I had a dream
I had a dream last night… I was in a completed house that I’d refurbished or built and it was bonkers amazing. It was just soooo beautiful and sparkly, everything was just wonderful, the kitchen was a marvel to behold and the bathroom and shower were fantastic. My Dad was there too, he’d helped (to be honest he’d done almost everything) when I’d refurbed my previous abode, he was quite amazed by the dream house too and he’s a hard man to impress. I bet his dream version is just as finicky.
Thing was when I awoke, what really impressed me wasn’t the amazing house, it was that it had all come from my head, that design was somewhere in the crevices of my brain, I’d come up with it all. My subconscious does that once in a while, I once dreamt up an entire opera, it seemed to go on for hours, all original compositions, sets, vocals and backing tracks, that’s all in there too, spinning around with superior bits of interior design. I think I need to get in touch with my subconscious self.
It’s all a bit at odds with the reality of my last week all dust and grubbiness, not a sparkle in sight.
The last weekend had finished with me still not completing the wallpaper stripping, however I’d estimated that it would be done quickly as there was only an ickle bit to do. Well Mr. Underestimation here had got it wrong again and every evening I wasn’t at work or seeing my little girl – and a couple of them too when I was seeing her that were spent to silly-o’clock working – I worked to finish off the stripping.
By the end of the working week I’d got it done and by the weekend I’d tidied up the room and I was now ready to start fitting the plug back boxes.
This weekend I only had a day available to work, the job in hand of fitting the boxes was one I’d not done before and I knew that this would entail me slowly getting up to speed and hence slow progress.
I know that this job is part of the remit of a trained electrician but my intention was to chase in the cables and allow an electrician to finish off and certify the work, saving me some valuable pennies. The back boxes too wouldn’t just be just for plug points, they would be for networking and speaker cables too, so there were quite a few to do.
Anyway with this all planned I bought some 35mm metal back boxes from Screwfix and tried to fit the first one. So using my Dad’s rather lethal angle grinder – mine having gone to the great angle grinder cloud in the sky – I scored out a rectangle and chipped out the core with a chisel. I tested the box in the hole and found I only had another centimetre or so the chip out. An hour later I was still at it, sooo back to Screwfix and I bought a set of 25mm back boxes, phew much better.
Back home and back on the job I decided for efficiency to mark the box positions up with pencil first, batch angle grind the lot and then screw in the boxes, fitting them with a neat little grommet. Well blow me down but grinding out brickwork with a cutting disk creates some dust, enough dust to hide a destroyer in it, I was in full radiation suit and within minutes the room was so cloudy I couldn’t see the pencil marks on the wall. I opened the French doors to let some of the dust out and it belched clouds into the garden, it looked like the place was on fire…. Deja vu from sanding walls I seem to remember…
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What to an electrician would take a couple of hours took me a day, it was my first time at it and I did have to change some parts and get used to a fierce little angle grinder, so I can’t complain. I know how to do it now, I think I should try my SDS drill with a chisel attachment in future too, perhaps I could have get away with the 35mm boxes and perhaps it might be less dusty and/or more efficient for chasing than the death grip grinder.
By the end of the weekend, well the single day I had, I still hadn’t finished. To complicate things further I realised I’d not left enough slack on the cooker cable and I’d have to lift five sheets of flooring to solve it, still this would allow me to replace a sheet of plywood that I wasn’t happy with near the door, so it wasn’t a complete waste of my time.
So again I’m going to have to pull some late nights, my intention before the coming weekend is to clear some more jobs: chase in the Laddomat lead (being careful with the cornicing and dado rail), chase in some new back boxes for unfused switched spurs for the kitchen units, extend the cooker cable, chase in cable and fit a back box for cooker switch, fit channel (wire cover) to the cables, bonding plaster in the cables chases and any other dints there may be and finally replace the dodgy floor sheet of plywood. This has to be all done by the weekend, I have spoken…
The fused spurs in the kitchen? Well they’ve been added so I can potentially fit some lighting to the kitchen units, like the kitchen in my dream, it was a sign I tell you… fit unit and kickboard sparkly lighting and they will come.
My daughter and I were shopping in Screwfix and I was collecting a box of grommets, she was rather keen to see what Wallace had named his dog after and was quite disappointed on finding out that he’d named Grommet after a small rubber doughnut. Life can be cruel when you’re five.
Monday
I’d normally work into late on a Monday but as the college where I work was on half term I had an extra evening to work through my jobs to do before the weekend.
I wasn’t a happy puppy when I got home, a dreary day at work and a closed road on the way home do not a happy puppy make… but rather than sit around and mope in the cold – usually manifested by a snack on the couch while watching Eggheads – I decided to make an immediate start. Not a start after I’d picked up my email but an out of the car, into the house and shaking my bootie into my dusty clothes from Sunday start.
Rather than doing a nice easy job I decided to hit those two jobs that I didn’t fancy doing, those two jobs that were ones were I’d make no visible progress in doing them, extending the cooker cable and replacing the dodgy sheet of plywood.
First I got on with the cooker cable, basically I’d made a mistake and I’d forgotten to leave a loop on the exposed cable so the electrician could fit a isolation switch for the cooker, this would mean pulling up all the floor, unpinning the cable and pulling more cable through, not a nice job at all, particularly bad as the flooring was so neatly laid (taking some doing too) and it was neatly covered in a fine coating of dust from all the angle grinding the day before.
First job before this first job was to get the fire on as it was pretty cold and sweep the floor to shift some of the dust and rubble. Next I was unscrewing the flooring using my trusty Makita drill and on my second sheet removal there was a bit of a problem. The second sheet wasn’t just screwed down it was glued down too, the glue had been used over the old fireplace where there was some packing and this packing was glued into place (too narrow for screws), the glue had seeped out and glued the surface sheet to it. Actually it has such an impressive grip on it I decided to seek another remedy.
Looking further up to the next sheet it wasn’t likely to be glued down so I removed it and with a little dexterity I managed to unpin the cable under the other glued fixed sheet. This allowed the cable to be pulled through despite it being under this glued down sheet, so essentially I’d saved myself the job of lifting and refitting a sheet. The next sheets were a doddle, the last one up and I pulled through the cable and hey presto a nice big loop for the electrician to fit an isolation switch to.
The next job was to replace the dodgy flooring plywood sheet panel, looking at the panel (it was the last one I’d removed for the cooker cable pull) it wasn’t in bad nick, the plywood had delaminated a little near the middle and that was causing a little sponginess, so rather than replace the entire floor-sheet, I got to work and fitted a bunch of wooden stretchers between the joists under the problem spot. I was really going over the top doing this as the plywood was a sub-floor for the eventual top layer of tongue and groove, the tongue and groove alone would support any weight without the need of the sub-floor, I was just being pedantic as usual. Anyway these wooden noggins worked a treat, not an inch of movement in the sheet once refitted.
Refitting the sheets was the nightmare I thought it would be, there were plenty of odd angles to fit, the DPC kept getting in the way and one corner would just not lay flat until on the third fitting I noticed that there was a nasty great big stone hidden under the DPC that had been propping it up and causing the problem, d’oh.
Phew so that’s the really nasty jobs out of the way and I’m now well on the way to getting my list done.
Finished around ten so the early start worked. So a ten o’clock snack and a mope on the couch while watching a recording of a bloke on Grand Designs making a house out of a cave… and I thought I had it bad. Hey at least he doesn’t have a day job… what luxury.
Tuesday
Putting my little girl to bed tonight so I didn’t get back home till after ten.
Straight to my pile of paperwork and sorting it all out late into the night, bath then bed.
Wednesday
Groundhog day
Putting my little girl to bed tonight so I didn’t get back home till after ten.
Straight to my pile of paperwork and sorting it all out late into the night, bath then bed.
Thursday
I’d decided that I needed an electrician, someone who could give me an idea of what needed to be done and then someone to do the final fix and sign off the work. With this in mind I checked out Checkatrade.com and found a suitable electrician called Lee who informed me he’d be over on Thursday evening to check out the work that needed doing. Anyway I speeded home to meet him, waited, wandered into the street and waved a torch at passing traffic, went back inside and waited some more, sat in an armchair and waited a bit more… until at eight…. I gave up and went over to see my daughter. By now I should have been quite perturbed but hey he seemed a nice genuine chap, I’m sure there must have been a good reason.
Sure enough the next day I got an apologetic email, he’d spent an hour looking for my house, he’d asked pedestrians, he’d been to Copley, Cockfield, Butterknowle, everywhere, he’d even been pointed to a chip shop but he’d given up after an hour of looking and gone home.
See, what’s the point in getting all upset.