Rewarded with tired

So, today was a bit of a disaster, in some senses. I was, it appears, meant to be at work for an Early shift. I discovered this 2 hours after the start of the Early shift. Having fled to work at speed, unshowered and feeling distinctly grotty I stumbled through the shift, making countless small errors (I took a patient to the ward having forgotten to update their obs chart for an hour. Having put them on a monitor and carefully monitored them. Doh).

I then trundled home, stopping at B&Q to find out how much our awesomely exciting voucher that they gave us when we moved in was worth. It said ‘Up to £2500!’ on it. That, we thought, unlikely though it is, would be enough for a kitchen. Hell any significant amount would have been quite helpful with the kitchen. See, we have a problem with the kitchen which is… well… we’re not exactly sure what we want to do.

We’ve gone through period(ish) units (as in, either English Rose / Paul Metalcraft etc) re-sprayed in a modern colour; period wood furniture of various origins repurposed and reworked into kitchen units, commodity cabinets with custom doors, a commodity kitchen, brick pillars with wood-framed doors inset. As you can see we’ve been deeply decisive. So I was kinda hoping that, while I have no great love for B&Q kitchens, if they turned out to have given us 2.5k towards a kitchen it would have been easy(er) for us to decide.

But they didn’t. So tomorrow we’re off to look at some sale ‘standard’ units, and see what we think of them.

The issue is, of course, becoming more pressing as the room that will be the kitchen has become closer to completion. I spent an enjoyable few hours under the floor adding in extra plumbing after we somewhat suddenly decided that we actually would rather like to have a second sink on the opposite side of the room to where we put the main sink. This was inspired by finding this in a salvage yard:

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It’s an insanely dinky sink, and yes, again the vitreous coating is a little less than perfect. But it’s so cute. And so handy. Of course, having looked at it, there were several problems to this genius idea. First up, the room is 3.5m wide. The maximum run for 40mm waste pipe is 4m. If we went diagonally, as the crow flies, from the position the sink is in to the soil pipe it would be more than 4m. Not only that, but it would also be 160mm below the floor, and because the joist run ‘the wrong way’ then it would also have to be below them. This created a problem, in so far as the pipe would then be coming out about a foot down into the concrete plinth at the back of our house.

Having pondered this, we accepted our fate and bought a macerator/pump. It’s not like the sink’s going to be used a lot, so we’ll cope with this. Which lead to the entertaining pipe running where I ran a U shaped waste pipe, one end of which is to be connected to the soil pipe. I’m slightly unclear on whether it needs to be separate from the other waste pipe (the gradient flow from the sink and the dishwasher). I’m thinking it just needs to be lower, but will check before I do anything stupid like connecting it. I’m wondering if I can use one of these pipes to give me a sink in the garage; it says it can push water up 5m, and the fall to the garden is about 3m. But it’s also about 70 foot horizontally, I suppose.

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That’s some of my plumbing kit. Anyone remember Sun Dishwasher powder? Whatever happened to them?

Anyhow.

So the Acrows are out, the beam is clad in fire-retardant plasterboard, and our builder has been slathering things in plaster:

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The plasterer is scheduled for ‘late this week’, which means that it was time to try and get the plaster off the wall that’s to be repointed and painted. Whilst I started off wearing a mask, having smacked my hand a few times after my glasses misted up I lost the mask, and soon looked very fetching:

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By the end of the delightful experience I looked like this:

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I have rarely felt as filthy as I did. I’m slightly disconcerted by the cough which has sprouted, although I totally respect my body’s desire to remove the mix of cement and industrial waste* that makes up the plaster dust. It also reminded me why I hate not having a shower, because as I clambered into the bath water, it instantly went a filthy shade of grey. I scrubbed at myself and rinsed off, but know I’m not as clean as I would be in a nice shower.

Also, having removed the tiles without incident, I started putting the waste in bags. I didn’t think to switch to more protective gloves, and y’know what, the tile that cut me was so sharp I didn’t realise it’d happened until I was trying to find another waste bag in the garden. And suddenly I realised that my finger was sore, Having looked at it briefly, I thought, it’s not bleeding… meh.

But it kept being sore, so then I pulled the slit and torn glove back a bit more…and there was a slice across the top of my finger.

Pooh.

Anyhow:

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It’s actually not finished, the patch behind the fridge’s not done, and the last couple of rows of tiles down at the bottom are still there – because I’d reached the point my arm was tired from holding the bolster chisel.

One thing which continues to provide some amusement is the plate. We have a copper plate which was up when we moved in, left behind by the previous owners. It’s sat up on the wall, watching the walls around it ripped to pieces, demolished, doors removed, new openings cut. There it sits. It will have to come down when the plasterer comes, but strangely, despite the fact neither of us is deeply keen on it we’re now kind of inclined to put it back. Because it seems it belongs there…

* We think it’s slag from the various smelting / industrial plants that’s been used to bulk up the plaster and mortar.

KateWE

Kate's allegedly a human (although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise). She's definitely not a vampire, despite what some other people claim. She's also mostly built out of spite and overcoming oppositional-sexism, racism, and other random bullshit. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, she's here to reassure that it's all fine.

2 thoughts on “Rewarded with tired

  1. Are you planning on keeping that wall bare? Because, well, I like it. Or rather, I think it’ll look awesome if you steam clean and then seal it…

    1. Yep, that wall’s staying bare. Well, painted, but not plastered. Otherwise I’d’ve not gone through the hell of removing as much of the plaster as I have!

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