One week to go

As we come to the final stretch of this remodel, the small, finishing touches like the bath, the toilet, the sink, the plumbing, the kitchen, the utility room, the windows, and the doors are all giving us grief.

To be fair, the windows and doors should arrive today, and the bath should arrive tomorrow (along with the dishwasher).  The only thing missing is the cooker hood, which is out of stock, and they have no idea when it will be in.  (A more practical person would have ordered a cooker hood that was available.  Unfortunately, Jess left that task to me.)

The kitchen was 2cm shorter than the kitchen cabinets -- still not sure exactly how that happened, but I'm blaming the paint thickness -- but we were able to get around that by swapping a 30cm drawer with a 40cm drawer, which worked out just fine.  The worktops have been cut and look great.  The "subway tile" is going up one wall, and also looks great (although it would look better if there was a cooker hood on it).  The wall cabinets should go up today or tomorrow, and the cabinet doors should arrive sometime within the next 150 days, according to Ikea.

One of the corner units has a two-tier carousel, and the builders seem perplexed by that.  At first they set it up so both shelves were in the middle, and you couldn't even fit a spice jar on the second shelf.  We pointed that out and, after great effort, they moved both shelves to the bottom, not actually addressing the issue.  We'll keep working on that.

Yesterday morning, I watched the plumber drill a large hole in the bathroom wall right behind the toilet, so you can understand my surprise when I came back in the evening to find he'd drilled a second large hole right next to the first, and put the waste stack in that  After a rather tense discussion -- which the plumber started with the words "don't panic" -- he explained the first hole was where we wanted it, but the second was where he had to put it.  Somehow this wasn't comforting, but after looking at the elbow he had to install outside, I understood why he did it that way.  (I'm still not happy about it, but I understand it.)  Fortunately, it will all be hidden when it is finished.

The plumber redeemed himself the next day by not showing up.  After 45 minutes of waiting, I called him and he told me that it wasn't worth continuing until the bath had arrived.  I listed the other things he could do -- installing the valves and plumbing, hooking up the kitchen and cloakroom, running gas to the stove and tumble dryer -- and he responded in a way that I didn't expect: "You have a gas tumble dryer?  You never mentioned that."  I can't win.

The utility room, meanwhile, is a bit like Alice taking the red pill*: Your head hits the ceiling, there is no space to stand, the basin is too high, the counter is too low, and opening a cabinet ensures you will hit some part of your body.  Otherwise, it's perfect.

* I am perfectly aware that Alice ate a cake that read "eat me" -- and that there were no pills -- but try phrasing that sentence as "a bit like Alice eating the 'eat me' cake." It just doesn't work.