The Money Pit

I Heart Screwfix

I've talked about my love of Screwfix.com before on this site. This love just increased a notch following some great customer service.

When doing the kitchen I splashed out on a load of fancy Crabtree Platinum electrical fittings. It was the sparky who pointed out I was crazy to use them on the unseen sockets below worktop level.

It's only now that I've decided I'll never use the spares anywhere else and, so, want to return them. On Monday I sent a mail to Screwfix to ask if and how I could return them. Yesterday a really nice-sounding girl called to say their money back offer runs out after 30 days and my order is older than that. But, they are willing to over-look this and are sending a courier on Thursday to pick them up. I get 70 quid back. Now that's good service. Take note Wolseley.

Plumb Center Pains

Remember a while back I complained about the service I received at Timber Center? Well, in time they redeemed theirselves, but I have another complaint to make. This time it's their sister company Plumb Center (both are part of the Wolseley group) I have the gripe with.

Now, I like to think I don't complain too much. This is only the second time I've been driven to blog about my misfortunes. Both times by the same group of companies!

What happened? Well, see in the last blog entry there was a picture of the downstairs loo? It has no taps or water supply/waste pipe. Last Friday I decided to get it plumbed in. I thought it was be a day-job and hoped to have it done that day. It's now a week later and it's no close to being finished. Here's why:

I had my mind set on a certain brand and model of tap for the sink - Ideal Standards Waterways Basin Taps with Ceramic Heads. I wanted the brand to match the rest of the suite. Tracking them down was proving tricky so I called my local Plumb Center (there are a number of them in Nottingham). They didn't have any but said the city centre branch did. So, off I trundled.

What I ended up with were Plumb Center own-brand basin taps. A bargain at £11 but not what I wanted. I had specifically asked for the tap I wanted and, when the guy brought them out, I questioned the box they were in as it had their own brand on it. He told me they made them for them and I took it at that. After all they looked pretty much like the ones I wanted. It wasn't until I got home that I realised they were the wrong ones. The ones I wanted are more than twice the price. So, maybe I should I have realised when he told me the price? Well, I would have done if he hadn't made so many other mistakes that bumped the overall cost up to a price that sounded right.

The guy made so many mistakes it's not even funny. For a start he charged me for 33m of 32mm waste-pipe at a total cost of £28. In fact I got two 3m length. He entered 11, maybe thinking pressing 1 twice was the same as 2? He seemed that thick.

Now, I have no way of proving I didn't take 33m home with me do I?! Although the taps were cheap the total cost seemed right because of mistakes like this and so I didn't check the invoice. If they now query my order how do I prove it? I only hope they can see from the rest of the order that I was obviously plumbing in one sink. Why on earth would I want 33m of waste-pipe?!

Also on the invoice were items I'd told him I didn't want after he'd shown them to me. Then I got home to find that one of the 32mm push-fit elbows I asked for was in fact 40mm. I also noticed that the isolator valves he'd given me were £7.50. Only 50p from Screwfix.

Due to his mistakes the price sounded right. But the order was so, so wrong. So wrong that I couldn't do the job. Because it was late Friday afternoon that I went there I couldn't do much about it.

Today I rang the same branch to see if they do actually have the right taps in. They don't. The "system" says they do, but this guy had the foresight to go check and found some bath taps "labelled up wrong". He's ordered the right ones in for tomorrow morning. The branch is in the city centre and about an hour for a round trip. Tomorrow, one week after my first visit (I've been away in the mean time) I've got to spend another hour on the ring road through no fault of my own. Why is life never simple.

Spending a Pretty Penny

While working on a million other things I've had a little side-project going on - the downstairs loo:

This "room" used to be a cupboard/cloakroom and the toilet was next door (to the right). The room next door is 2.5 times wider and so too big for a toilet. In my eyes any room bigger than the toilet itself (plus somewhere to stand) is a waste of space. So, we moved the toilet to the cupboard and are making the ex-toilet in to a utlility room.

The idea of getting this job started was that it would be cheap and quick. We were wrong on both counts! It's taken ages to do  and has cost a small fortune. I just can't believe how much toilet "furniture" costs. The toilet pan and cistern cost £200 and the sink basin + shroud cost £100. This is without the taps and other accessories! Not to mention the fact the room needs plastering.

Now, it's all from Ideal Standard, so we could probably have gotten it cheaper. But our motto is "no corners cut" if it means jeapordising quality. I always think it's best to spend a little more upfront and avoid problems in the future.

On a positive note I managed to use some glass blocks in the wall. For years now I've always said I want at least some glass blocks in my house, no matter where. With this being a Victorian house this was always going to be hard, while maintaing character. I think we've got away with it here. The idea is to let in some light from the utility room, which has an outside window. Otherwise, using the toilet would mean turning the light on during the day. Whether these eight blocks let in enough light is yet to be seen.

One thing I learnt is that laying glass blocks is a nightmare. Maybe this was because I opted not to use the recommended spacers and used normal floor tile spacers instead. It worked but only just.

Living in the Pits

The BBC are reporting on the Top Ten Best/Worst Places To Live in UK.  The "findings" were reported in a program I happened to catch on TV tonight. I saw that Nottingham (my current home) came in 2nd on the worst list and wasn't at all surprised. What I missed was that my birthplace, Mansfield, was 6th in the same list.   

I don't feel the need to stick up for either place really. I can see why they'd rank so highly. Since moving to Nottingham a year ago I've started thinking the place is a bit of a shithole too. Like everywhere it's "got its nice bits", one of which we live in, but Notts has less of them than other places I've lived. Still it's not as bad as they made out. They seemed to play on the fact that Nottingham has had more than a few gun crimes reported just recently. They went as far as to suggest you might need a bullet-proof vest to walk the streets. Arr, come on now! 

Taking Photos

As I mentioned the other day I take a lot of photos of the work I do on the house. It might seem mad or sad (or both) but there's good reason to. Not only can you sit back and admire your progress from time to time but you can also share it with others. An idea of mine is to create a DVD when it's time to sell up and move. Imagine being able to show a prospective buyer the work you'd done. It's all very well telling them you've improved this and fixed that. Showing them the evidence is another thing entirely.

There's also a practical use for some photos. Take this one for example:

It's the kitchen ceiling. I took it knowing that a few weeks later I would be fixing ceiling roses and heavy chandalier-style lights there. This photo proved invaluable at the time as I'd completely forgotten where the joists were and even which way they ran.

Talking of ceiling roses, don't let them fool you in to thinking it's easy to put them up. The instructions on the box should really suggest you have somebody else around to lend a hand. I did it on my own and it's a real pain in the arse job - standing a top step ladders, balancing it on your head and trying to screw it up before your arms go dead.