New electricity meter

The new meter was installed this morning so I should now have enough current to run an air source heat pump. The ASHP has been hauled, with great difficulty, onto the roof - it was bigger and heavier than the builders expected - so I guess all the bits will get connected soon and in due course I will be shown how it works.

We had an informal, no-architect, no-minutes site meeting this afternoon ranging over fixing the ceiling pulleys for my airer (they can be fixed very easily), which pile of tiles is to go into which room (we labelled the boxes), grout colour (I was given a sample card to choose from), whether the taps will attach to compression joints or snap connectors (my choice - I can do compression joints; I choose snap connectors), the door handles fouling the door-stops (I have looked at a job half-done without understanding what happens next), the type of floor varnish (I have compromised over many, many things but I will not compromise over the quality of the floor varnish), and the sizes of the service hatches in the bathroom and shower room, which I had insisted on having and which look too big to me - but the builders have a cunning plan, of course, and will make them the right size as they are tiled. 

I asked how the proposed rail for fitting the top kitchen cupboards will work given that I want the cupboards to go up to the ceiling and there is some boxed-in ducting in the way. The site manager looked totally bemused that I might want cupboards up to the ceiling. 'But you won't be able to reach the top shelf'. True, but in every house I've ever lived in I've got a stepladder and have dumped things on top of the kitchen cupboards - usually things I use rarely such as Christmas cake stuff, spare plastic boxes and vases - so I'd rather have them hidden. 'Well don't,' he said. 'And if I don't, the tops of the cupboard will get covered in a mixture of dust and grease,' I said. I was so obviously an expert in dust and grease that he fell silent. 

Instead, he took me to the alcove in the shower room above where the basin will be and we discussed a mirrored cupboard and lighting. I told him I couldn't afford any that I'd looked at. He asked me to go away and design what I wanted.

to be continued...


I have uploaded a plan of the ground floor, on the day after the plan I posted ages ago of the first floor. Thanks for that sensible suggestion, LaurieT.