House Progress Report

It was a long day yesterday and not a lot seamed to go right. I found out on Thursday thar the bath I wanted was too long to go into the position where the bath currently is in my house. The bath that is in there is smaller than normal (1680mm) most new baths are a standard size (1700mm). We came up with a way to get one in by knocking a plasterboard wall through behind the bath and rebuilding it but that wasn't gonna be simple. When we smashed some of the plasterboard out we realised it was gonna be even more complicated because of where the wooden lats were. Hopefully we have figured a way of fitting the bath in. I say we but I mean my dad!

I was intending to take some pictures again so you could see how we have smashed out some of the wall and stripped the paper from some of the rooms but forgot to take my camera with me. Will take some tomorrow.

I ordered my bathroom suite on Saturday, I had originally seen one in Trade Direct in Meadowfield for £199, cheap but actually look suprisingly good. I went o order it and the lass showed me some other in the showroom out the back. I decided I liked some better taps ao ended up paying another £80 extra for the taps. Unfortunately its not gonna be delivered until Tuesday at the earliest. I will ring tomorrow to make sure its gonna come Tuesday or its gonna hold me up.

I also bought a mixer shower on Saturday from B&Q for £129, it was supposed to be more than this but when I got to the till it came up cheaper so I wasn't gonna say anything. I also needed a pump but decided we would get this elsewhere cheaper. I started to lookup how to fit it all onthe internet and showed my dad. He realised that it wasn't gonna work with my water system because of the location of my tank in relation to the shower. Basically its because the drop from the tank to where the shower is would only be a couple of feet and this wasn't gonna be enough. If my shower was down stairs it would of worked. I think my dad was quite happy that it was't gonna work because it was gonna be a lot of work and a massive headache to fit.

I took the shower back today and got a refund, then went and bought an electric one from Argos. I'm not exactly happy, I always wanted a really powerful shower but instead I'm stuck with an electric one :-(

The picture to the left shows the shower I bought from Argos, which I guess for an electric shower looks OK but no where near as good as the original one I bought. Suppose it saved me some money with not having to buy a pump and will be easier to fit. This cost me £149.

I don't seam to of done very much in my house yet other than strip wallpaper.

I tried unsuccesfully to buy a Fridge Freezer all weekend, I think I mentioned I tried to buy one from Currys but it had gone up by £50. I went back on Saturday and was going to buy another I liked but they only had the display model left and it was scratched to hell. So again I walked away without one. I then started to searching the internet and found a Frost Free Bosch model that I could get from Appliance Deals for £264 with free delivery but I got all the way through the purchase process and when I tried to confirm everything I got a web site error, Bollocks!!

I tried several times and the same thing kept happening. I then tried on Boots Appliances web site which was slightly more expensive, when trying to purchase it I noticed the site looked very similar with the exact same layout and fields to fill out. I got exactly the same error again. The same people must run both web sites. I sent an email to Appliance Deals but there is no one there until tomorrow to answer my query. Will give them a ring tomorrow, the free delivery ended this weekend but not my fault the website is broke :-(

Tomorrow is going to be a frustrating day as well, I have to wait for UPS to turn up to give me a box to return my iPod to Apple in. They have already been out twice and this is the last time they will come out. So I'm gonna have to stay in my parents house until they come which is normally after 1pm. It means I'm wasting most of the day. My dad is gonna try and pull the bath out on his own and blank off some pipes, so that we can fit the new one on Tueday as long as they deliver it then.

To continue with the frustrations I found out that I will need to run another mains wire for my Cooker, the current wire was originally by the back door and was run around to the other side of the kitchen to where the cooker was located under the extractor. The previous owners just ran a wire around the kitchen in some crappy looking plastic trunking. Not only did it look rubbish but its also not very safe. So this means we are going to have to run a new cable from the fuse box at the other side of the house up throught the ceiling and under the floor boards above, then down into my dining room and through the wall into the kitchen where we will have to fit some skirting board to hide the cable behind. The kitchen is tiled and we dont want to damage the tiles.

Nothing is ever easy but I'd rather have things done properly than bodged together like it appears most people do. I seam to be taking several steps back at the moment but will get there in the end. All this work means its gonna be ages before I'm at a point where I could move in.

My mother is going to continue to pull paper off on a night after she has been at work and will help fill in the holes in the walls. She will then paper them with thick lining paper, the walls are no where near good enough to paint direct and don't really want to pay someone to re-plaster them all. I might have to skim some of them in a few places. Once that is done I will have to choose some colours and paint them. Will feel like I'm getting somwhere once this is done.