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.