Hob and heater now working..

After the previous evenings efforts I opted to wait in this morning until the gas fitter arrived, just so I could brief him on what I'd done and make sure everything is acceptable. He seemed happy enough when he arrived, despite there not being quite enough copper pipe to do both gas and heater in the house. Also the electrician was there to fit the socket front for the hob supply (it had previously been left off due to a lack of space to work beind the carcass). Whilst he was there he also fitted the isolator switch for the cooker, which now means that as of this evening we have a working hob, oven and kickspace heater.

The hob has an auto-igniter which has a flame sensing safety interlock. I'm beginning to hate this already as when the hob is cold you need to hold the knob down to keep the interlock override on for a good few seconds. I much preferred the manual pushbutton igniter on my old hob/oven, even if it did give me the option to gas myself. meh.

Preparing for Hob installation

I prepared the 2 base units in question by cutting holes in the back - the one under the hob had a hole already for the electrical connection, though this needed to be enlarged to allow the gas pipe through as well - irritatingly Hotpoint have moved the gas inlet between the 2 models. I'd have preferred it on the other side as it's now right in front of the electrical supply on the wall. The other base unit (to the left) is under where the gas pipe drops, and behind it is now the isolating valve for the gas supply to the hob. I cut the hole quite generous for this as once the worktop was glued down the base units weren't moving and the poor gas fitter had to somehow manoeuver a couple of bits of 15mm copper pipe into the 40mm gap behind the base unit. I also notched the sides at the back to allow the pipe to pass.

The worktop was carefully measured and then cut to the dimensions of the hob using a router I'd borrowed off a mate. (during this the dyson overheated and died -argh!) The position was worked out to allow the gas supply to drop inside the base unit (rather than behind the back board) to allow easier access. With the drawers in there's about 30mm behind the rear of the drawer for the gas connection - plenty. This did however, push the front of the hob quite far forward - leaving it about an inch from the post-formed edge. Not a problem in itself, though the fixing clamps for the front of the hob now foul on the cross-brace that supports the base unit sides at the front. Oops. Reluctant to remove the brace (knowing how tightly wedged the base units are, I had visions of the sides being pushed in and the drawers jamming) I opted to put a pair of holed under the clamp mounting holes on the hob. Bin the clamps and put a slightly longer screw into the hob with a large washer to catch on the underside of the crossbrace - much tidier.

Once the base units were cut they were replaced in position and the freshly routed out worktop was then repositioned in it's final resting place. Despite the fact that the dog-bone worktop joint bolts say they're not suitable for a trend-jig cutout, I found they still fitted, so in they went. A tube of jointing/filling compound was squirted over the cut ends of the mitre and the worktop was then bolted together. A quick rub over with the solvent removed the excess and I've now got a nearly-tidy worktop joint.

At the same time I also cut the hole in the plinth for the kickspace heater. To support the heater in situ I screwed a couple of bits of batten to the back of the plinth that sit unde the heater keeping it at the right hight. The flexi hoses that come with the heater are a bit short, so I think the 2 spurs that are under the corner unit will need extending with copper pipe before being connected. Likewise the power lead is shorter than it needs to be. Arse.

Lining the hob up in it's intended hole has highlighted the poor build quality of this hob unit as well. Even screwed down there's a gap of a couple of mm all around where the top surface doesn't reach the worktop. This is poor, Hotpoint.

Now it's over to the professionals..

Another weekend, still no floor

Saturday AM(ish) S got to work painting the ceiling in the 3rd bedroom then started cleaning up all the woodwork for a coat or two of gloss paint. I finished putting all the handles on the kitchen cupboards (apart from the one where we're short a door) and fitted the pelmet lights The wiring for which passes up the back of the wall cabinets in the slim void behind the back board to the transformer. I'll fit the pelmet boards once the tiling is done. The transformer for the lights will sit on top of the wall cabinets, behind the cornicing, and is switched via one of the kitchen lighting circuits.

I also managed to track down the elusive little bit of plumbing required to allow me to complete the plumbing under the sink. The kit that came with the kitchen didn't seem to have the right bits to joint 2 outlets at different heights, and kitchen plumbing has a few conventions that defy logic (a different thread on sink outlets to the rest of the system -for example). Up to this point the half-basin drained into a margarine tub, which required frequent emptying (into the correct bowl!).

We've decided that I'm to build a narrow wine-rack that will sit in the gap behind the breakfast bar this will fill the gap nicely, and give us a useful wine storage solution that we'd otherwise have to put in a cupboard somewhere.

I also fitted some more outside electrics - the 2 PIR sensors for front and side lights, and the front dome light. Just the light by the back door and the front power socket to do - the front socket I want to flush into the brickwork, which will be a challenge, as being weatherproof, it is quite bulky.

The 'Narnia' cupboard was also emptied to allow me to get in there to line it with more accoustic stuff, and finish off positioning the electrical services for the electricians to terminate. The contents of Narnia is now mostly under our bed in the spare room -how many people can say that? The intention for that cupboard is for storage of CDs and dvds, though to keep future options open I'm putting lights, power and Cat 5 data sockets in there.

We managed to get the boxes containing the wardrobes and bed-frame upstairs (no mean feat at over 40Kg and 2m long). Then the sofa (still boxed) was plonked on one of the recently liberated wheel-boards. This enabled me to get to the end wall of the dining room, this is one of the last areas downstairs needing plaster, so was keen to do that corner as now the dining room can be papered.

As S spend most of saturday painting, sunday she could start papering the office. We'd chosen a coloured and textured wallpaper again (reminded me of lemon meringue) however as it was going up we were a bit concerned to see the patchy blue paint of the original wall through it - we checked again this evening when the paste and paper has properly dried, and thankfully the patchyness has gone -we were hoping we wouldn't be needing to paint as well as paper in every room. I've also discovered the importance of batch numbers, as we have 2 slightly different shaded of yellow going on in there.

I avoided cutting the hole for the hob. I've decided to leave it as late as I can as we're finding the additional uninterupted worksurface useful. Need to chase the gas fitter on that one.

This coming week will hopefully see a bit more progress, I still have to level the floor in the front room, not totally decided how I'm going to achieve that yet, lots of latex levelling I'm guessing.

More second fix materials delivered

Also recieved the second part of the second fix order - this time mostly the decorative styled socket outlets, plus also a couple of bits that were missing from the first part. Irritatingly the suppliers seem to have forgotten a bunch of switched spurs. This is a nuisance as they're on the kitchen ring. Managed to get through (eventually) and had a promise that they'd look into it. I'm starting to realise why this particular supplier is so cheap. The products are fine, the service is poor.

I also need to order a different face-plate and switches for the living room lights. I've got a double gang socket, where I only need a single. Maybe I'll put a pair of dimmer modules in, they're twice as wide.

Another hob

Recieved the second hob this evening at work. Late but intact.

It's the next model up from what was originally ordered, as it seems to be hard to find the original for sale online now at sensible money, and this model is actually cheaper from some places. On seeing one in a showroom a while back S noted that it also looked nicer.

Will be fitting it hopefully at the weekend.

Back to civilisation

The weekend saw a milestone reached - we have actually assembled the bed in the spare room. After S had laboured throughout the week to get the walls papered and painted, I fitted the carpet and skirting over the weekend. With the exception of curtains, second fix and snags, the room is done! So we moved out of the box room (soon to be office) assembled the bed and went back to joining a large majority of the population by not sleeping on the floor.

I did learn a valuable lesson on sequencing, skirting goes on before carpet, and definitely before gripper-strip. There is nothing more painful than trying to fit skirting-board whilst having your fingers shredded by gripper-strip.

I also took advantage of a break in the rain to fit the external lights down the side of the house - nothing exotic, just a line of cheap bulkhead fittings with a PIR at the end:

Kitchen taking shape

I got the breakfast bar cut to size, mitred and approximately located - I can't fix it down properly until I've cut the hob into the other worktop and the gas supply has been finished. I'm still waiting on hotpoint to deliver the replacement, should be later this coming week. I've cut the end of the breakfast bar square, but after snagging my sweater on it a couple of times yesterday I'm tempted to radius the corners off a bit, though I'm not sure how tidy that will look once I've stuck on the end-cap stuff, it's not the horrid iron-on stuff I once tried using, you've got to glue it with impact adhesive, but I can't help thinking that it'll end up un-peeling itself. maybe I can get something metal..

The door/drawer handles are slowly starting to appear on the units as well, I do a couple a night as it's nice, unstressful work to help me wind down.

Oven and wires

In an effort to avoid plastering last night I fitted the oven instead. We had an electrician come by yesterday and start second fix - he found a bag of scruffy second hand sockets donated by a work colleage and proceeded to fit them around the kitchen. I had the foresight to get a few specialist connections, such as a couple of 45A hob/oven wall terminations, as well, and after his efforts we now have fixed power in the kitchen, and no other obstacles to getting the oven out of its box and fitted into it's housing.

Also spent an hour or so locating the wiring for the dining-room light. This had been previously lost once the plasterboard went up on the ceilings, with only a few cryptic marks on the walls to indicate where it might be. After some careful measuring and consultation with S as to where the light is actually wanted I put a 25mm hole in the ceiling adjacent to the joist carrying the wires.

The problem now was getting 4 bits of 3 core t&e through this hole. The floor directly above this point is the bathroom, which is tiled, and not coming up whatever the excuse. However the hallway adjacent to this has currently got exposed floorboards, and the run of the joists allowed me to reach along the void to the area above the hole.

The problem is, in fitting the plasterboard, one of the wires has been trapped between board and joist. After a lot of cursing and a fair amount of brute force (applied at arms length) I managed to free the trapped wire, and then it was simply a job of feeding the ends through the hole. We now have a spider of t&E hanging from the ceiling.

Meanwhile S has been labouring in the back bedroom, and it's now pretty much totally covered with lining paper. Result.

How useful is home delivery?

A rant.

Why do retailers think they're doing us a favour by selling us products with 'free home delivery'? As most of us may be aware, most delivery agents don't work weekends, so what they're actually saying is we'll deliver to you at home when you're most likely to be at work. Maybe I'm assuming too much by the fact that most of us still go to work during the day, but I think for an average household this is still the case.

Some of us are lucky enough to be able to work somewhere that will accept deliveries on your behalf, but if recent experience shows, this doesn't always make for an easy life. We were hardly in a position to open and inspect a pile of kitchen appliances in the rain in a car park. Neither were were able to sign for the goods un-opened.

So what's the solution? Evening deliveries? Weekend deliveries? All of this is achievable, even if it adds another £10-£20 to the price, it'll still be cheaper than paying high-street prices.

Running water

Despite all the plastering I need to be doing, the weekend was spent in the kitchen, and as a result we now have running hot & cold water, and a mostly functional waste system.

I hired a worktop jig & router from a tool hire place near work and after buying a new cutter for the router (£25!!! - the hire of the router & jig only came to £30) was ready to begin.

The main length which runs across the width of the kitchen is a single, wall-to-wall length. Given how un-straight and un-square the house seems I took a punt that the false wall would be straighter, and was correct, however it's still not square. After taking a few measurements, I cut the worktop to what I hoped would be the correct size. Far from it. Despite comparing the diagonals, I've now come to the conclusion that the worktop/wall area is skewed slightly. Cutting a 15mm wedge from one end ensured a fit square and flush with 2 walls, but leaving me out by 10mm at the other end. I think creative tilling should be able to solve that one.

I cut the female side of the mitre into the main length with the router and jig, and then rougly cut the second length so it'd fit in the gap and I could then line that up. Likewise it was slightly skew, but as it was shorter than the overall space, I could change it's orientation to get the best fit. I had to route a few mm off the back edge to accomodate a slight bulge in the wall and then mark it for the male end of the mitre.

Cutting the worktop is hard work with the router. I did a test joint first on a bit of old worktop to be sure I understood the principals of making the joint and using the jig. This worked fine apart from a clamp slipping slightly, however it also took the edge off the cutter in the router. It appears your typical laminate kitchen worktop has quite a high quantity of resin/glue in it, and also is of varying density, it's denser at the top & bottom edges. The upshot of this is that as the job progresses, and the cutter gets blunter, the first and last pass of the cutter gets harder. Towards the end of the weekend I wasn't so much cutting the worktop as burning a hole in it.

So after effectively 2 mason's mitres, tidying up an L-shaped cutout I (foolishly) did with a jigsaw, and cutting the hole for the sink, the cutter was pretty much finished. I also had to put a small rebate on the underside of the main run to allow for where I'd tiled too far up the wall under the worktop. I did this with the circular saw, rather than endure the pain of coaxing a blunt router along 2.4m of dense, resin impregnated chipboard.

I'm very pleased with the mitre joint - it fits together exactly, or will do once I level the second worktop, however that needs to come out to have the hob cut in and fitted. However I did suffer from poor planning which had me cutting the joint upside down (or right side up), hence the router was spinning the wrong way which caused the laminate to lift on the front edge. Hopefully I can fix that with one of the (too many) colour-fil packs we were sold. You live & learn.

Fitting the sink was more frustrating than it should have been, I'd gotten the hole cut mm perfect, and in just the right place, however despite this the claw-clamps that hold the sink down are obstructed by the carcass beneath both front and back. I got the front fixings in by dismantling the carcass in-situ allowing access to front clamps, which I had to chisel out rebates for to allow refitting of the front support. I gave up on the back fixings, even if I could rebate the worktop to allow the clamp to fit over the carcass, I'd never be able to get a screwdriver on the clamp to tighten it.

The taps went in fine (hooray!) however the waste kit that we were supplied doesn't have enough or the right type of fittings to connect 2 bowls that are at different heights. Additionally the height of the waste outlet puts it a little too low for a conventional P-trap, so I had to send S out with a list of bits I thought might work (this was the night before I'd actually fitted anything). Even with the the bits I requested I still couldn't get it to fit together, as the pipe in the kit is slightly larger than the standard 32mm waste pipe, so none of the additional bits fit where I wanted them to. AArgh.

At about 11pm last night I suceeded in getting the main sink draining properly (albeit slightly uphill) and the half sink currently drains into a margarine tub.

At least we don't have to go outside to draw water, or dispose of it.

I celebrated by doing the washing up in the new sink. S had had enough of my cussing by then and had gone to bed.

In addition to our new running water in the kitchen, it appears we also have running water in the loft. The chimney stack has a leak somewhere. One step forward, one back.

At this stage, I'm not sure if it's the flashing, brickwork or the flaunching, but under heavy weather it's letting a small trickle of water down the side of the stack in the loft, which is slowly soaking the ceiling joist, and now the recently plastered ceiling in the master bedroom. We've got a roofing/chimney guy coming by tomorrow to take a look at the problem, and then we'll take it from there.

Hob trouble again

Not more trouble, just the same stuff.

On closer inspection of the damaged corner it looks like it's been damaged prior to packing, as the metal is scratched as well as bent, this wouldn't be able to happen whilst in it's packaging.

I managed to straighten out the bend, but the top surface is still deformed, and scratched, which will be a dirt-trap.

On this basis we've decided to try and find a replacment, and dispose of what we have on ebay. S spent a merry couple of hours trawling around various high-street stores to see if there was anything we could buy and fit this weekend- alas not. Looking online has found the next model up, for less that we paid for the original, so we'll chase that - just as soon as I know how soon we can get it..

a quick word

I'd like a quick word with whatever sadistic indvidual put the 2" oval nails in the bottom of the door surround i've been trying to shorten.

My saw is now lacking a few teeth.

Hob trouble

Finally got around to unpacking the hob last night, mostly to check what connection was needed for the power hook-up (13a plug, it sems) plus also to check the type of gas connection.


Despite the fact the packaging was intact, the corner of the hob had clearly recieved a knock, and was bent over.

That ain't going to fit without help.

Of course, having bought it so long ago, the retailler isn't interested in exchanging it, though they did offer a £25 goodwill cheque - thanks Argos.

That leaves us with 2 options, try to straighten it, or get another one. That'll be another £170quid or so. Ouch.

I'll be getting the hammer out this weekend.

A Few bits

Bought myself some new side-cutter this evening, along with a set of saw-horses and some second fix bits to help push the kitchen along - hopefully get an afternoon out of the electrician to install these little bits.

Also arranged hire of a worktop-jig and router for the weekend - cheaper than paying a pro, and it gives me another excuse to wreak havoc and distruction with power tools. Read a few tutorials and vids online and a masons' mitre, or butt & scribe joint doesn't look that difficult once you understand how the jig works.

Of course that would be in a kitchen that's square.

The reality will be another thing, but getting the worktop fitted will then enable the sink to be installed negating the need to draw water from the outside tap, or washing machine feed hose.

More plastering

Managed to plaster the chimney-breast in the living room last night. Didn't achieve much more as once again for an hours work I spent 3 hours moving stuff around.

Still haven't found my side-cutters.

plastering the sitting room

As much as I'd like to put it off, I've got to get the plastering (at least) done before I can think about laying floors.

My brother kindly offered to stop by after work to help, so the pair of us started on clearing a space then trimming out some edges with beading before mixing up half a bag of multi-finish to skim over one of the larger wall segments.

Trimming the beading to fit proved more challenging that it should have been due to my side-cutters going for a walk. Using a cheap halfords combination crimper to cut galvanized corner beading is not a pleasant experience. A hacksaw is out of the question, it's like cutting chicken-wire. Suprisingly tough.

S must have spent several hours looking for the wretched cutters on my behalf (she hates to hear me bitching, and when I fail to find things accuses me of having a 'boys look'). I'll look again tomorrow.

Kitchen assembly

Given that the floor is down, walls are papered and painted in the affected areas I figured I was running out of excuses not to start assembling the kitchen.



I started in the corner with the wall units, and worked my way along. I picked a height (not out of thin air, honest) for the fixing, and levelled all the units to that height.

After fitting all the wall units I decided they had to come down again to allow me to drill holes for cable to feed the low-voltage pelmet lights that will sit under the bridging and corner units. The transformer will live on top of the units, which is where the T&E supplying it currently rests. The holes are in the top and bottom boards, right at the back, allowing the cable to run up in the shallow void behind the backboard. To ease installation I threaded some builders string through both holes, taping it onto the top to secure it.

Once the wall units were up and leveled I then fitted the extractor hood, getting that on the wall and out the way. I'm going to have to do something creative with the upper cover, as the securing method is poorly thought out at best, and definitely won't work with the duct where it is.

Base carcasses then followed, I wanted to be sure they'd fit, as I suspected the dimensions along the chimney wall would be tight. They were. Chisel a few low level tiles off the end wall and the units now fit, highlighting how out-of-square the side of the chimney breast actually is. I blame the person who plastered it.

The following day doors started going on, mostly to reduce the quantity of unopened cardboard boxed around the house.