Your Day (apart from gardening) - what took place?

Yesterday evening I had a look at Groupon holidays. They were advertising 2 nights in Rome Inc flights from £79. I looked a bit closer and 4 nights in October would cost £149 each. My wife and I agreed it sounded reasonable so I booked. It turns out that buying the voucher and booking the holiday aren't quite the same thing. I had to fill in a booking form and enter my preferred dates, airports etc, which is fair enough. A few minutes later Groupon phoned me to confirm detals. I had to go through everything again that I had written on the form. Then I was offered some flight times from my chosen airport on my chosen day. I was told there were more sociable flight times available if I were willing to pay extra. I said I had bought an all inclusive holiday and that was what I expect to get. I excepted the flight times he gave me. In reality I wasn't bothered which days we travel so I might have been offered better times on different days. As I didn't want to spend all day haggling on the phone and I wasn't feeling 100% I didn't bother going there.

I won't be buying a holiday that way again. I need to spend the time deliberating and checking everything works in as I want it to. Groupon is a pig in a poke. Paying for something that big in advance without confirmation is not ideal. I still don't know where the hotel is or how we are going to get to/from it. One evening when I have some time I'll look into it.

It's done now so I had best stop worrying about it. The bottom line is that my wife and I will be going somewhere nice.

G.

 

I spent some time at the controls of "The Star Ship Enterprise."

 

Took Barley for his walk this morning and noticed that the may blossom was out.


The scent from it was intoxicating.

 

Wednesday went with hubby to see a consultant at Edgbaston Birmingham hospital, for his hurnia. He was told that they wouldn't do a repair because it wasn't causing any pain or discomfort.After the op he could be in a lot of pain for a long time after. Nothing to do with the mesh that they us, it's just painful. But if it gets any worse they will.

 

My friend has just sent me the following text message:

"Kernel time"

As it is lunch time - I assume that he will be dining on a seasoned deep fried chicken product with fries .

Unless of course he intends to eat a bag of nuts for lunch - you can't make this stuff up can you?

 

A pain of a job.

The pedestal tap of our worktop inset kitchen sink, was becoming a bit wobbly. It's ten years since we had a new kitchen. My wife would love another.

Last year, my wife was hopeful of another new one when we had a new central heating boiler, late in September, the old one of which the kitchen was fitted around.

We did have this.



Were left with this.



But I managed to get all the necessary woodwork, (no mean task as the firm that supplied the kitchen had long closed down).

So now we have this. O.K. I've still to redecorate the whole kitchen, but I'm waiting for a spell of dry weather.



Anyway, to fix the tap I had to remove both drawers under the sink. The tap unit is hidden behind the sink bowl in a corner of the unit and the two supply water pipes were in front of of the retaining nut. Fortunately, I still have the socket set I had from my youth when I could be bothered to service my own cars. It just needed a socket, a long extension and the ratchet bar. Quite an easy job, but I've still got the crease in my back from lying on it with my head under the sink.

It's as good as new now, so no new kitchen!

 

We've never had a new kitchen, the door on one of the cubboard is nearly off one of our dogs knocked it, that was a few years ago. It's still the same.Had to have a new sink so we had to have all the surfaces changed. Because the new sink wouldn't fit.

 

We've had several. Forty years ago in the early seventies, when we purchased this house we bought a cheap "Hygena Q A" self assembly kitchen. (Curiously, looking that name up on the internet, to make sure I'd got it right. I found people looking for bits of them or trying to sell them!) In the eighties, we had a new Schreiber self assembly kitchen. We got that at a discount as the company was owned by GEC for whom my wife worked part time. In the nineties I ordered all new doors and worktops, which I fitted. Then we bought and had fitted this one, thirteen years ago.

I fitted a false ceiling and installed the spotlights my wife wanted, the laminate floor and did the decorating. We were going to have curtains but settled for roller blinds.
It's all soft-close drawers under the worktops, as with her disability she can't manage cupboards.
There's a huge double tiered carousel in the corner, you just push the front in and it locks as you spin it and it returns to normal after a complete revolution.

You can see the size of it here, there's a narrow drawer unit next to it for tea, coffee, Amaretti biscuits etc.,









My wife told the designer what we wanted, but I insisted having that little breakfast bar, just big enough for my morning paper and a cup of coffee. She didn't want it, but she's always got stuff on it! So I can't often sit there!




We haven't a hob, for a while we had this double boiling ring. But for ten years now we've had two halogen hobs that can be put away in a drawer. She's talking about replacing them with the latest versions which are half the size now.



Since then we've had to replace every appliance, large and small, they all broke down over the years, which were mostly new and the oven and the dishwasher twice! But the units still look as good as new.

When the Bosch fridge/freezer went U/S last year, no replacements were available of the same size, they were all 1cm taller. We didn't want to have a shorter one, so we had to lose the overhead cupboard, for me to get this much taller Miele in last September, (that went wrong and had to be replaced last month!)





The problem with fixing the tap was that the fitter had installed it with the supply pipes to the outside so the fixing nut was behind them. He could have done it the other way round. As it was with the first attempt, the socket fell off the nut and behind the back of the unit, so I had to drag the dishy out to retrieve it!

 

@Doghouse Riley that's quite a lot to have done.

We did have a new bathroom a few years ago. They chose the shower screen, but didn't take into account that the wall wasn't straight and the screen was starting to fall off, so they replaced that, for nothing of course.

We had the shower coming off the hot water tank, but had to have a pump to boost the pressure. After 6 months they replaced it because it broke, still on guarantee.

 

We did our own kitchen. Combined two rooms. Tore out the walls, ceilings floors and started from scratch. It took nearly 5 months and I had to cook on the old stove which was hooked up in the cellar.
Thought I would lose weight running up and down the stairs to cook but no, I also tasted each time... probably tasted the food to get rid of the taste of drywall dust.Yuk! Not much else has been done since except I bought a new sink - one of those that is 30" wide and nice and deep. Love it! You can see one of my small greenhouses at the side of my house - behind kitchen sink. And then the larger one right outside my garden doors. It's been 19 years since the reno and all is holdin g up nicely.

 

That looks really nice, kitchens do wear well if you look after them. Ours is quite small, there's no room for a tumble dryer, that's in the cupboard under the stairs.

 

Over here we usually have a separate laundry room. My house is 30 years old so it is where they used to put them, in the cellar. I get my exercise on laundry days