a convenient truth

We’re having our kitchen fitted. Obviously just a few cabinets
wasn’t enough for us. Oh no. We’re going the whole nine yards, and
getting new everything. And on top of that we knocked a wall down.

Well I say ‘we’, what I really mean is a Romanian bloke called Fatmir
and a whole bunch of huge Romanian geezers. I’ve got to say though,
they’re doing a fine job (as far as I can tell). Two weeks later, it’s
not looking like a building site any more, it’s looking more like a
room.

Almost all the walls are skimmed, the floor in the old scullery has
been raised and levelled, the first-fix electrics are done. All that’s
left is for them to finish the skimming, board the floor, put down the
undertile heating, put down the tiles, whack a new architrave where the
old back door was, put a mist coat on the plaster and we’re off.

Then there’s a couple of weeks of cabinet fitting. Here’s some
advice :- if you’re going to be without a kitchen for a month, go on
holiday. The worst bit is that the dust gets everywhere. I’d come
home in the evening, go upstairs and find the cats curled up together
with a thick coating of dust over them.

The cats are another thing I hadn’t considered. Obviously I’d
thought about them getting squished under huge Romanian boots, or lost
under the floor. But I hadn’t considered how on earth you clean their
bowls when you haven’t got a sink. We can eat pizza, and just chuck the
box away. They can’t. Poor blighters hate the whole building thing
more than us I think :(.