipe work which reduced the cupboard space significantly so it all needed changing.

I felt that I could sort that out easily enough except for the mains pipe itself which is a plastic pipe that sticks out of the concrete floor by just about 2cm and goes into a converter that is also the stopcock. I had bought a convertor without a stopcock so the pipe could come up and then turn ninety degrees and run under the new cupboard before coming up at the back to a stopcock – just like normal houses!

The problem with the mains pipe was the tiny amount of play left in it. It was a one-chance job once the old fitting was removed. If the new fitting didn’t work the concrete floor, and the new tiles, would have to be dug out to get more pipe to play with. The old fitting came out reasonably easy and the mains pipe was thankfully undamaged. The new fitting went on and connected to a stop-tap a little further up the line. I turned the mains water back on at the front of the house to a loud shout from Colm. The new fitting was leaking.

We worked out that it was the top part of the fitting where it went into the copper pipe so Colm undid the nut and found that the olive, a brass sealing ring, had not compressed to make a seal. The trouble was that it was a brass nut on a plastic thread so we couldn’t give it large to tighten it to compress the olive or it would strip the plastic thread. If the thread was stripped the fitting would be useless and the floor would have to be dug up to remove it and fit a new one. It was tense.

Colm found a copper olive, a real feat of discovery in the chaos that is the back of his van. How does he work like that? The theory was that copper is softer than brass so it should compress with less pressure.

So the new olive was fitted and the nut tightened to a minimum of pressure and off I went to turn on the mains again. It leaked. The nut was tightened just a bit and the process repeated. In fact, it was repeated at least five times with the fitting leaking every time. Colm said that it was just about at the limit when he tightened it for the last time and it held! Hallelujah!

The rest of the pipework was relatively easy and Colm is coming back next Wednesday or Thursday to fit the gas fittings that he forgot.

So at the end of the day, I have got a cupboard in place, the sink plumbing almost sorted out, a new cooker socket and some bloody great holes in the walls that were so lovingly smoothed and painted only a few days previously.

This is perilously slow work. Saturday will be spent completing the electrical work, filling the holes in the walls and getting the oven cabinet secured in place. With those niggly jobs out of the way, I hope to get the other two cabinets secured on the back wall tomorrow so I can concentrate on completing the sink plumbing, the waste pipes and power supply for the dishwasher and the sink base unit in place before Tuesday when help is coming to cut and fit the worktops.

There’s still plenty to get on with. I have just watched qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix. Go Lewis! Time to crack on...

Day Six - Some units......almost

After a late-ish start I got the grouting done for the remaining half of the tiled floor. Some of the tiles had not set properly and were moving about a bit but I managed to keep them straight and then got the hell off of them before they moved again!

Grouting was all done by lunchtime so after a quick sandwich I got on with putting together the first corner unit. All of the other base units are going to come from this unit so it was important that it was perfect.

The unit assembled pretty straightforwardly, even if trying to put it up on its legs on my own caused a few problems. Because I am having plinths I have got the very cheap plastic legs and they only take the weight vertically. Any horizontal movement and they pop out of the sockets. I like to think of myself as pretty strong but I can’t flip a corner base unit like an omelette so I had to resort to suspending the unit on a plastic tool box slightly higher than the legs, pop the legs on and then slide the unit carefully off. That took a few goes to get right!

The walls in the corner aren’t at a nice 90 degree angle of course but got it as good as was possible, marked the fixing holes and screwed it in using plasterboard fixings which promptly popped out of the wall! Aaaargh!

Before I got annoyed with it I decided to crack on with the oven base unit which goes next to the corner one. That went together ok but the gas supply and an isolator are right on the edge of the cabinet so that needed hacking about a bit.

The cooker is in a different place to the original one and the isolator switch and socket are directly above where the hob is going to go so that has got to be moved.

And that’s about as far as I got before showering and heading over to my sister’s for a lovely dinner and a few beers. Proper plates, metal cutlery and beer from a glass were a real treat for someone who has been eating off paper plates for the past six days. Dinner was lovely too! As usual when I stay over at Sarah’s I must have slept while doing headstands so I write this on the morning of day seven with a pain in the neck.

On the way home this morning I popped into B&Q for some cable for the cooker point and some more substantial plasterboard fixings. I’ve got the plumber, Colm, coming over later to look at the gas installation for the hob. I hope that he will be able to fix it temporarily in place with a bayonet type fitting so I can remove it and fix it back in place when the counters go down.

This means that today’s priorities are getting that corner unit secured to the wall, attaching the oven cabinet to the corner unit and moving that cooker supply.

If yesterday’s rather frustrating progress is anything to go by I think this will be about all that will be achieved today. I am getting a little despondent at how slowly this is all coming together. I really want a sink back but that will be the last base unit to go down so that will be a few days at least – and a hell of a lot of plumbing as it is a real dog’s dinner down there at the moment.
Onwards and upwards...

Days Four & Five - Flawed Flooring

Floor tiles! How can thirty pieces of ceramic take so long to turn into a floor? What an utterly horrible job. I can do tiling. The bathroom took over six hundred tiles and while they drove me a bit potty I could manage to get them on straight and level. Floor tiles though? Never again!

It has taken me two days to lay those thirty tiles. Yesterday I got just over half of them down but it was so hard to get them in a straight line against walls that must have been put up by myopic alcoholics. I can’t do the maths and work out the angle but in a mere twenty centimetres they were out by six millimetres and that’s a hell of an angle when it is supposed to be straight.

The huge tub of tile adhesive I bought on Saturday wasn’t going to go as far as the floor let alone the walls so it was back to Topps Tiles for another tub and some additional wall tiles because I had been thinking about how many I bought before and wasn’t convinced that I had bought enough. That was another £45 so the budget is well and truly knackered now. The latest budget is £2,500. I am going to say that I didn’t take the VAT into account in the original budget. At this rate I might get a job as Financial Controller for the 2012 Olympics.

I have got to admit that I wasn’t exactly “in the zone” yesterday and was making hard work of it so by just after four in the afternoon I decided that retreat was the best option and had a lovely hot shower and sat on the sofa, having a good read and at seven decided that I would eat out at that classiest of joints, McDonalds. I did think of going to the pub for dinner but was wearing jogging bottoms and an old t-shirt and really couldn’t be bothered with changing. Even so, it was nice to get out of the house for an hour after such a crappy day.

Today I got my mojo back! I went to bed just after nine last night and listened to Sherlock Holmes on the radio before sleeping right through until eight this morning. I woke feeling great and much more ready to get stuck in!

By midday I had the rest of the tiles down but was disappointed to see that the adhesive from the tiles laid yesterday hadn’t quite set although it was dry enough to step gingerly on the tiles.

My mum came over to help me with the garden and she got stuck into pulling the summer flowers out and planting the spring bulbs. I have no idea what she planted or where she planted them so it will be a lovely surprise in the spring. Thanks Mum x

While mum toiled in the rain I was nice and dry inside grouting the tiles that were laid yesterday. I did complain that my back was aching to make her feel better but really think that she had the grotty end of the stick. As a gentleman, I did lend her my coat!

We did inventory the kitchen delivery. Why does Ikea not put the same part numbers, and in one case the same dimensions, on the boxes that are on the kitchen planner? Finally they did tally with the original order, even if that doesn’t quite tally with the delivery note. At the very least the units are all there and they are the sizes that I was expecting. If a drawer or hinge is missing I can live with it but it would have been disastrous if I couldn’t even get the base and wall units installed.

Tomorrow will be grouting the other half of the floor, getting the first corner base unit and oven unit assembled and into position. I might even get the oven in and hooked up to the mains! Could it be too much to hope for the other base and sink units?

In the meantime it is off for another hot shower, a couple of beers and a DVD. Success tomorrow might depend on how many of those cold beers in the fridge get consumed. I might be sensible.....

Day Three - It's All White Now

Day three started with me standing in the blank space that used to be a kitchen thinking that I had definitely gone beyond the point of no return.

As I worked yesterday I was making a B&Q shopping list and decided that I'd sort out the hole-filling and then head for the store while it dried.

Strangely, I quite like filling holes and gaps. It's a nice job until you realise that you need to do more sanding later - more talcum dust! I prefer the traditional Polyfilla as powder in a box because you can mix it up to whatever consistency you need - thick for slapping it on and runnier for the finishing touches.

The shopping list was just about £60 worth so on day three of fourteen I am already over budget!

One of the items was expanding foam filler to fill the flue hole from the old boiler. I started squirting it in and was very underwhelmed. What it doesn't tell you on the can is that it keeps expanding for about an hour. Okay, now I'm impressed. It has filled the gap and some!

The other job that had to be done today was scraping up the old floor tiles. I put these down about 5 years ago because the original floor was carpet tiles which I don't think is the most suitable choice for a kitchen floor. Some of them came up fine and some of them were awkward sods. Even through rigger gloves I have taken the skin off the outside of both little finger knuckles. It was heavy scraping but they are gone now and I am left with a perfectly flat concrete floor - perfect for laying new tiles!

After another dusty sanding session I was ready to paint the walls. They took five coats which I expected on top of that horrible mustard yellow (what was I thinking?) that I put down when I first moved in. I am quite pleased with the result.

I have painted over where the tiles used to be so that the adhesive isn't sucked into the plasterboard like it was in the bathroom. This should give me more than the thirty seconds I had for that job to place the tiles perfectly.

So another productive day. I am looking forward to having a sink back. As I write I am drinking orange squash from a Chicken Tonight jar and eating dinner fron a paper plate with plastic cutlery. Cleaning the paintbrushes and rollers was a sod too.

Tomorrow, the floor. Watch this space...

Bye for now

Day Two - Demolition Day

Day Two didn’t start well because I slept in past the 5:30 alarm so had to watch the Japanese Grand Prix recorded rather than live, which meant I didn't have the advantage of the FIA live timing on the laptop, and then Hamilton went and blew it again! Oh Lewis, what were you thinking? On the plus side, Massa only scored a single point because he is as excitable as our man Lewis. So I had an egg and bacon sandwich, which I guiltily consumed because it was supposed to be eaten as a reward for getting up so early on a Sunday, but what can you do when you have gone and bought the bacon and fresh bread?

After the Grand Prix there were no excuses left so I finished packing up the cupboards and drawers into boxes and was left with an empty kitchen. A cup of tea and a cigarette’s consideration later I decided to hack from right to left with a crowbar, a club hammer and the odd judicious use of a screwdriver and it all came away remarkably easily.

The counters came away with nothing more than a jigsaw and a bit of pressure. An hour later all that was left was a cooker and a sink. I stopped the hot and cold water, cut the pipes, added inline stops and the sink unit was free.

The cooker itself was easy beyond comprehension. How come it just pulled out of the unit when it had seemed so solidly integrated for the past six years? I isolated the power at the consumer unit, cut the wire, half expecting and bang which didn’t come, (I’ve gone through a lot of cutters like that!), and the cooker was free. The hob had an electrical connection for the ignition spark that had never worked which was also a quick snip. Behind, where the cooker used to reside, was a stop tap for the gas which I turned and then cut the pipe, checking for a build up of pressure with my thumb which didn’t come and then removed the hob along with the cut counter-top. Piece of cake!

That left the entire kitchen, flattened in a pile in the back garden and a God-awful mess in the house so I made a quick sweep through before setting about the tiles. I refurbished my bathroom four years ago and the tiles in there were stuck on so well that I had to replace two of the plasterboard walls. I was expecting the same in the kitchen but I had either learnt through experience or they had used a weaker adhesive in the kitchen. For my vanity’s sake, let’s just say I’m getting good at this :-)

The tiles all came off with only a little collateral damage to the plasterboard walls much to my relief. There were a few gouges in the plasterboard but nothing a good Polyfilla session won’t cure. That left walls with lots of tile adhesive in a tramline pattern and it was a total b*****d to remove!! I tried with a scraper and then the eccentric sander until my palms blistered and bled and then went for 100% sander which did work.........at a cost. The trouble with a disc sander is the dust. I am not talking sawdust or house-dust. It is pure talcum comprised of the white tile adhesive. I wore a facemask knowing how bad it can get but had forgotten quite how the dust manages to get through closed doors, drawers and cupboards. It is incredibly fine and works its way into everything, even behind a facemask. I got a very good idea of how I will look after my hair has lost its colour!

I have got the walls smooth enough to re-tile them now and cleared up the dust in a the most important places in the house and have written this after a lovely hot shower.

And so, Dear Blog Reader, I will update again soon. Bye for now :-)

Kitchen Refurb Day One - Out with the old...

Hello again. I'm back!

I thought I'd blog my kitchen refurb as a way of getting all the photos in one place so I can look back on the project and my friends can also see what I'm up to. The photos in this post were taken a couple of nights ago as I prepared to move everything out of the kitchen and into boxes - I don't usually keep a washing up bowl on the side!

I have taken a fortnight off work to get this done and in two weeks' time I sincerely hope to have a new, fully functional, kitchen.

As background, my old kitchen came with the house I bought six years ago and it was pretty tired back then. I have painted the cupboard doors a couple of times and tarted up the counters with a laminate covering, (which I promptly burned with a hot pan!), but at some point I knew it had to be replaced.

Unlike the holiday blog I am allowing comments to be left on this part of the blog so if anyone has any ideas or handy hints I'd love the help!

Day 1 was spent, rather aptly, spending. I had given myself a budget of £2,000 for the project and the first £1,450 went to Ikea when I ordered the kitchen units, cooker, hob and extractor. This was all delivered the week before last and because they list every hinge, handle and sprocket I have no idea of they have delivered everything on the order. They have a better reputation than MFI........just about.

Now I hate shopping at the best of times and having to go to the DIY stores on a Saturday filled me with dread. Surprisingly though it wasn't too bad. I fitted the roof rails to the car and headed for the Plumb Center (sic) who kindly relieved me of £130 in exchange for a bunch of copper pipes and the joints to stick it all together. I still have in mind that this takes care of the feeds to the sink, washing machine and dishwasher, but not the wastes yet so I expect another hefty fee for a bunch of plastic bits in a few days' time.

Then it was on to Topps Tiles for floor and wall tiles. I have calculated the floor space and the wall area but decided to go on the mean side with the order for some oblong, cream floor tiles and cream wall tiles. The ones I chose were definitely on the budget side but I still left the store with a friendly wave from the salesman who helped me load the car after cheerfully extracting £200. Admittedly this did include a bucket of spacers, tile adhesive and limestone coloured grout. What a bargain!

Screwfix screwed me (pardon the pun) for a further £155 for electrical sockets and switch boxes. This was better than the estimated £250 that the same items would have cost from B&Q or Homebase.

Finally I got to B&Q and shelled out a further £40 for a laser spirit level, a box of Polyfilla, a paint brush to replace the one I knackered when I painted the fence and some fresh blades for the Stanley knife.

So this shopping spree has left me with just £25 left to stay within budget. Thankfully I have a few litres of Dulux white paint to slap on the walls but I fear that I am going to have to adjust the budget.


Dear Barclays Bank

It is no secret that you have been having a bit of a time of it recently but I have good news for you.

I am refurbishing my kitchen and fear that the budget of £2,000 that I set for the project will not suffice.

I could surrender my Unit Trust ISA which contains Barclays shares but this could be counter-productive and I don’t want to be even partly responsible for a run on short-selling Barclay's shares.

Therefore I propose that you bail me out of my current situation by underwriting my kitchen project. I am a UK taxpayer so ultimately we will be bailing each other out.

At current estimates, I would say that another £1,000 should cover the project to completion and most importantly this will keep the UK economy going by pure spending power. Please do not forget that you do own a large percentage of the property so this can only be a win-win situation.

I do not see how you will be able to deny this offer so I will commence spending in the morning.

Yours ever so sincerely


Nik Potter

PS. You have been charged £22 for this letter.

Pouring the perfect Stella

Have you ever wanted to tell the landlord at your local how to pour a proper Stella?

Here's how it goes...

C'est Voila! Bon Apetit!

Many thanks to a very understanding barman, (who's name I either forgot to ask or forgot to remember), in Leuven who also gave me a classic Stella Artois tin ashtray to take home as a souvenir.

Saturday 26th July - Au revoir Belgique / Francais and welcome home

Surprisingly not hungover on Saturday morning we went into town for a quick roll and coffee breakfast from a bakery and then went back to the hotel to pack the car and head for Calais which was 2-3 hours' drive from Leuven.

We did stop on the way in Adinkerke, commonly known as Tobacco Alley because it is the last place in Belgium before the French border where you can buy cigarettes as Belgium duty rates which are a lot lower than the French, and heaps lower than UK duty on cigarettes.

After stocking up we went to the Hypermarche in Calais to stock up on wine, beer, cheeses, and other delicacies. The car sat a little lower on the wheels than it did when we left Leuven by the time we got to the port.

I had booked the Club Lounge for the short ferry back to Dover which was superb. Comfy chairs, champagne on arrival and complimentary tea and coffee. It was a really nice way to complete the journey and I knocked back 5 or 6 cups of tea having just had coffee for 2 weeks. Sweet, sweet nectar!

And so dear blog readers we are back in the UK now and back to real life. The mundane awaits but to keep the blog, and the memories, going for a while longer I am going to sort through the photos and post the most memorable so watch this space.

Au revoir

:-)

Friday 25th July - Part Deux

I am home now as I write but wanted to finish Friday's post and cover the journey home.

Because I was on holiday I decided on a nap when we checked in at the Novotel but Ali wanted to go out so she headed off for a bar that we saw that seemed to have the cheapest Stella in town. I joined her in the bar an hour later and worked out why it was the cheapest in town without too much trouble. It was a real working man’s boozer – and they were smoking inside. Having that first drink and lighting up felt to right but somehow so naughty! It’s amazing how quickly you get conditioned to life’s rules. Has it only been a year since the blanket smoking ban in the UK?

Ali had been talking to the locals before I got there and she had discovered that it was the bar that the Stella workers went to after their shifts finished. She mentioned the tour and was told that if she got “friendly” with one of the workers they could probably give her a “private tour”. As the Sunday newspapers say, “She made her excuses and left”!

We went from the cheap bar to the main square where we had eaten the night before, via McDonalds so we could experience the Big Mac with a beer! We didn’t really want the food so we shared a Big Mac and small fries just so we could take a photo of the tray with the beer on it! Belgium is a cool place where you get beer in McDonalds and can smoke in bars. I think I have found heaven on earth, although my doctor may not entirely agree with that sentiment.

We went on to a bar in the main square where we had a few drinks sitting outside in the sun watching a stage being set up for a tropical music event that evening, sponsored of course by everyone’s favourite beer! Stella sponsors a music festival in Leuven through the summer with a different theme every Friday night. They were doing the sound tests on the stage and setting up the mobile bars. We love work – we could watch it all day!

We did manage to obtain a really good Stella pint jug from that bar. The barman was leaving in 3 weeks to set up his own bar so he said just take it when I offered to buy it from him.

We went back to the dingy bar for a second round of cheap beer and got talking to the barman and a bloke called Merlin (we kid you not) who had been inside the Stella plant where they run “Tap School” to teach bar staff how to pour the perfect pint. It’s quite an art!

I asked Merlin if he got a lot of wizard jokes about his name, explaining that I got the Harry Potter jokes on account of mine. So there we were, Harry Potter and Merlin the Wizard in a bar in Leuven. Picture that if you can!

We left it far too late to get proper dinner so we settled for a kebab (and a bloody nice one at that) from just about the only place open in town before heading back to the hotel for the final night of the holiday.

Friday 25th July - What tour?

We decided to have a wander through town to find some Belgian waffles for breakfast. Ali liked them but I wasn't that keen. You can't beat toast and Marmite for brekky!

Then we had a post-waffle wander through the main shopping street which was full of the same chains of stores that fill every UK High Street so it was a bit of a let down after the grand streets with their beautiful squares and buildings that we saw the night before. What we didn't expect was the scale of the map we were using so that when we got to the end of the shopping street we were on the ring road.

We looked down to see the Holy Grail.................there it was in all its majesty. The Stella Brewery plant - and it was massive. I could almost hear the angels trumpeting our arrival at my spiritual home!

Deciding that there was not another moment to waste we hurried down the road to the main entrance and then discovered that it was back up a fork in the road within a few yards of where we first saw it, but no matter, we got to the main entrance in the end.

This is where we were told that the next English speaking tour is next Friday and that all visitors must be booked in advance :-(( On the bright side this does mean that a return visit to Leuven is well justified.

We then walked back to our hotel, checked out and drove the 0.7 miles to the new one. We couldn't stay at the Holiday Inn because they were carrying out air conditioning upgrades to the rooms and had limited capacity. The Novotel, cruelly, is about 30 yards from the brewery we can't visit.

I'm going to leave it there for now as we are checking out of the hotel on the way to Calais - Boo! I'll write the rest from home.

It's been quite a journey and brilliant fun. We can't believe that it is time to go home now but reality, and a nice cup of tea, awaits.

Ciao

Thursday 24th July – Leuven, The quest for the Holy Grail of brewing

We woke up late this morning, despite promises made last night to ourselves that we would make an early start for Belgium to be in Brussels or Leuven by mid afternoon. We woke with the unnerving feeling that we’d left the fridge and cool-bag out all night as they weren’t in the room. They weren’t by the bench outside when the (much needed) coffee was got in the morning. When we got to the car, there was the fridge and cool-bag, but neither of us can remember how they got into the boot of the car! Needless to say we were, okay I was, hung-over (Nik blames the last glass of wine – but it always is!), and we still needed to book a hotel for this evening. A visit to McDonalds in Dijon for free wi-fi got us a hotel booking in Leuven and an instant hangover cure – Big Tasty burgers, fries and coke – We’re lovin’ it!!

We headed off for Leuven and although tired we did our now customary two hours, stop, coffee, then change drivers, and we were in Leuven in less than six hours. Again, the driving was easy although lane discipline and motorway etiquette has dropped the further north we have driven.

I was half expecting Leuven to be a bit of a crappy industrial town with a huge brewery, but it is a fantastic place. Unfortunately Hercule Poirot is out of town. We are staying in the Holiday Inn right in the centre of town. It is a university town and is chocolate box beautiful.

Every bar sells at least 20 types of beer but we had to go straight for the Stella Artois. It has a more sharp flavour and more of a bitter aftertaste than the Stella in the UK, but it’s served very cold and the head is cut off with a knife, just like in the adverts – Brilliant!!!

There are so many bars and cafes in town. It seems like very corner you turn there is another street or square packed with bars with outside tables. There’s quite a cosmopolitan atmosphere here with lots of tourists and students milling about. Most importantly everyone speaks impeccable English which is great because neither of us know a word of Belgian.

After trying out a handful of bars, just to check that there was consistency in the serving of the famous brew, we started looking for somewhere to eat. It’s not that hard as every bar seems to also be a restaurant. We were walking down a street looking at menus when I saw a side street which seemed to have quite a few tables at the top of it. We walked up into a huge market square which was packed with bars and restaurants and decided on one called The Meating Place. They served one of the best, and hugest, steaks either of us has ever eaten.

Tomorrow is the brewery tour so blogging may be a bit tricky by the time we get back from there. We can’t believe that this holiday will be over in just 48 hours but we are determined to maker the most of those precious remaining moments.

So, from the beautiful town of Leuven, bye bye for now.

Cheers!

Wednesday 23rd July – Dijon, but no mustard

Bonjour Bloggers

We stopped at Dijon as planned yesterday and, as expected; we didn’t get to see any of the city, just the hotel and the autoroute. The driving was as easy as we expected though and apart from hordes of Dutch caravaners and a 20 minute hold up in Lyon the traffic was pretty light. We made Dijon in about 6 ½ hours from Frejus.

The car has blown a brake-light bulb and we do have a spare, as per the law in France. We just don’t have the tool kit to replace it. The Law’s an ass in France too! As we are now only about five hours from home I don’t feel that it would be tempting fate to say that the car has otherwise behaved flawlessly throughout, giving 46mpg even with stop-start driving and VERY heavy usage of the air conditioning.

The hotel in Dijon was an Etap which is like an Ibis but more basic. Unfortunately it also meant that there was no wi-fi access so no blog updates from Dijon.

Luckily we were cunning enough to have bought provisions and a big bag of ice in Frejus so we had plenty of cold beer, wine and food in the car fridge.

After booking in at about 7 we had a picnic dinner on a pub garden style bench in front of the hotel and made many friends throughout the evening. We met a wonderful family, the Kramers from Holland who were on their way to a camping holiday in the Ardeche region. We were chatting for ages with Paul and Ingrid and their lovely children Steven, Kwint, Tinne and Eva. Paul is a biker so he and Ali had a lot in common while I chatted to Ingrid and the children about my sad holiday packing saga. (To be honest, I still don’t think that an electric toothbrush and charger and two ‘emergency reserve’ manual toothbrushes with two tubes of toothpaste – one for the rucksack and one for the case - is overdoing it but that doesn’t seem to be the perceived wisdom.)
Needless to say we ended up having a really lovely picnic and drank way too much, going to bed far too late, but hey – we’re on holiday!

Tuesday 22nd July - Time to head north

Bonjour again from Frejus!

Since the last blog we have done absolutely sod-all except lay by the pool to top up the tans before we leave the Cote D'Azur tomorrow to head north.

The plan is to be in Belgium on Friday to visit the Leuven brewery - my Mecca!

Leuven is about 20 miles from Brussels so we are looking to be in Brussels by Thursday night, thinking that visiting the brewery on Saturday will be a really crap idea because we have a ferry to catch at 1730hrs.

Tomorrow's goal is to get as far as Dijon which is about 400 miles north and east from Frejus. With breaks I reckon on about 6 hours' driving for this part of the journey so it's unlikely that we'll see too much of the place before hitting the hotel and then pressing on on Thursday for Belgium, the mystical land of Choclit 'n' Beer!

The weather forecast is good so we should be driving in the mid to high 20's and sunny all the way, hit the cruise control and just nudge the steering wheel every so often.

So for the last post from the French Riviera, au revoir...

...but before I go, my brother in law is starting out on a charity bike ride tomorrow from London to Paris in 4 days hard biking so while I have been lording it up these past few days he has undoubtedly been going through a lot of last-minute preparations, and probably shitting bricks too. Good luck to you Flash - see you on the other side! I'm sure you will be okay.

For anyone interested in sponsoring him for this act of selfless madness, the website is http://action.org.uk/~ashleylewis

Monday 21st July - Frejus - Room with a view

Bonjour Bloggers from sunny Frejus

The journey from Nice to Frejus was a bit of a nightmare I'm afraid. It's only about 35 miles but it took over 2½ hours - I could have gone quicker in London!

We got here a bit late for spending too much time on the beach or by the pool but what a lovely beach it is! All sand with sparkly bits, gently shelving into the crystal clear turquoise Mediterranean.

The hotel is a stunner. The best one yet by a long way, but then again it is a lot more expensive than the others too. We decided because we got here so late that we would book an additional night so we can enjoy the place fully. We have a private beach, swimming pool, health spa (yeah right!) and the most amazing balcony view. The room overlooks a beautful harbour packed with gleaming white yachts. All around the harbour are boutiques, restaurants and bars which come alive after about 8pm. The photo shows the view from our balcony at night.

When we arrived we emptied the mini-bar and stocked the fridge with our own orange juice, water, beer and food. Later on we found a supermarket where we bought cooked fish, tomatoes, peaches and pate and this morning I popped over to a boulangerie to grab a still warm baguette for breakfast on the balcony. This really feels like living the dream!

Must dash now - we have plonked books and towels down on sun-loungers by the pool to beat the Germans to the best spots. A day lazing in the sun awaits...

A Bientot

Sunday 20th July - Nice.......it's nice

We woke to a beautiful Riviera day and breakfasted on the hotel's free coffee before heading off for a wander and ultimately ending up at the beach.

The town is very nice (I don't mean that as a pun everytime I write it), typically French buildings, pavement cafes, maniacs on scooters, etc.

After a lovely lunch we set off for the beach which was disappointing in so much as the rather large pebbles and very quickly shelving sea. Within a few yards the ground just fell away. That is not to say that we didn't enjoy it though, even if the pebbles did make walking a bit painful on bare feet. The steep slope combined with the large pebbles did make it quite difficult to get out of the sea. The waves pushed you forwards but the pebbles dragged you back. How we laughed watching others get out of the sea, until we tried it ourselves!

We stayed on the beach until gone 7pm and wandered back through town to the hotel, picking up some lovely takeaway asian food on the way to eat in the hotel room.

Back at the room we were deciding where to go next. The plan, (which is said in its loosest sense) now is to go as far as Marseilles and bomb up north to scenic Leuven. We used Google earth to find a nice town with good sandy beaches and found Frejus. The only problem was that the only hotel we could find with rooms is €147 per night. We'll just stay the one night then!

The other thing about Frejus is that it rhymes with Praise You and I can't get the Fatboy Slim song out of my head now!

Au revoir

Saturday 19th July – Down, out and hungover in Portofino

We got up late and I soon discovered that someone had let loose a herd of elephants playing percussion instruments in my head and shovelled ash in my throat while I slept. To say I felt like crap would be an understatement. Ali seemed to fare a lot better but I couldn’t even have a shave because the buzzing of the shaver would have been too painful.

Groggily we checked out of the hotel after taking in as much liquid as we possibly could, supplemented with Nurofen for me. The plan was to drive the 30 miles south to Portofino, find an hotel and stay for 2 nights so we could watch the Grand Prix while in Italy. At least we didn’t have to worry too much about getting caught short on the drive thanks to the massive dehydration we were both suffering.

The coast road into Portofino is as beautiful as it is dangerous. In 5 or 6 miles I could only have got up to 3rd gear as many times. It was so narrow with buses swinging around blind curves on the wrong side of the road. There were a few bottom-clenching moments but thankfully no new scars were added to the car. We passed through beautiful little towns with small coves of crystal clear turquoise waters lapping at the sheer cliff faces and boats from small leisure craft to fantastically expensive yachts bobbing gently as the waves lapped at their sides.

All I had heard vaguely about Portofino previously was that it was a lovely Italian resort and indeed it is. The only trouble is that it’s also the sort of place that the likes of Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Roman Ibramovich and their ilk moor their super-yachts to go shopping in the designer boutiques.

The harbour is achingly beautiful in a natural cove with a castle overlooking it all from the top of the cliffs. The buildings are typically Mediterranean with immaculate shutters and awnings which on ground level have been turned into some of the most expensive retail outlets in the world. You know they are posh when they don’t need plate glass windows to show you what they sell. If you know of them, you can afford to shop in them. We did not go shopping in Portofino!

Unsurprisingly, and after an expensive but mediocre pasta lunch we decided that maybe we were in the wrong place to find a budget hotel so reluctantly made our way out of Portofino, the original plans now disbanded.

The choices were to go further south and find a hotel, go back to Genoa which is about the only major city between Portofino and the French border, or to press on into France. In the end we decided on France because it would get us away from the crazy Italian drivers and I thought that we had probably pressed our luck after 2 days with no scratches or dings on the car. We stopped at a service station and made a reservation at the Ibis in Nice.

A couple of hours later we were safely settled into the hotel where I ordered drinks in French and was rewarded with a puzzled look and asked if I spoke English! So much for that French language audiobook! I was vindicated later when we ordered dinner and the waitress thought I was French after I spoke so maybe the audiobook wasn’t such a bad investment after all J

We went for a walk after dinner along the first part of the promenade by the beach and were surprised at the amount of activity at 10pm. There were families having barbecues and kids playing volleyball. It was a hive of activity and we were expecting a quiet walk along a mostly deserted beach.

I did try to get photos of a most amazing red moon as it rose in the East but the light pollution from the promenade made it impossible.

Feeling absolutely knackered after the walking, driving and shaking off a dreadful hangover it was not hard to fall asleep very soundly, very quickly.
That’s all for now mon amies. A Bientot!

Friday 19th July – Genoa

It all started so well in Genoa. It looked beautiful from the boat as we moored in the port…and then we had to drive off the ferry, almost colliding with an HGV because we weren’t prepared for the Le Mans style start from the ferry parking space. When we got off the Bilbao ferry, everyone was in their cars for 10 – 15 minutes while everything was made safe. In Italy they drop the ferry door and everyone’s off!

For Brits it was gratifying that we were the only car that managed to get off the ferry and drive on the right! All of the other cars drove down the right hand lane of a dual-carriageway and boy did they look miffed when they saw us at the port exit!

For every legend about Italian drivers I can now confirm that there’s no smoke without fire. They are absolutely mental. It’s every man, woman child, cat and dog for himself. Indicators are a sign of weakness and / or contrition, the horn and wild gesticulation is the only form of communication, and you don’t so much park as stop wherever you fancy.

After a 15 minute drive that felt like 15 hours we got to the hotel. This one’s a Novotel which is the same chain but a bit posher than the Ibis hotels we have been staying in. It has a nice lobby, reception desk and bar but no Wi-Fi. Shame on you Novotel! There is a PC in the lobby where you can swipe your credit card and get access but you can’t copy and paste the offline blogs because there’s no USB port. Grrrr!

Apart from that the hotel is fine. The room is big and overlooks the port of Genoa. The temperatures have ranged from 32ºC during the day to 22ºC even at 2am. How do we know this? It’s a long story…

We took a short walk from the hotel to find a bar, fund one and had a couple of beers (naturally) to recover from the drive from the port. We went back and booked a taxi at the hotel reception to go into the main town and find some dinner.

The old town is very Italian with wide open piazzas discovered by walking through narrow streets, all the time dodging the ever-present mopeds. It’s a really beautiful place. We found a Trattoria / Pizzeria on a pedestrianised street lined with 4 or 5 storey shuttered apartment buildings.

Now I have a strong belief, often shared, that pizza is the King of Food and Italian pizza surpasses every other one I have ever eaten. Bellisimo! I realise now why foreign visitors comment that the British version of pizza is boiled, not baked. You can forget Pizza Hut, Domino’s or even Pizza Express – this was the real deal. I had a Quattro Stagioni, olives, artichoke hearts, ham and loads more. Ali had a Vesuvius – salami and cayenne peppers. We decided that it would be good to eat ‘continental style’ and take our time, chatting, drinking, smoking and watching the world go by and it took us a couple of hours to see off our pizzas. They really do have the right attitude to food and drink here. They even sell beer and wine by the litre jug – Heaven really does exist!

We had probably had about enough beer and wine when we got back to the hotel, and maybe should have been sensible enough to realise this, but the bar was open and so we settled in for a couple more. The point at which I suggested that we should have a shot of Grappa while in Italy should definitely have rung the alarm bells. It tastes like shit in restaurants at home so why would it be any better in Genoa? Ali had never tried it before and I should have known better because it was foul!!

There was another patron at the bar and we struck up a conversation with him. He shook his head and asked us why on earth we would drink “Crappa”. He was a very nice bloke from Holland and quite knowledgeable about the Italian and French Riviera. We only wished that we could have remembered half the things he said the next day!

By this time the bar had shut and again we should have taken this as a clear sign that we should retire but oh no, not us. We went for a walk and found an all night bar in a bit of a run down part of town where we kept ordering the beer until we ran out of cigarettes, which the bar did not sell. (Yes, the European non- smoking lobby have got to Italy as well.) There was only one thing for it – we could have another beer if we could surpass the language barrier and buy some cigarettes from one of the other patrons of the bar, all of whom were completely pissed as well. How we managed this I don’t know but we did, and made a friend at the same time. He wouldn’t accept payment for the cigarettes so we repaid him in the universal currency of beer!
We staggered back to the hotel and collapsed taking a photo on the way of a sign that showed the time and the temperature, 26ºC and 0200. Italy, Genoa…what a brilliant place!