Tuesday 17 June 2008

DAY 15 CONT....

Good news and bad news today.

Firstly the bad news. After taking off the last of the old tiles in the kitchen Alessandro was going to sort out the wiring and the gas pipe. The wiring wasn't that much of a problem (just some trial and error pulling on the wires to see where they came from and where they went!) but to deal with the gas pipes we had to turn the gas off at the gas meter. Well we couldn't. It was completely blocked! If it broke whilst forcing it we'd have a big problem on our hands so we had to call Italgas - the gas company. They'd send someone out straight away if it was an emergency - eg. a gas leak, but since it wasn't an emergency someone will come in the next 2 days. So that has slowed us down a bit and also means someone has to be in the house at all times ready for the surprise visit from the gas man whenever that may be! Oh, it will also involve more money. That's the stuck gas tap on the left....


Once all the tiles were down we also discovered that the strangley shaped wall in the corner of the kitchen could be partially knocked down. Sounds like good news but it's not as my new kitchen has been built specially to go around that stupid little wall!! Oh well, too late now to change it! BTW, Raimondo called yesterday and my the kitchen has arrived, so I guess that's part of the good news!

Here's the wall. The right half of it is completely unnecessary. We discovered it used to be the old flue.


Now the good news. I went to the bathroom show room for the umpteenth time, this time to take back the shower drain (Alessandro already had one), to change some other piece of the loo drain and to see if they had some sort of support for the sink. Apparently my wall and the few big screws supplied with sink won't support the sink all on their own. The supports that Sandro showed me in the catalogues were either ugly, too expensive, needed ordering or all three!! Then he went to the store room, came back with two nice chrome supports, winked at me and told me he's giving them to me in exchange for the shower drain, which cost about a tenth of the price of the supports!!! So I guess my infinite number of visits to the showroom in the last month or so has been worth it! ;)

And things are progressing well in the bathroom. The shower base and bath are now in! And tomorrow morning the floor tiles are going down!! Yeah!!

Here's what the kitchen looks like "nude", with all the tiles gone!!


This is what we found behind the sink unit. Interesting place to put a tile like this when all the other tiles were plain!!

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