Kitchen's Kitchen

Would be useful, for you or a future pumber, to label all those shiny new pipes at both ends, with their function.

This is a good thought, they're such detailers I'm sure they would do this but I shall mention it too.

Plumbers are done for the day I think, can no longer see them around... at the moment it's down to 2 electricians and the builder.

Day 5

Electrics in, and some more plumbing sorted out (a side quest involving putting the taps the right way around in the bathroom). The electrics was a bigger job involving cabling a 20m run from the fuse box for each of the different circuits (sockets, boiler, hob) and chasing that at both ends and also routing the cables through the roof to get from one end of the house to the other. Additional work to chase and place all of the socket points needed. You can see in the photos where this cabling all now emerges from the ceiling in the wall where the cooker and boiler are.

Whilst this happened the builder handled tidying up the outside, repairing brickwork, repointing where needed around it, filling holes, etc. And aside from minor deviations in brick colour... you wouldn't know.

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Weirdly our decorator loves F&B. Only the modern emulsion though.

I reckon a lot of decorators got stung by the estate emulsion and eggshell, which is a total ballache.

Oddly we had the opposite experience. Hague blue estate emulsion has always gone on well (over Leyland Trade undercoat) and all the wood in that room is the eggshell, which also goes on great.

Hague Blue, incidentally, is one of the colours test won’t match well. You need the real F&B.

But the blue green modern emulsion was a nightmare. On every brushstroke more was dragged off than went on. Maybe it would work if you spray. We chose to fuck it off, write off the £70 it cost and buy some Crown, which gave us no problems at all

In our boiler room for the pipes going into the boiler they paint the central heating pipes blue and red, and the dearer ones white. So useful for working out what did what!

very nice

Pro tip.

F&B is great. The flat matt finish on the Estate Emulsion is amazing for the really dark colours like Hague Blue. For lighter end of spectrum Johstons paints will paintmach Paint and Paper Library, Little Green and pretty much everything else if you take in the sample swatch.

What BQ said.

Crazy. Literally just done one of my rooms in this F&B Estate Emulsion and went on like a dream, over a Dulux white base coat.

Folks got F&B colour matched using one of the super durable Dulux paints for their hall. Ten years on its held up incredibly well.

Does your builder do structural stuff (steelwork to replace supporting external wall) as well? If so, would you be ok to pass on his contact details?

Yes. I'll get his full details for you.

Thank you, much appreciated

His website http://www.totalbuilding.uk which he apologises for... He's an incredible builder, the website is very basic as the vast majority of their work comes through recommendations from happy customers (which already includes me). He's affirmed he does a lot of structural work too... And btw, his choice of trades people have been excellent so even when he involves others they've proven to also be excellent.

His name is Leigh, and feel free to let him know I sent you, that doesn't get me a discount but I'm sure he'd appreciate understanding where the referral comes from.

What does he think is wrong with the web-site? It seems fine to me (but I have no idea what people expect of web-sites nowadays). Do people want walk-through videos of completed interiors or something?

Thank goodness it's generally still the quality of the work that really matters. :)

His building work reflects someone with very high standards. And seriously from what I've seen, the detail oriented approach, I can see why he would like the website to express more completely the standard he holds his work to. So it's just someone with very high standards and I can respect that, nothing fundamentally wrong with the website.

Ah, I see. That seems consistent with him. :)

That is a SLICK website for a builder ... cripes...

Day 6

No photos today, the builder was in alone but as I was in meetings until just now I've missed the opportunity to take photos (there are no lights in there and it's dark now and my flash is crappy).

Update:

• Prep for plasterer done (he's coming tomorrow)
  
• Prep on floor for tiler delayer. A part of the floor has 1-2mm of flex and the fear is that this would lead to a tile cracking in the future or the grout popping out, etc. So the decision was taken to remove the board in this area and replace the oak floorboards underneath so that it's a lot more solid. It was 50/50, it's not a big deal, may never occur... but we'd be sealing the issue under a floor that should last decades to come.
  
• Due to the floor thing, the rest of the work today were small tasks just to make sure everything is perfect... i.e. working on the bit near the kitchen door to see how close to perfectly flat can be achieved, there's a cable underneath for a nearby socket so cleaning around that, etc.
  
  

A lot of work still... but not as much visible progress, which is fine because my flash is crappy.

Day 7

Plastering.

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Time to choose which slab I would like.

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I'm thinking the more gold one.

Bling!

Missed my chance to get gold taps and everything. Oh well.

Taps can always be changed

So the worktop needs to end up as a U-shape... I know I'll have a person templating it... but I reckon I could try for an L shape plus an I shape... so that the corner that is the one most used has a perfect continuation of the veins and no groove where a join would be.

Unsure how good an idea this is... but I'll ask when I get to that in a week or so time.