The new kitchen - a Christmas miracle!

Did I tell you we were having the kitchen done? Ha! Ha! That's just my little joke there. It's finished! Completed! For the first time in four and a half months there are no builders in the house at all. They have gone away. Vanished. Disappeared. Hooray! It's a Christmas miracle. 

Just as soon as I finish writing this I'm off to find the It's A Wonderful Life DVD (because it is) and start wrapping presents in front of it, with the fire on, before the children get home. But hang on a minute... I just have to nip down to the kitchen again and check it's all still there and pinch myself and open a few drawers and cupboards and pinch myself again and go in the pantry (yes! I have a real life pantry!)...

Okay I'm back. I still can't believe it. The first morning we were due to move in (Sunday) I was awake at 5.30 trembling with excitement. Really. I was. Okay so you might think that's a bit sad but I make no apologies, as I said to Husband the other night, we started in a studio flat in Streatham in 1988, which immediately went into negative equity so we had to live in it for 8 years pulling the sofa bed out every night and dragging all our washing off to the launderette each week, and somehow we have arrived here… in heaven. And it's only taken 25 years.

It's been hell getting to this point, mind, I will not be recommending my builder anytime soon that's for sure. Okay, so I did get quite fond of the guy at times and on the plus side he didn't walk away even after all the cock ups and problems, and he went along with all my crazy schemes - "So I want a fireplace with a woodburning stove and a wood store in the middle of two windows with triangles at the top, and recesses in the walls that I can use to sit the cupboards back in, and a walk-in pantry taken off the back off the loo area here, and these reclaimed ships lights I found on eBay to hang there in the pitch roof, and long suspended wooden shelves made from cheap wood that we will sand down and stain to make look old and put above a dresser area, like this, and a retro style sink run with metro tiles and these wall lights I got…" and all without an architect or anyone to project manage it, except me. 

Actually, now that I write all that it sounds mad. No wonder it took four and a half months! Well anyway, we did it, we survived, and it's all done in time for Christmas and we have a beautiful kitchen and I really could not be happier. I know we're very lucky. I owe it all to a hard-working husband, a crappy endowment I took out when I was 21 and just cashed in, and a whacking great mortgage. 

And because you have borne with me for so long, dear reader, and suffered all the trials and tribulations here by my side, here it is just for you. I hope you like it…

And the best bit till last… the walk in pantry!

Merry Christmas!

Love E x Twitter @DOESNOTDOIT

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Smoke and mirrors.

"Alright Liz?" says the workman standing in our back garden with one of my best Sanderson mugs in his hand. I've just got back from an outing with friends. "We just made ourselves a cuppa, hope that's ok." 

No, it's not okay, I think to myself. That means you went into the living room, which was firmly shut, and rooted around in my temporary kitchen and found my best mugs and helped yourself. 

If I count them all up there have probably been more than 40 different workmen in and out of our house in the last few months: window installers, fire installers, roofers, plasterers, a team of electricians (I think there were 7 on that day), tilers, granite worktop installers, and most of them Polish. These guys, the ones installing the wood burning stove and the chimney pot, are British, or to be more precise, Londoners, and I think I like them the least. They come with a bunch of one-liners and a whole lot of cheek and they are the only ones to help themselves to tea. 

"Where's the frame for the fire?" I ask. There is a gaping gap between in the new inset stove and the opening for it.

"Oh there ain't no frame," says the one holding my best Sanderson mug. "That's what it's meant to be like. Didn't you order a frame? If you want a frame you have to get it separate, love. Didn't you know?"

I can feel my heart start to race. I'm sure you don't have to order a separate frame. I've been looking at inset stoves for months and I've never come across one that required a separate frame. 

They can see that I'm panicking. They look at each other. One turns away and whispers something to the other under his breath. There's a hint of smile. 

They are in my house, being paid by me and they are holding my best mugs.

I go upstairs and ring the fireplace company. They are very apologetic. There should be a frame, they say, they will ring the company in Sweden.

I come downstairs. The builder appears from the back garden with a large cardboard box, "Is this the frame?" he says. It was there all the time.

By the time they finish it's dark and the  chimney pot is on the roof but I can't see it,  and they want paying, in cash, all of it. I pay them most of it but hold back £100.

"What's this?" says the one in charge, let's call him King Cheeky. 

"I'll pay you the last hundred when my husband has seen it," I say.

"But we've done the job," says King Cheeky, clearly outraged, "It's all finished."

"Yes, I say, but it's dark and I can't see and my husband hasn't seen it. (He doesn't need to know that my husband couldn't care less). 

He leaves in a huff, slamming the door behind him and the next day I awake, look out the back office window, and see a nasty splodgy mess of mortar all over the cowl (top of chimney pot) and the roof. 

So, when King Cheeky sends a text a few days later asking when can he call round for the rest of his money, "Liz"? I reply saying anytime, thanks, so long as he clears up the cowl first.

"Why?" comes back a text, quick as lightening, "What's wrong with it?" 

"Bit splodgy," I text back.

"Send a picture," he returns.

So I do. (At the top of the blog.)

"Saturday am okay?" comes back his reply.

"Fine," I say.

Touche to you Mr Cheeky pants-I'm-going-to-use-your-best-mug-and-buggar-off-without-doing-the-job-properly.

So he comes on Saturday and puts it right and I pay him and I won't be recommending him to anyone anytime soon.

But God it's exhausting.

Love E x

Better.

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The milkman, Georges Simenon, and Sex

The milkman says he really likes Simenon. He is looking at our book shelves. "So you did French at university?" he says. 

"Not me," I reply, "Husband. I did English."

"He's a fascinating writer," says the milkman, examining our row of Simenon titles. "Do you know he could write a whole novel in eleven days? He was prolific."

"Really," I say, thinking about my two unfinished novels and this week's blog not yet written, "I bet he didn't have three boys and six builders in his house."

"He had children" says the milkman.

"Yes," I say, "but I bet he had a wife too."

I would quite like the milkman to leave now. He has called round for his money and I have invited him in while I scrabble around looking for a tatty old cheque book. I have managed to find one with an empty cheque in it (not an easy task in our house) and pay him his outstanding £52.00 (daylight milk float robbery), as the builder hovers in the hall outside the living room waiting to continue the argument we were just having about where the pendent lights should go (I say centre over the kitchen island, he says centre over the hob, I wish he could just bloody well do what I ask). 

I have just got back from taking the boys to school - AGAIN - because Middle one needs his guitar and amp for his GCSE music assessment. I have also just seen Eldest out of the door to a University of London workshop for English A' Level, (Me: do you know where you are going? Him: yeah, kind of. Me: don't you think it would be a good idea to take that map Daddy printed off for you last night? Him: yeah but I can't find it. Me: it's on the desk upstairs. Him: I haven't got time to get that. Me, running up the stairs to get it, like a twit). Now I'm trying to guide the milkman towards the door. 

"He wasn't just prolific with writing, you know," says the milkman, "he slept with 10,000 women."

Now I remember, our milkman is obsessed with sex. He manages to crowbar the topic into all sorts of random doorstep encounters, which is rather worrying, and inappropriate, especially when one is standing in one's dressing gown looking for change.

"Really." I say. We are nearly at the door now. He is being forced to walk backwards towards it, as I stride forwards towards him. 

"So," I say, stupidly continuing the conversation rather than curtailing it, "Georges Simenon is your favourite author then?"

"Oh no," says the milkman, "my favourite author is Turgenev."

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What ho!

What ho! What a jolly wheeze it was to get tickets for the whole bally lot of us to go and see Jeeves and Wooster at the Duke of York Theatre in the old metropolis on Saturday night. 

Such a rare treat to be the entire clan for a change: all three boys, plus Mater and Pater. Especially wanted to go because spiffing Stephan Mangan is in it, and we all think he's top hole. So, we pushed the boat out with a lovely nosh-up at Imperial China first, our absolute faves Chinese restaurant.

Bit of a pain that there was no rotten Northern line to transport us hither and thither from our neck of the woods, but no matter, with a stiff upper lip Pater looked up car parking in town and ascertained we could park for half price in a central car park on presentation of the old theatre tickets. Just the ticket! you might say.

The meal was top notch and then we tripped on round to the theatrical establishment, and would you credit it? No Stephen Mangan. Indisposed due to a bally rotten sniffle, or something. He says pneumonia, but you know what actors are like.

Was still a super show. Matthew McFadyen and the other thespian chap were a revelation. All those costume changes! What a hoot. And then it was time to a get a cab home, I mean, to climb aboard Pop's automobile. And would you believe it? The machine in the car park would not accept the ticket from the theatre. Scoundrels!

So, we paid thirty pounds. Thirty pounds! And drove home taking in the Christmas lights and sights, and flopped into bed just before the witching hour, only for Mater to wake up sick to the bally stomach. Something rotten in the state of Imperial China, methinks.

No matter, was a tip top evening nonetheless. And with regard to the old renovated kitchen quarters (I really dare not mention the topic), there is a floor there now, and units arriving today. All rather jolly disruptive to the old nerves, though, so I'm off to Totleigh Towers to get away from it all. Hope Jeeves has packed the smoking jacket, I'm in need of some serious R&R.

Love Bertie (aka E) x

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Adversity

(Fresh concrete going down.)

It has been a week in which 800 bags of soil, hardcore and cement have gone through our front door.

A week that has seen our new kitchen, which had lately had windows installed, been plastered, and was on the decorating home straight, transformed into a 52 square metre hole in the ground.

A week in which Husband and I have lain awake wheezing and staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night for more hours than we will ever care to look back and remember.

A week that began with shattering news and ended, thankfully, with a ray of hope at the end of the tunnel, or should that be foundations, and the joy of Middle One's birthday.

And also a week in which, in the midst of disaster, there have been positives: friends who have pulled the stops out to pick up the phone, to text and to write, to be supportive, empathetic and kind, and family, in particular my parents, a constant source of support and reassurance on the end of the phone, and most wonderfully of all, Husband. 

Who would have thought that going through a, let's call it 'very eventful', kitchen extension would have done wonders for the old marriage? In adversity, it turns out, we pull together and draw support from one another. Who knew?

It is quite literally one of my worse nightmares to have nothing but a hole in the ground at the back of the house. You know those dreams in which you have to give a speech and then you suddenly realise you're naked? Or when you are desperately trying to get through to someone on the phone and can't? Or when it's your Geography GCSE the next day and you haven't revised? (With me it's always Geography, no idea why. I got a B.) Well, I have one where the back of the house is missing. The builders have come and knocked it all down and gone away. And that pretty much came true, except that they didn't go away, thank God. I kept thinking that they might. Every night after they left I would do a quick audit of their tools and clothes: still there, I would think. Phew.

Here we are now, seven days on from 'that' day, the day we discovered that the concrete floor was no good and had to come up, and since then the builders have dug the whole lot out, down 400 mm into bare soil, carted nearly all of it out the front door, put down a new cement layer with DPM underneath (damp proof membrane, you see I know all the lingo now), built sleeper walls and joists and nearly completed the insulation layer before the marine ply and then underfloor heating go on top, all before the lovely Christof (see previous blog) is due to come back on Wednesday to lay the engineered timber. You see I told them, when we discovered the cock-up, that they had just over a week to sort it all out and if they manage to get it finished by Wednesday, as promised, we will end up only two days behind the original schedule and back on track for Christmas.

So, with reference to my previous blog sign off, I would say that it looks like he can do it, and that he is up to the job… but I'll have to let you know. 

Watch this space.

Love E x

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Life is a series of problems.

The state of the concrete floor.

"Life is a series of problems that need to be solved," said Maggie Smith, aka the Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey, during Sunday evening's episode. Or something like that. We seem to be having more than our fair share of them at the moment. 

Yesterday should have been a red letter day for us, a day to celebrate having a watertight kitchen again after 16 long weeks, with new doors installed by Express Bi-Folding windows, from Leeds no less. 

They have been great, a good service, on time, to a high standard. But. BUT. On the very day they were being installed, lovely Christof, from Waxed Floors in Clapham, popped in to test the moisture content in the concrete floor and check it was level before laying the beautiful engineered timber next week, and he was not happy. He rang me. I was at the library collecting parking permits. I sat down. 

"Bad news, I'm afraid," he said, and I knew what he was going to say. We already had an inkling that all was not right. 

I realised that my breathing had become a little laboured, shallower, and that my hands were shaking ever so slightly. All I could think was: "what's the solution, what's the solution, what's the solution?" I always want to hear a solution straightaway but you have to let people tell you the problem in detail in their own time first and usually, for me, that means SLOWLY. SLOWLY. SLOWLY. I'm nothing if not impatient, it's a characteristic I deplore in myself and it has caused me many a problem in the past. Act in haste, repent at leisure. I think about that a lot.

So, do you want the detail, or the long and the short of it? I thought so. Here's the long and the short of it. 

The concrete is crap, it's dust, something went wrong with the mix. It's not level either but that hardly matters by comparison with the quality. It has to come up. It is coming up right now as I write, and quite quickly and easily too as it happens, probably because it is crap.

What now then? What is the solution? Do we have a new concrete floor put down, which will be quick to lay but take 5- 6 weeks to dry before the engineered timber floor can be fitted on top, and which definitely means missing Christmas in our new kitchen? Or, do we get the builder to make a new floor with joists, with the underfloor heating coiled between? I believe that's called a floating floor. 

Answers on a postcard (or below) would be great because we really have no clue what to do for the best, and unfortunately neither does our builder. On the plus side he is trying to put it right. For free.

We originally wanted a concrete floor because they conduct heat well and retain that heat for a long time, and it's the cheapest and easiest thing for the builder to do (you would think). The downside is that it takes time to dry before you can lay engineered timber on top.

The floating floor is a skilled job. It all has to be cut and laid and made level. This is what, at the moment, we have decided to aim for because if it can be done in a week we can still make Christmas. IF. The builder says he can do it in a week...

But can he? 

And is he up to the job?

New windows going in. Finding out that the floor had to come up rather rained on our parade.

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The builders

(Eldest shooting a video for his media project in the 'kitchen'.)

The builders have been here since Friday July 26th and I have officially had enough.

I am aware that moaning about builders is what Middle One calls, 'a first world problem'. We're not a displaced war-traumatised family in Syria. We're not Eritreans so desperate to flee poverty we're prepared to risk life and limb in an overcrowded leaky old boat on rough seas. We are a middle class family of five in south London having a kitchen extension. 

Still, I think I might be suffering from a PTBS, that's post-traumatic builder stress, except it's not so much post because they're still very much here. Unfortunately. Here are a few observations -

1. Kitchen extensions in Victorian terraced houses are inherently horrible because everything has to come through the front door. That's every wheelbarrow, every ounce of concrete, every pipe and wire and breezeblock, every brick, and every bum-crack sporting brickie. 

3. Builders don't tell the truth. They can't help it. Number one is the schedule. "Oh it will only take 11 weeks max," means, "It will take five and a half months and by the time we're finished we will all loathe the sight of each other."

4. Builders offer to do extra things in your house at the start of the job and then don't follow through. You want that underfloor heating tweaked in the upstairs bathroom? No problem, we can easily fit a new control panel for you. All such offers miraculously dry up the minute the build starts. We all know this will happen but choose to be optimistic.

5. Why?

6. The price always goes up, never down. Even if some things end up quicker and easier than they thought. 

7. Who am I kidding? Nothing ends up easier or quicker than they thought. 

8. Quite how the price goes up is a mystery since you told them exactly what you wanted at the outset. 

9. When builders make a mistake they pass the cost on to you. (For example, not building the trench for the foundations deep enough and having to re-dig them.) When you make a mistake the cost stops with you. How any builder in London ever goes out of business is a mystery, it's foolproof. Having said that...

10. So far our builders have - failed to cover the beautiful front tessellated path so that it's now worn and cracked and damaged, tripped out the leccy when we were on holiday so that all the food went off in the fridge and had to be thrown away, failed to consider disconnecting the kitchen alarm so that it went off the whole time upsetting the neighbours, put a foot through the cellar ceiling damaging a pipe and causing a flood, made an absolutely bloody huge mistake with the main supporting beam so that it was failed TWICE by the building inspector and there are now cracks all over the place, made a glass door with a frame too narrow for a proper handle, plaster-boarded around a fireplace with non-fireproof board, over-run by four weeks with no real end date in sight. Although I'm sure most of this is par for the course.

On the plus side the beam has finally passed, the plasterers are in today and the builder seems to be a basically good guy who gave Husband a bottle of vodka for his birthday and mended our wedding picture. And he says he'll fix the damage to the house free of charge. He's going to put that in writing.

So watch this space reader…

Love E x

(Beautiful glass door, no space for a proper handle.)

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